ployment of vitreous and semi-transparent enamel. Sometimes, like the Limoges enamels of later ages, the coloured material was evenly laid over the metallic surface; while on other examples, the pattern to be inlaid was incised (champléve, Fr.), below the surface, and filled in with the vitrific paste in regularly divided sections. A third style, called by continental writers, “ cloi. sonné," was occasionally employed, in which every separate colour was enclosed in a thin strip of gold or bronze soldered previously to the surface beneath, as in the Chinese vases of the present day. Sometimes also the adornment upon the Assyrian rings was mythological, groups of divinities, sacred animals, &c.; but more frequently the ornamental patterns consisted entirely of lotus flowers, rosettes, fir cones, or leaves, imitated in natural colours by means of various glassy pastes, or inlays of carnelian, mother. of-pearl, porcelain, or even fragments of pearl and figured shells, closely fitted and mounted. Rings in the form of serpents, plaited wires, and strands of rope, beaded rings, and even rings with pendants, are also found abundantly of Assyrian origin and manufacture.

Between Egypt and Assyria there was, even from very early times, a certain amount of intermutual traffic. This is implied in Gen. xii. 10, xxxvii. 25, and is confirmed by several incidental circumstances. It has been noticed that the Assyrian seals were generally engraved on small revolving cylinders of stone, which were not worn on the finger, but were suspended to a chain hung round the neck. (See cut, Nos. 2, 3, 4.) At one period of Egyptian history—the XII. dynasty, supposed to be contemporaneous with Abraham—the use of the same kind of seals prevailed throughout the Delta, possibly the result of a temporary Chaldean raid. Some time after, in the XVIII. dynasty, during the reign of Thothmosis III., the Egyptians made a successful incursion into Assyria, and from that date the scarab rings of the African kingdom were occasionally used by the Asiatic nations. But the scarab was never popular in Assyria, nor the cylinder in Egypt. The force of custom soon restored in each case the original character of the national signet, and the scarab was left to the Egyptians and Phoenicians alone, who transmitted it, through the Romans, to the magicians of the Middle Ages, while the cylinder lingered on, and is still traceable in an imperfect form among the peoples of Persia and Hindustan.

ASSYRIAN RINGS AND SIGNETS. (1) Carnelian rings, probably pendants from chains; (2, 3, 4) signet cylinders, in hard stone ; (5) impressions from same, deities and sacred goats, emblematic of the sun and moon? The king slaying the mystic evil lion. (6) Signet cone, in hard stono, muoh less commonly used.

ASCENT IN THE SCALE OF CREATION. EVERY rank of creatures, as it ascends in the scale of creation, leaves death behind it or under it. The metal at its height of being seems a mute prophecy of the coming vegetation, into a mimic semblance of which it crystallizes. The blossom and flower, the acme of vegetable life, divides into correspondent organs, with reciprocal functions, and by instinctive motions and approximations seems impatient of that fixture by which it is differenced in kind from the flower-shaped psyche that flutters with free wing above it. And wonderfully in the insect realm doth the irritability, the proper seat of instinct, while yet the nascent sensibility is subordinated thereto-most wonderfully, I say, doth the muscular life in the insect and the muscular-arterial in the bird imitate and typically rehearse the adaptive under. standing, yea, and the moral affections and charities of man. Let us carry ourselves back in spirit to the mysterious week, the teeming work-days of the Creator, as they rose in vision before the eyes of the inspired historian, “ of the generations of the heaven and the earth in the days that the Lord God made the heavens and the earth.” And who that hath watched their ways with an understanding heart could, as the vision evolving still advances towards him, contemplate the filial and loyal bee, the home-building and divorceless swallow, and above all, the mani. foldly intelligent ant tribes, with their commonwealths and confederacies, their warriors and miners, the husbandfolk that fold their tiny flocks on the honey leaf, and the virgin sisters, with the holy instincts of maternal love detached and in selfless purity, and not say to himself, Behold the shadow of approaching humanity--the sun rising from behind in the kindling morn of creation! Thus all lower natures find their highest good in sem. • blances and seekings of that which is higher and better. All

things strive to ascend, and ascend in their striving. And shall man alone stoop? Shall his pursuits and desires, the reflections of his inward life, be like the reflected image of a tree on the edge of a pool, that grows downward and seeks a mock heaven in the unstable element beneath it, in neighbourhood with the slim water-weeds and oozy bottom grass that are yet better than itself, and more noble as substances that appear as shadows are preferable to shadows mistaken for substance P No! it must be a higher good to make you happy. Whilst you labour for any. thing below your proper humanity you seek a happy life in the region of death. Well saith the moral poet,

“Unless above himself he can Erect himself, how mean a thing is man!”

COLERIDGE.

Biblical Criticism.

MOUNT MORIAH. GENESTA XXII. 2." And He said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom

thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.”

The meaning of the name seems clearly to be Mori-jah, “the vision,” or “the manifested of Jehovah.” . . . In 2 Chron. iii. 1, Solomon is said to have built his temple on Mount Moriah; and the Jewish tradition (Josephus, Ant., I., xiii., 2 ; VII., xiii., 4) has identified this Mount Moriah of the temple with the mountain in the land of Moriah on which Abraham was to offer his son, whence probably here Onkelos and the Arab render "the land of worship.” No sufficient reason has been alleged against this identification, except that in ver. 4 it is said that Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off," whereas Mount Zion is said not to be conspicuous from a great distance. Thence Bleck, De Wette, Tuck, Stanley, and Grove, have referred to Moreh (Gen. xii. 6), and attempted to identify the site of the sacrifice with “the natural altar on the summit of Mount Gerizim," which the Samaritans assert to be the scene of the sacrifice. Really, however, the words in ver. 4 mean nothing more than this, that Abraham saw the spot to which he had been directed at some little distance off,—not farther than the character of the place really admits. The evident meaning of the words, “the mount of the vision of the Lord” (see ver. 14), the fact that the mount of the temple bore the same name (2 Chron. iii. 1), the distance, two days' journey from Beersheba, which would just suffice to bring the company to Jerusalem, whereas Gerizim could not have been reached from Beersheba on the third day, are argu. ments too strong to be set aside by the single difficulty men. tioned above, which, in fact, is no difficulty at all.”—E. H. Browne, D.D., "Speaker's Commentary."

PETER'S DENIAL. Jopn xviii. 16.-" Then went out that other disciple, ... and brought in

Peter.” “PETER stood without until John procured his admission. John meant to let him out of the cold, and not to let him into a temptation. But his courtesy in intention proved a mischief in event and the occasion of his denying his Master. Let never my kindness concur in the remotest degree to the damage of my friend.”—THOMAS FULLER.

THE SURE FOUNDATION. 1 Cor. iii. 12, 13.-—"Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver,

precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; every man's work shall be made mani. fest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and tho fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is.”

In such cities as Ephesus, where this letter was written, or Corinth, to which it was addressed, there was a signal difference (far greater than in modern European cities) between the gorgeous splendour of the great public buildings and the meanness and squalor of those streets where the poor and profligate resided. The former were constructed of marble and granite; the capitals of their columns and their roofs were richly decorated with silver and gold; the latter were mean structures, run up with boards for walls, with straw in the interstices and thatch on the top. This is the contrast on which St. Paul seizes, . . . not as sometimes the passage is treated, as though the picture presented were that of a dunghill of straw and sticks, with jewels. such as diamonds and emeralds, among the rubbish. He then points out that a day will come when the fire will burn up those wretched edifices of wood and straw, and leave unharmed in their glorious beauty those that were raised of marble and granite and decorated with silver and gold, as the temples of Corinth itself survived the conflagration of Mummius, which burnt the hovels around.—Condensed from Howson's " Metaphors of St. Paul.”

THE JERUSALEM SERVANTS. MATTHEW XXV. 14, 15.—"For the kingdom of heaven is as a man travelling unto

a far country, who called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods. And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one; to every man according to his several ability; and straightway took his journey." OLSHAUSEN thinks that these do not represent all Christians even, but such as possess distinct qualifications for the guidance and government of the Church. “They are the active members of the community who, with the gifts conferred upon them, carry on the external operations for the promotion of the cause of their Lord. Hence the talents entrusted signify the gifts of nature so far only as these form the condition of endowments with gifts of grace. For he who is without any natural abilities is not fitted to be a powerful instrument of grace.” He admits, however, that in accordance with the ordinary mode of interpretation, there may be lawfully taken from the parable a general application to hu. manity, because every individual is entrusted with something, be it great or small in amount.