Pan crouches under the weight of the sphere, and listens to the instructions of a figure which I venture to term Celmis. In the other, vol. iv. plate cxvin., Celmis presents two eggs, as a vivifying gift, influenced by which Pan, supporting the lower portion of a sphere, dances with the most ridiculous gestures. The torch, of which the mystical meaning is determined by Lucretius, -- "Et quasi cursores, vitaï lampada tradunt,” Lib. ii. v. 78. is here neither elevated, to denote life, nor depressed, to denote suspended animation, but characteristically held in a horizontal direction. As the principle of life to the universe it is a symbol of the sun, and Eusebius has informed us that the Aadouxos was attired as an allegorical image of the sun. This idea may be pleasingly illustrated by a passage in the Ezour Vedam; in which little work (evidently composed by some European missionary* for an excellent purpose) is the following apostrophe :-" Le Soleil 66 que tu as divinisé, n'est qu'un corps sans vie et sans connoissance. "Il est entre les mains de Dieu comme une chandelle entre les "mains d'un homme. Créé de lui pour éclairer le monde, il “ obéit à sa voix, et répand partout sa lumiere comme une chan"delle qui commence à éclairer dès qu'on l'allume.”— Vol. i. p. 226, 227. "The sun, which you have deified, is a mere lifeless " and unintelligent body. It is in the hand of God as a candle in "the hand of a man. Created by him for the purpose of lighting "the world, it obeys his word; and disperses every where its light, "as a candle throws its beams the moment it is lighted." To this it may be properly added, that the most ancient Osiris of the Egyptians, for there were many of the name, was * I believe it to be the same work that is noticed by Father Giorgi, Alph. Tibet. p. 94., as the production of the Capuchin missionaries in India. supposed to be the son of Vulcan, and was entitled Tosorthrus*, a word that, according to Father Giorgi†, signifies filius fornacis, "the Son of the Furnace." Upon the whole, this interesting painting, taken from a very early Sicilian vase, which was once preserved in the library of the late James Edwards, Esq., but was destroyed by accident, furnishes a curious insight into the earliest religion of Greece, which evidently consisted of speculations upon, and probably a worship of, the mundane elements. This worship is also to be clearly traced in religious allegories upon works of art, in China and Japan; and it seems to have prevailed universally, before the first deification of heroes, who, in the course of time, were likened to those elements. "Plures fuerunt in Egypto Reges Osirides; quorum primus a Bonjurio, sta“tuitur Tosorthrus, filius Necher-Ophis Vulcani, omniumque Egyptiorum Regum antiquissimi."-Alphabet. Tibetan. p. 71. tenim +"Tosorthrus hic idem esse posset tanquam forayeppa, Touser-thro, "et Græca terminatione Tousorthros, filius fornacis, sive Vulcani filius."articulus fœmineus ideo præfigitur, quia pu fornax generis est fœminei.”— Ibid. p. 75. The Chinese imagined two principles which they termed Yang and Yn, and they represented them by an entire line, and a divided one, styling them the perfect and imperfect, heaven and earth, male and female. Dr. Kæmpfer observes, that certain of the Japanese philosophers admitted an intellectual or incorporeal being, but only as governor and director, not as the author of nature; nay, they pretended, that creation was an effect of nature produced by In and Jo, heaven and earth; one active, the other passive; one the principle of generation, the other of corruption. Hist. of Japan, p. 250. These opposite principles are elsewhere reported, p. 601., to be represented before the Daibod's Temple, near Miaco, by two images of giants, called A-wun, or In-Jo, or Ni-wo, one with the mouth open and the hand extended, the other with the mouth shut and the hand brought close to the body. CHAP. VIII. Harmonious Arrangement of the Universe. ACCORDING to Plutarch, when Osiris had settled the affairs of his government at home, he set out to civilise the rest of mankind: Πειθοῖ δὲ τὰς πλείστες καὶ λόγῳ μετ ̓ ᾠδῆς πάτης καὶ μεσικῆς θελγομένες προσayóμevov. (De Iside et Osir. s. xiii. p. 32.) By persuasion and argument, with every kind of song and music, he soothed the "minds of men, and brought them over." 66 66 Now as to what may have been the origin of this tradition, and who the person shadowed under the name of Osiris, I shall not here make it my business to enquire. But I suspect, that the expedition of Osiris, and the manner in which the object of it was accomplished, were anciently converted into a religious allegory, by which a well-known human event was made a type of the harmonious arrangement of the universe. I suspect this, because Plato, whose philosophy and language are frequently borrowed by Plutarch, had before said, that the deity created all things, Teoïnal óyw, " by persuasion and reason.” The representations on vases of a figure setting out in a quadriga, preceded by Camillus, or Mercury, petasated and booted, and bearing the caduceus, while an attendant by the side of the car plays upon the lyre, or beckons with the arm uplifted; these I venture to term the expedition of the deity, either in his male or female nature, |