cially however if easily moved, though ever so little, enhances the wonder, and may be made to excite the adoration of a very ignorant and superstitious mind. Although the poor native Irish now despise their stupidity, who could kneel to a mishapen rock, the work of God, yet they still readily fall down before a stone Mary, or Peter, of little size, which they know to be the work of a man only. Anterior to all inscriptions, and I believe to all knowledge of letters, at least in Ireland, forts, or earthen fortifications, abounded every where throughout that country; as do artificial barrows, or monuments of the dead, probably of much earlier date than the forts. These latter were erected as monuments over the burnt bones of the very greatest men; while bones of men ranking in a second class, enclosed in urns of pottery, were deposited in the earth, and over each urn was placed a rude stone, as large as the friends of the deceased could roll to the spot of interment. The lower and poorer people were all buried unburnt in the earth, as now. The barrow erected over Halyattes in Lydia by his son Cræsus, is the greatest I have read of, in height about four hundred perpendicular feet, and emulating the pyramids of Egypt in every thing, but materials. These sorts of monuments are traced northward throughout all the countries, peopled by the posterity of Gomer. This rude kind of structure speaks its own antiquity, as prior to all inscriptions and records. The language of the old Irish, of considerable similarity with the Hebrew, noted by the very learned colonel Vallancey, together with the aforesaid monuments, support the idea of their kindred with Gomer; nor is it at all incredible, that a people, living detached from the rest of mankind till about six hundred years ago, should have better preserved a tincture of the original language than any other people, more exposed to conquest, and more jumbled with neighbouring nations by commerce, or any other kind of intercourse. The Montgomeries, once possessed of large estates in France, and as Vandals, in Barbary, have preserved entire in their own the name of their great ancestor Gomer. An Irish lady of that name, having very fairly traced her family up to Gomer in a chat with one of my acquaintances of another name, was bid to stop there. Why, pray, said she? Because, madam, replied he, if you go but two steps higher I shall be of as noble a family as your ladyship, and will actually call you cousin at least. If the antiquarians do not think my other Irish antiquities worth their notice, they ought at least to

take the Montgomeries into their particular attention. The herald's office more especially ought maturely to weigh the matter, because probably the Montgomeries have a right to priority among mankind, for as Gomer was undoubtedly the eldest son of Japhet, so the greater part of our most learned critics and commentators insist upon it, that Japhet was the eldest son of Noah. The Jews have no claim to this priority, for they are descended from the younger son of Isaac, and Isaac from Arphaxad, who was but the third son of Shem.

126. About the year 1768, a six-year old bullock was slaughtered in Dublin after the usual manner, that is, knocked down and blooded. The raw flesh of this beast (I saw some of it) was every where as white as good veal. The blood was thrown away by the butcher, and not microscopically examined, so that it could not be known, whether it abounded with red globules as plentifully as the blood of other oxen. Though the Jews, I believe, do not knock down their beeves, as we do, but bleed them to death, in order the more perfectly to clear the flesh of the blood, yet I have never heard that their beef, newly killed, is of so pale a colour; nor can I think, that the minuter muscular vessels of any full grown animal, can by any mode of bleeding, be so entirely exhausted of this fluid, as to leave it colourless. But the point may be easily tried by killing and dressing a bullock in the Jewish manner. At present it seems to me most reasonable to suppose, that as wooden vessels are tinged with the colours of such liquors, as have been long enclosed, or passed through them, in like manner, the muscular membranes of a full grown animal, by the incorporation or adhesion of the red globules, must have acquired their colour in a much higher degree, than the same sort of membranes in a calf of only six or seven weeks old; and in this opinion I am the more confirmed, because there is a like difference in point of colour between the flesh of a lamb and of a wether, both blooded to death in the manner of the Jews. It is true the difference, though considerable, is not so great between the flesh of a sucking pig and that of a hog; but this may be owing to the smaller impregnation of red globules in the blood of the latter, killed at a year old, than in those of a bullock, killed at six, and of a wether at four. Besides, it may be possible, for aught I know, that the blood of swine may never be so highly thus impregnated, as that of the other two species, or their fibres and membranes, so susceptible of that impregnation.

127. It is a current report, but on what authority grounded, I know not, that three hundred lewd women were, like other stores, shipped aboard the Royal George, sunk near Portsmouth; and that the divers, who went down to rummage the wreck, found them and the sailors in pairs. Whosoever believes this, ought always to remember, that God is on land as well as at sea; and that if here he hath water, there he hath fire at all times ready, as an instrument of justice and vengeance. I doubt however the truth of this ugly report, as it is rather too wicked for credibility; as that ship, I am told, was overset in the daytime; and as the divers could not have been at leisure to make the observation above-mentioned.

128. A miser is one, who, in respect of vanity and sensuality, is more mortified than an anchoret, and what he denies himself, he is still farther from allowing to others. He heaps up riches, without knowing or caring who shall gather them,' when he dies. His vice is the most abstracted, the most ideal, and refined of all vices. There is another sort of miser, much more sensible than this, who heaps up money, with large stores of victuals and clothing; and, for fear of thieves and robbers, intrusts both with a parcel of poor agents, not suspected by any sort of plunderers to possess the prey they look for. These agents, by sale or barter, on very moderate brokerage, bring in to the miser I am speaking of, a profit, with which nothing else in commerce can come into competition. The miser, whom they serve, sees them every day airing his stores, and preventing all sorts of insects and moths from damaging his meat and clothes, and at long run he receives his money, exchanged into the currency of a better world than this, so as to carry it with him beyond the grave.

129. There is a certain set of words, such as bigotry, latitudinarianism, superstition, and fanaticism, employed mostly in matters of religion, and flung by sects and parties at one another, as terms of reproach. Thus used, they are nothing else but the random shots of poisoned arrows and chewed bullets, from the engines of ill-nature and malice. All of them, however, when rightly adapted, imply somewhat culpable, and often criminal. Bigotry is a zeal without knowledge, a tenaciousness of opinions, ill founded, and warmly pursued to excess, even to hatred aud persecution. Truths, of all sorts, ought to be espoused by a rational mind; and, if they are of the last consequence to human duty or happiness, they cannot be espoused with too great warmths;

but can never tend to the detriment of any one, if this leading truth is embraced with warmth proportionable to its beauty and importance, namely, that charity is the first of Christian duties. The true Christian reasons for the fundamental principles of his religion (those I mean which he takes to be such) with all the force of his understanding, but shews, at the same time, that all the warmths of his heart go out in love to the man he is addressing. No spice of acrimony is employed by him; but in regard to such deceivers as labour to pervert and corrupt the principles of simple and well-meaning people, whom he endeavours to guard against their artifice. The deceiver hath nothing left for it, but to call this reasoner a bigot, because he is firm in defence of a divine truth. Into this odious extreme however he will be apt to run, if he is not very careful to temper his warmth with that 'meekness and fear,' wherewith his principles oblige him to 'answer every man that asketh him a reason of the hope that is in him.' Latitudinarianism is that indifference to all religion, which qualifies a man to espouse, or repudiate, any principle or sort of religion, without much caring whether it is well or ill founded. A hereditary bigot is not more blindly attached to the opinions infused into him by a wrong education, than the silly child of vanity, rigidly adhering, as he thinks, to new notions in religion, · though but licking up the exploded drivel of old heretics. What room for vanity is there in thus servilely borrowing errors! How much less in one of the clergy, who not only contents himself with being, in like manner, a fool at second hand, but shews himself to be a knave too of the worst kind, by entertaining and covertly insinuating such principles, as he himself hath condemned by his public professions! The latitudinarian, near akin to the sceptic, paying little or no regard to reason, or the word of God, will tell you, that God loves variety of religions among mankind, as if all were equally false or insignificant; and that he will not at the last day ask any man what religion he was of. It is true, he will not, because he knows it already. But it does not follow, that one religion is not better than another, nor that there is not one, better than all the rest, which every man that had an opportunity of judging ought to have chosen, and therefore is accountable for his choice, or for his having made none. This dissembler would needs palm on us his indifference to all religion for an enlargedness of mind. But if his line is longer than ours, it is only made so by its curvature, which leads him this way and that withi

VOL. VI.

out end, and without fixing him any where. He may truly call himself a bigot to nothing, for, if he believes himself, he hath no principle, and hardly an opinion. There is another, and a wiser sort of man than this, who tries all things, and, by God's blessing, holds fast that which is right. This man hath the use of his senses, and the reason God hath given him. In a due exercise of these he finds little trouble in the search of religious truth. His candour and honesty throw the truths of religion open to him, insomuch that, aided by the word of God, he throws both his understanding and heart open to them, and justifies his choice of principles by as steady an adherence to it, as the bigot does to his, which were perhaps but entailed upon him by an ignorant father, and riveted by an inveterate habit. Though his principles, as certainly they do, point out to him the reduction of his appetites and passions, and a degree of mortification and self-denial, he cheerfully obeys, and trusts God with the consequences. He hates no man for thinking in a different manner from himself; but is ever ready to oblige and serve all men, as far as opportunity occurs, and integrity will permit. Among mankind there is not a more amiable nor a more illustrious character than his. He hath but one thing to guard against, and that is, the danger of sitting too loose as to religion, which a mind once afloat, as his was, may still give in to, as agreeable to the happy liberty he hath so successfully indulged, if the wind of new doctrine, or the current of fashionable opinions, should attempt to carry him away. Superstition, the foible of weak minds, consists in laying too great a stress on trifles, or things foreign to religion. In such minds the infinite importance of religion itself is apt to communicate some share of its own weight and dignity to all its circumstances, and to every thing, that but seems to second its good purposes, to raise its ardours, or promote its effects. In this light, superstition looks like the harmless, but simple child of religion, and passes unsuspected, till, grown up to a degree of strength, it steals the reins from its mother's hands, and drives her out of the house. It begins with observations on spilling salt, on meeting a red haired woman in the morning, on the flight of a bird; but proceeds to an adoration of the moon, and to offer human sacrifices to a fancied deity. This at least is throwing religion off its strong hinges, and giving it those of wire or packthread; but, in its farther progress it throws away the doors themselves, and lays the house open to whim, instead of principle, after which there is no