going so far as Friedlieb has done, and considering them as the same. We may also infer that more than one version of the oracles was known to the Romans, and that the Third Book might be among the number consulted by Virgil for the preparation of his Eclogue, and thus the introduction of Messianic prophecies into Roman poetry will be rendered intelligible; though the near coincidence of such popular promulgation of these predictions with the actual advent of our Saviour will remain one of those miracles, produced by the succession of events, which are not less miraculous than supernatural interpositions. We ought to have remarked that Pausanias informs us that the Hebrew Sibyl was also termed the Egyptian by others.

With these explanations the Fourth Eclogue of Virgil becomes perfectly intelligible. The whole oracular point and significance are contained in four lines, which we quote again :—

"Ultima Cumæi venit jam carminis ætas:
Magnus ab integro sæclorum nascitur ordo.
Jam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna:
Jam nova progenies cælo demittitur alto."

The rest is all poetic fancy and amplification, but every point in
these four lines is Sibyllistic, and requires interpretation from the
Sibylline Oracles. It was no arbitrary conclusion imagined by
Virgil that the last Sibylline age had been completed, but one indi-
cated sufficiently by the tenor of the Third Book, and by the rem-
nants of early oracles contained in the others. The notion that a
renovation of all things was to occur after the expiration of ten ages
was very current in the ancient world, and may be traced from
Hesiod downward through the whole stream of Greek literaturę,
as well as in the Sibylline Oracles. According to the Sibylline
enumeration seven of these ages were completed with the generation
of the Titans, and the remaining three were occupied with the revo-
lutions of human history. Unfortunately, with respect to the curious
doctrines of the ancient world in regard to these systems of imagin-
ary chronology, we have little information beyond what has been
preserved to us from the wreck of this literature in Syncellus and
the Paschal Chronicle. But that the tenth age had arrived about
the commencement of the Christian era, in the estimation of Sibyl-
lists, may be inferred from the Second Book of these oracles, which,
though long posterior in date, must have borrowed this indication.
from earlier sources. The first line of Virgil above quoted may, in
all probability, have been derived from some expression in the ora-
cles accessible to him, similar to this:-
:-

Δὴ τότε καὶ γενεὴ δεκάτη μετὰ ταῦτα φανεῖται
ἀνθρώπων.

And the general impression embodied in the Alexandrian versions of the Sibyls may perhaps have had some influence in determining the decision of the Sanhedrims at Jerusalem in regard to the expected advent of the Messiah, by influencing their interpretation of their own sacred prophecies on the subject.

The renovation of the cycles of change after certain successions of astronomical periods, was a dogma peculiarly developed in Egypt, but indulged elsewhere; and communicated from Egypt with diverse modifications to the whole civilized world. Independent, however, of any extrinsic influence of Egyptian philosophy, the idea announced by Virgil is contained in the Sibylline Oracles, which appear to have borrowed from Isaiah the anticipation of a reign of millennial peace. The happy age, when the wolf should lie down with the lamb, is to Virgil the return of the Saturnian rule; to the Sibyl of the Third Book it is the prospective period when the Jews should be restored to the independent enjoyment of Jerusalem and the devout practice of their holy religion. The Virgin whom Virgil recalls to earth is the translated Erigone, who had been transferred as the impersonation of Justice to the heavens. To the Sibyl, however, whence the notion is borrowed, without being apprehended in its deep original import either by lender or borrower, it is the Virgin Mary prophetically announced by Isaiah.† The new progeny sent down from heaven seems to have been vaguely contemplated in the passage relative to Ptolemy Philometor previously cited, but is more distinctly employed with reference to the Messiah in other parts of the Third Book. One line, indeed, is so precise and pointed as to admit of no misinterpretation; but its singular precision makes us suspect it to be a late addition or alteration—a suspicion entertained by Gfrörer, Alexandre, and Friedlieb. The line referred to is

Υἱὸν γὰρ καλέουσι βροτοὶ μεγάλοιο θεοῖο.

It is cited in this form by Lactantius and St. Augustine. The MSS. are unanimous in the mode of its exhibition, yet Alexandre has ventured to suggest vnóv as a new reading, which is rejected as improbable by Friedlieb; and we must believe that the line is a later corruption or interpolation.

Orac. Sibyll., lib. ii, v. 15. On these generations see Friedlieb, Einleitung, pp. xiv-xx.

† Orac. Sibyll., lib. iii, v. 784: Εὐφράνθητι, κόρη, καὶ ἀγάλλες, κ.τ.λ. Friedlieb, Einleitung, i, § xvi, p. xxxvii.

It thus appears that the Fourth Eclogue of Virgil is literally an application and variation of Sibylline materials, probably drawn from the Third Book of the Oracles, in consequence of the manifest introduction of the ideas of the Scriptural prophets, but not necessarily indicating thereby the actual identity of the Cumaan, Erythræan, and Hebrew Sibyls. From the general current of our investigations it may be safely inferred that all the earlier Sibyls exhibited only different versions and slightly dissimilar modifications of the same original text or collection of texts; and that the later editions which have descended to us, underwent numerous successive revisions, additions, purgations, and alterations, to adapt them to the use of different ages or different parties, until, their treacherous character being finally suspected in the fourth and fifth centuries, they gradually sunk into comparative oblivion, to be at length gathered up into their present collected form by the pious charity of the writer of the preface discovered by Antimaco.* But, at whatever period they ceased to be botched and tinkered by every fanatical volunteer, we do not believe that a century of lines can anywhere be found consecutively, which exist now in the same state in which they came from the hands of their Jewish editors-to go no further back.

If, therefore, it be impracticable to determine the exact dates and fortunes of the different component parts of this trading stock of oracles, we can at any rate discern the general agencies, both psychological and historical, which have produced the variety of our present books, their discrepancies, and dissimilarities, and have also given to them the motley and incongruous character which they display. The superior antiquity of the Third Book is not inferred singly from the pointed reference to Ptolemy Philometor, but may be confirmed by much intrinsic evidence, and especially by a larger, more uniform, and more consistent employment of Homeric locution and the Homeric rhythm than belongs to any of the other books. We would venture to suggest that perhaps the most ancient ingredient in the whole collection, excluding the warning to Camarina, as not being of Sibylline origin, is the passage in the Twelfth Book, already referred to:

Αἱ μέλεοι Κέκροπες, καὶ Δαύλιοι, ἠδὲ Λάκωνες,
οἱ περὶ Πηνειόν τε βαθύσχοινόν τε Μολοσσὸν
Τρίκκην, Δωδώνην τε, καὶ ὑψίτμητον Ιθώμην,
αὐχένα τε, πτερινοῦ τε μέγαν περὶ ῥίον Ὀλύμπου
Οσσαν, Λαρισσάν τε, καὶ ὑψίπυλον Καλυδώνα.†

* τοὺς ἐπιλεγομένους Σιβυλλιακοὺς χρησμους, σποράδην εὑρισκομένους καὶ συγκεχυμévovs. Orac. Sib., ed. Friedl., pt. ii, p. 2. † Orac. Sibyll., lib. xii, vv. 214–218.

This may not be Sibylline, but it can scarcely have been written after the Messenian wars. The latest passage of historical character or oracular pretension is in our opinion in the Eleventh Book:

Αἱ ὀπόσοι φεύξονται ἀπ' ἀντολίης γεγαῶτες

σὺν κτεάτεσσιν ἑοῖσιν ἐς ἀλλοθρόους ἀνθρώπους·
αἱ ὁπόσων ἀνδρῶν πίεται χθὼν αἷμα κελαινόν·
ἔσται γὰρ χρόνος οὗτος, ἐν ᾧ ποτε τοῖς τεθνεῶσιν
οἱ ζῶντες μακαρισμὸν ἀπὸ στομάτων ἐνέποντες,
φθέγξονται καλὸν τὸ θανεῖν, καὶ φεύξετ ̓ ἀπ' αὐτῶν.**

In verse 105 we detect a distinct allusion to the capture of Rome by Genseric, though Friedlieb would probably apply it to some obscure or doubtful event under Gallienus; but the lines which we have quoted, though they may be applied, on the authority of Herodian, to the reign of Septimus Severus, are applicable only to the condition of the Roman empire under Theodosius, as described by Priscus Panita in his colloquy with the Roman emigrant, or under Justinian, as illustrated by Procopius.

We have not nearly exhausted our memoranda and materials, nor given adequate development to our views; but we have exhausted our paper, and our own as well as our reader's patience; and may, therefore, conclude by referring those who desire other, further, or more minute information to Alexandre's valuable notes, and Friedlieb's elaborate introduction, having used their assistance but slightly and incidentally ourselves, while endeavouring to pursue our own explorations by new methods, and into wider fields.

It was our design to have added a new list of our own to Volkmann's catalogue of metrical rectifications. He has left much for the gleaners who may succeed him; and the task of correction is often easy enough by obvious changes. But we have occupied so much time already that we are obliged to forego our intention, which we do-the more willingly, as the labour is thankless and profitless in itself; and, after the endless corruptions, deliberate and accidental, which these oracles have experienced on numerous occasions, it would seem as unnecessary as it would be to file down Mother Goose's melodies to the polish of Pope's versification. We are not certain but that all that is to be learnt from the Sibylline Oracles may be most readily gathered from them in their sluttish and mutilated state as exhibited in the MSS. Their rugged wretchedness is more suggestive than they would be in a more purified form. They are the tattered remnants of an ignorant, bigoted, superstitious, and often fraudulent phase of declining civilization; and the Sibyls who pro

Orac. Sibyll., lib. xi, vv. 113–118.

fess to be coëtaneous with the birth of antiquity,* and contemporary with Noah,† deserve to be lapidated at its close, according to the sentence and prayer put forth by one of them on her own behalf.t

Βάλοιτέ με, βάλλετε πάντες

ART. II.-PUBLIC PRAYER.

PRAYER goes back of mere speech-it exists amid the felt emotions of the soul. To every man there are two worlds of immediate interest the world of outward facts and events, and the world of inward thoughts and emotions. The first is concrete and tangible; the second, in a sense, abstract, and with difficulty explained. Knowledge of the first is obtained by observation, analysis, and induction; while the second can be perfectly known only to individual consciousness.

Now, as in the first, at the creation, the Spirit of God moved, separating light from darkness, land from flood, and order from general chaos; so in the second, at the new creation, the spirit of prayer, which is, in some sense, but another form of expression for the Spirit of God, moved, separating the light of hope from the darkness of despair, the grounds of peace from the floods of anxiety and remorse, and the order and beauty of holiness from the general chaos of depravity. And, furthermore, as in the outward

Orac. Sibyll., lib. iii, v. 813. She calls herself the Erythræan Sibyl, daughter of Gnostos and Circe, a statement which must be late and fraudulent, as not agreeing with geography, mythology, or the testimony of antiquity, and indicating Oriental influences by the name of her father. In lib. v, v. 53, a late book, she is the sister of Isis, a declaration probably ancient, and borrowed from the old Egyptian Sibyl.

† Orac. Sibyll., lib. i, v. 288. She is the daughter-in-law of Noah; and the same is again asserted, lib. iii, v. 826, which must have been in the latter book a Jewish addition to their heathen materials, and is at variance with the previous allegation of her parentage.

Orac. Sibyll., lib. vii, vv. 150–162. In this passage, besides incidents obviously imitated from the Cassandra of Eschylus, there is a confused reference to the tradition which represented the younger Erythræan Sibyl as indiscriminately the wife, sister, and daughter of Apollo. Pausan. Phocic., p. 327. We may mention here, what we have had no suitable opportunity of mentioning in the text, that the Jewish expectation of an actual restoration to Jerusalem is, in the main, a Sibylline idea, derived originally from the Jewish colony at Alexandria under the Ptolemies, but adopted and repeated in the Sibylline Oracles.