and peace of the reign of the Persians covered these operations. Alexander appeared; wars recommenced, and the autographical manuscripts were destroyed, or were no longer known. The Jews, after their dispersion by the Assyrians and Babylonians, were spread over the whole Persian empire. Protected by Alexander and the Ptolemies, they had active commercial and financial relations with the Greeks; their youth learned their language. The second Ptolemy founded the library of Alexandria,' the director Demetrius, a friend to the arts, desired to have the Jewish books; their translation was perhaps solicited by the powerful Jewish corporation inhabiting that city. One of their learned men, several years after, under the supposed name of Aristaas, related this event with fabulous circumstances, which credulity admitted, but which a judicious criticism has proved to be a heap of improbabilities. This work, like all works of the kind, must have been done by learned men, consequently not rich, who were encouraged and paid by those who were so. The diversity of style proves the diversity of persons, and also the difference of a number of passages from our Hebrew text, which they often paraphrase, shews them to have been much less scrupulous than

1 About 277 before Jesus Christ,

we, or to have had other manuscripts; besides, several evident errors in geography, demonstrate, that at this epoch, the chain of good traditions was already broken. The manuscript produced by this labour, must have been deposited in the public library of King Ptolemy, and become the model of all those in circulation. It was never cited. It must have burnt in the conflagration, under Julius Cæsar. From copy to copy, the errors of transcribers introduced various readings, and the Greek text was as defective as the Hebrew a little more than a century after this operation, the Greek kings were driven out of Judea for their vexations; the Jewish spirit revived under the Asmoneans. The ancient customs were attempted to be introduced: medals were struck in the Samaritan character, that is, in the old Hebrew. Books were written in Hebrew which were supposed to be ancient, such as Daniel, Tobit, Judith, Susanna, &c. The Paralipomena, that is, the things omitted by the book of Kings, were composed through rivalry, and their anonymous author, bigotted and obscure, far from being so well informed as that of Kings, introduced real errors of facts and of geography no doubt, it is to this period, little known in its details, that we are to attribute the grand schism that took place between the

Hebrew and Greek, concerning the chronology of the Patriarchs, one reckoning from the Jewish creation to our era, 5508 years, while the other only counts 4000. The Roman power revived in Asia, in preference to the Latin, the Greek idiom, which still existed. Christianity arose: disputes of sects broke forth, manuscripts were multiplied and altered; each church had one. In fine, after an anarchy of 320 years, the council of Nicée produced from the midst of factions that unity of doctrine always solicited by the political and civil authorities. Our four gospels were chosen from among more than thirty; the manuscripts from which our Bibles are taken, were also chosen without discussion; which would never have ended. From this time all that differed were proscribed. Omar came in the seventh century. The library of Alexandria was burnt, and it is only because the chronicle of Eusebius, written before the council (of Nicée,) has preserved one phrase, and that the city of Alexandria, the seat of knowledge, maintained its independence, that there came down to us, in the midst of so many difficulties, two gleams of truth. Let us felicitate ourselves for possessing it on so many other points!"

Notwithstanding our Critic's gratuitous assumption, therefore, that no authentic documents

or data exist relative to the Jewish computation of the six thousand years having already nearly elapsed since the supposed creation of the world, the computation of the Seventy, or Elders of the people, contained in the Septuagint, must be assumed as constituting the coincidence asserted by Volney; and which "produced considerable fermentation in the minds of the people."

The subsequent remarks to the end of this chapter, the fourteenth, relative, according to our Critic, to the utter improbability of the foundation of Christianity on such a basis as that illustrated and demonstrated by Volney, scarcely require comment; and admitting the representations of Volney as incontrovertible, we proceed with our investigation of the fifteenth chapter, in which Mr. Hails appears to concentrate all his force of criticism, argumentation, and attempted refutation, in vindication of Christianity-with what success, an investigation of his specious and absurd statements will sufficiently determine..

CHAPTER XX.

ON THE MYTHOLOGICAL HISTORY, AS CONSTITUTING THE BASIS OF THE SYSTEM OF CHRISTIANITY.

We need not penetrate far into the fifteenth chapter of the Remarks, in order to discover the absurdity of the reasoning, and the manifest contradictions into which its author is unavoidably led in support of his specious argumentation. In the first place we find a critical disquisition on Volney's representations or analogies adduced respecting the mythological history, in which "the following traditions were recorded ;1 'That, ' in the beginning, a man and a woman had, by their 'fall, brought sin and evil into the world'; that 'By this was denoted the astronomical fact of the celestial Virgin and the Herdsman, (Bootes,) who, setting heliacally at the autumnal equinox, resigned the heavens to the wintry constellations, 1 Ruins, chap. xxii. sec. 13.