the defign. Its architecture was pleafing; future artists admired it; and domes arofe in diftant countries confecrated to any thing but gods. What a noble field of critical inveftigation might not the Pantheons of the Efcurial and of London furnish, therefore, to antiquaries, two thousand years hence; could we suppose, for a moment, the Pantheon of Agrippa to be forgotten; and the languages and history of Greece and Rome to be then as completely involved in darkness, as those of high antiquity are to the researches of modern times. P

UPON the whole, an able general will make admirable difpofitions even on bad grounds. Mr. Bryant's arguments will ever command refpect; but the stations he has chosen muft, in my humble opinion, baffle all his fkill to defend. Without an acquaintance with those Eastern tongues, all analysis of Eastern names must be completely fanciful: for whilst numbers of words, which may be expreffed perfectly alike in European characters, have roots and meanings totally different; others, which, in the eye of a ftranger to the dialects, may bear no resemblance, will claim the fame radical origin, and poffefs little variation of sense. Widely differing, therefore, as thofe Eaftern inflexions are from the genius of European

tongues, it must be evident, even to those who have never made them an object of study, that the same principles which might guide an enquirer through the etymologies of the one class, must, in general, palpably mislead his researches in the other. It will hardly be confidered, at the fame time, as a fubftantial ground of defence, for this ingenious gentleman, to advance arguments, fimilar to those he has already used in respect to the Hebrew: "I do not, fays he, deduce them (i. e. ety"mologies) from the Hebrew. And though "there may have been, of old, a great fimi“litude between that language and those of

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Egypt, Cutha, and Canaan: yet they were "all different tongues. There was once but "one language among the fons of men."Let it be admitted, that there was one great original language, whence the Hebrew, the Arabic, and all the loft and living dialects of antiquity were defcended; is it not rational to conclude, that a confiderable part of those tongues, which still exift, did actually preexist in that aboriginal language: and that the variety of loft idioms, which, in early times, prevailed in Lower Afia and Egypt, were either the immediate derivatives from that language, or dialects of its most diffufive branches?

THOSE tongues in particular which Mr. Bryant mentions, if they ever did live, have certainly long fince expired: where then shall we fearch for a discovery of their characteristic traces? where but in the Hebrew, in the Arabic, in the Syriac, in the Perfic; which were unquestionably spoken in the fame or in the furrounding countries; and either gave them birth, were derived from them, or claimed one common fource. Can any stronger prefumption be furnished of the truth or probability of this pofition, with regard especially to the Arabic and the Perfian, than the unconstrained meanings which have been brought from those languages for almoft every radical particle, chofen by this learned gentleman as the basis of his fyftem? Could this be the effect of chance? Is it not a ftriking proof of their antiquity and utility? And do not such etymons carry far more forcible conviction to our understanding, than dark and unfatisfactory derivation from unknown tongues? A system of evidence, which proves either too much or nothing at all: for if one writer is allowed to roam through the regions of fancy, and fix arbitrary interpretations to a favourite clafs of words, another and another have an equal right and every ingenious critic may then, like Archimedes of old, require only

fome tranfmundane ftation on which to rear his engines; in order to fhake to pieces the reafon of man, as that famous Syracufan boasted he could have done our globe; had another world been found on which to fix his great mechanic powers.

CHA P. III.

SECT. I.

Obfervations on Eaftern manners. Conjectures on channels through which Eastern customs may have flowed into Europe. Improbability of the expedition of Oden from the Euxine to Scandinavia. Tartary the great officina gentium of the barbarous invaders of the Roman empire. Miftakes of our greatest writers with regard to the Tartars. An example brought from Montefquieu.

T

O touch flightly on the extenfive sub

ject of Eastern manners; and to trace, in a few inftances, their probable influence on thofe of modern Europe, will now be the fubject of a fhort enquiry. I am fenfible that we may refine too much, by deriving every refemblance of cuftoms in one country from the apparent counter part in another. In different quarters of the world, a fimilarity of