versities; the Duke of Wellington directed them to be read by offcers and candidates for commissions in the army. The 'History of Greece' has been translated into modern Greek and published at Athens. In the department of mythology, Mr. Keightley was also a successful student, and author of the Mythology of Ancient Greece and Italy; Fairy Mythology,' illustrative of the romance and superstition of various countries; and Tales and Popular Fictions, their Resemblance and Transmission from Country to Country." From the second of these works we give a brief extract.

Superstitious Beliefs.

According to a well-known law of our nature, effects suggest causes; and another law, perhaps equally general, impels us to ascribe to the actual and efficient cause the attribute of intelligence. The mind of the deepest philosopher is thus acted upon equally with that of the peasant or the savage; the only difference lies in the nature of the intelligent cause at which they respectively stop. The one pursues the chain of cause and effect, and traces out its various links till he arrives at the great intelligent cause of all, however he may designate him; the other, when unusual phenomena excite his attention, ascribes their production to the immediate agency of some of the inferior beings recognised by his legendary creed. The action of this latter principle must forcibly strike the minds of those who disdain not to bestow a portion of their attention on the popular legends and traditions of different countries. Every extraordinary appearance is found to have its extraordinary cause assigned; a cause always connected with the history or religion, ancient or modern, of the country, and not unfrequently varying with a change of faith. The noises and eruptions of Etna and Stromboli were, in ancient times, ascribed to Typhon or Vulcan, and at this day the popular belief connects them with the infernal regions. The sounds resembling the clanking of chains, hammering of iron, and blowing of bellows, once to be heard in the island of Barrie, were made by the fiends whom Merlin had set to work to frame the wall of brass to surround Caermarthen. The marks which natural causes have impressed on the solid and unyielding granite rock were produced, according to the popular creed, by the contact of the hero, the saint, or the god: masses of stone, resembling domestic implements in form, were the toys, or the corresponding implements of the heroes or giants of old. Grecian imagination ascribed to the galaxy or Milky-way an origin in the teeming breast of the queen of heaven: marks appeared in the petals of flowers on the occasion of a youth's or a hero's untimely death: the rose derived its present hue from the blood of Venus, as she hurried barefooted through the woods and lawns; while the professors of Islam, less fancifully, refer the origin of this flower to the moisture that exuded from the sacred person of their prophet. Under a purer form of religion, the cruciform stripes which ma k the back and shoulders of the patient ass first appeared, according to the popular tradition, when the Son of God condescended to enter the Holy City. mounted on that animal; and a fish. only to be found in the sea, still bears the impress of the finger and thumb of the apostle, who drew him out of the waters of Lake Tiberias to take the tribute-money that lay in his mouth. The repetition of the voice among the hills is, in Norway and Sweden, ascribed to the dwarfs mocking the human speaker; while the more elegant fancy of Greece gave birth to Echo, a nymph who pined for love, and who still foudly repeats the accents that she hears. The magic scenery occasionally presented on the waters of the Straits of Messina is produced by the power of the fata morgana; the gossamers that float through the haze of an autumnal morning are woven by the ingenious dwarfs; the verdant circlets in the mead are traced beneath the light steps of the dancing elves; and St. Cuthbert forges and fashions the beads that bear his name, and lie scattered along the shore of Lindisfarne. In accordance with these laws, we find in most countries a popular belief in different classes of beings distinct from men, and from the higher orders of divinities. These beings are usually believed to inhabit, in the caverns of earth. or the depths of the waters, a region of their own. They generally exce! mankin in power and in knowledge, and, like them, are subject to the inevitable laws of death, though after a more prolonged

period of existence. How these classes were first called into existence it is not easy to say; but if, as some assert, all the ancient systems of heathen religion were devised by philosophers for the instruction of rude tribes by appeals to their senses, we might suppose that the minds which peopled the skies with their thousands and teus of thousands of divinities gave birth also to the inhabitants of the field and flood. and that the numerous tales of their exploits and adventures are the production of poetic fiction or rude invention.

In 1855, Mr. Keightley published a Life of Milton,' and afterwards edited Milton's poems. The biography is an original and in many respects able work. The opinions of Milton are very clearly and fully elucidated, and the extensive learning of the biographer and historian has enabled him to add some valuable suggestive criticism: for example, in Milton's time the Ptolemaic astronomy was the prevalent one, and Mr. Keightley asks,

Could Milton have written Paradise Lost' in the Nineteenth Century?

Now, with the seventeenth century, at least in England, expired the astronomy of Ptolemy. Had Milton, then, lived after that century, he could not for a moment have believed in a solid, globous world, inclosing various revolving spheres, with the earth in the centre, and unlimited, unoccupied, undigested space beyond. His local heaven and local hell would then have become, if not impossibilities, fleeting and uncertain to a degree which would preclude all firm, undoubting faith in their existence; for far as the most powerful telescopes can pierce into space, there is nothing found but a uniformity of stars after stars in endless succession, exalting infinitely our idea of the Deity and his attributes, but enfeebling in proportion that of any portion of space being his peculiar abode. Were Milton in possession of this knowledge, is it possible that he could have written the first three books of Paradise Lost! We are decidedly of opinion that he could not, for he would never have written that of the truth of which he could not have persuaded himself by any illusion of the imagination. It may be said that he would have adapted his fictions to the present state of astronomy. But he could not have done it; such is the sublime simplicity of the true system of the universe, that it is quite unsuited to poetry, except in the most transient form.

Mr. Keightley was a native of Ireland, born in 1792. He long resided at Chiswick on the Thames, a retired but busy student, and died in 1782.

DEAN MILMAN.

The prose works of the late Dean of St. Paul's (ante) place him in the first rank of historians. His History of the Jews' was originally published in Murray's Family Library' (1829), but was subsequently revised (fourth edition, 1866). When thus republished, the author considered that the circumstances of the day, or, in other words, the objections which had been made to his plan of treating the Jewish history, rendered some observations necessary.

How ought the History of the Jews to be Written?

What should be the treatment by a Christian writer, a writer to whom truth is the one paramount object, of the only documents on which rests the earlier history of the Jews, the Scriptures of the Old Testament? Are they, like other historical documents, to be submitted to calm but searching criticism as to their age, their authenticity, their authorship: above all, their historical sense and historical interpretation?

Some may object (and by their objection may think it right to cut short all this

momentous question) that Jewish history is a kind of forbidden ground, on which it is profane to enter; the whole history being so peculiar in its relation to theology, resting, as it is asserted, even to the most minute particulars, on divine authority, ought to be sacred from the ordinary laws of investigation. But though the Jewish people are especially called the people of God, though their polity is grounded on their religion, though God be held the author of their theocracy, as well as its conservator and administrator, yet the Jewish nation is one of the families of mankind; their history is part of the world's history: the tuuctions which they have performed in the progress of human development and civilisation are so important, so enduring; the veracity of their history has been made so entirely to depend on the rank which they are entitled to hold in the social scale of mankind; their barbarisin has been so fiercely and contemptuously exaggerated, their premature wisdom and humanity so contemptuously depreciated or denied: above all, the barriers which kept them in their holy seclusion have long been so utterly prostrate; friends as well as foes, the most pious Christians as well as the most avowed enemies of Christian faith, have so long expatiated on this open field, that it is as impossible, in my judgment, as it would be unwise, to limit the full freedom of inquiry.

Adopting this course, Dean Milman said he had been able to follow out all the marvellous discoveries of science, and all the hardly less marvellous, if less certain, conclusions of historical, ethnological, linguistic criticism, in the serene confidence that they are utterly irrelevant to the truth of Christianity, to the truth of the Old Testament as far as its distinct and perpetual authority, and its indubitable meaning.' This was the view entertained by Paley, and is the view now held by some of the most learned and able divines of the present day. The moral and religious truth of Scripture remains untouched by the discoveries or theories of science. If on such subjects some solid ground be not found on which highly educated, reflective, reading, reasoning men may find firm footing, I can foresee nothing but a wide, a widening, I fear an irreparable breach between the thought and the religion of England. A comprehensive, all-embracing, truly Catholic Christianity, which knows what is essential to religion, what is temporary and extraneous to it, may defy the world. Obstinate adherence to things antiquated, and irreconcilable with advancing knowledge and thought, may repel, and for ever, how many, I know not; how far, I know still less. Acertat omen Deus.' A much greater work than the History of the Jews' was the 'History of Latin Christianity,' including that of the Popes to the Pontificate of Nicholas V.,' completed in six volumes, 1856. The first portion of this work was published in 1840, and comprised the history of Christianity from the birth of Christ to the abolition of Paganism in the Roman empire; a further portion was published in 1854, and the conclusion in 1856. No such work,' said the Quarterly Review,' has appeared in English ecclesiastical literature-none which combines such breadth of view with such depth of research, such high literary and artistic eminence with such patient and elaborate investigation This high praise was echoed by Prescott the historian, and by a host of critics. It is really a great work-great in all the essentials of history-subject, style, and research. The poetical imagination of the author had imparted warmth and colour to the conclusions of the philosopher and the sympathies of the lover of truth and humanity. The last work of

Dean Milman was his 'History of St. Paul's Cathedral,' over which he had presided for nearly twenty years, and in which his remains were interred. As a brief specimen of the dean's animated style of narrative, we give an extract from the History of the Jews:'

Burning of the Temple, Aug. 10, 70 a.c.

It was the 10th of August, the day already darkened in the Jewish calendar by tae destruction of the former temple by the king of Babylon; that day was almost past. Titus withdrew again into the Antonia, intending the next morning to make a general assault. The quiet summer evening came ou; the setting sun shone for the last time on the snow-white walls and glistening pinnacles of the Temple roof. Titus bad retired to rest, when suddenly a wild and terrible cry was heard, and a man came rushing in, announcing that the Temple was on fire. Some of the besieged, notwithstanding their repulse in the morning, had sallied out to attack the men who were busily employed in extinguis ing the fires about the cloisters. The Romans not merely drove them back, but, entering the sacred space with them, forced their way to the door of the Temple. A sodier, without orders, mounting on the shoulders of one of his comrades, threw a blezing brand into a small gilded door on the north side of the chambers, in the outer building or porch. The flames sprang up at once. The Jews uttered oue simultaneous shriek, and grasped their swords with a furious determination of revenging and perishing in the ruins of the Temple. Titus rushed down with the utmost speed; he shouted, he made signs to his soldiers to quench the fire; his voice was drowned, and his signs unnoticed, in the blind confusion. The legionaries either could not or would not hear; they rushed on, trampling each other down in their furious haste, or stumbling over the crumbling ruins, perished with the enemy. Each exhorted the other, and each hurled his blazing brand into the inner part of the edifice, and then hurried to his work of carnage. The unarmed and defenceless people were slain in thousands; they lay heaped like sacrifices round the altar; the steps of the Temple ran with streams of blood, which washed down the bodies that lay about.

Titus found it impossible to check the rage of the soldiery; he entered with his officers, and survey the interior of the sacred edifice. The splendour filled them with wonder; and as the flames had not yet penetrated to the Holy Place, he made a last effort to save it, and springing forth. again exhorted the soldiers to stay the progress of the conflagration. The centurion Liberalis endeavored to force obedience with his staff of office; but even respect for the emperor gave way to the furious animosity against the Jews, to the fierce excitement of battle, and to the insatiable hope of plunder. The soldiers saw everything around them radiant with gold, which shone dazzlingly in the wild light of the flames; they supposed that incalculable treasures were laid up in the sanctuary. A soldier, unperceived, thrust a lighted torch between the hinges of the door; the whole buildings was in flames in an instaut. The blinding smoke and fire forced the officers to retreat, and the noble edifice was left to its fate.

It was an appalling spectacle to the Roman-what was it to the Jew? The whole summit of the hill which commanded the city blazed like a volcano. One after another the buildings fell in. with a tremendous crash, and were swallowed up in the fiery abyss. The roofs of cedar were like sheets of flime; the gilded pinnacles shone like spikes of red light; the gate towers sent up tall columns of flame and smoke. The neighbouring hills were lighted up; and dark groups of people were seen watching in horrible anxiety the progress of the destruction; the walls and heights of the upper city were crowded with faces, some pale with the agony of despair, others scowling unavailing vengeance. The shouts of the Roman soldiery as they ran to and fro, and the howlings of the insurgents who were perishing in the flames, mingled with the roaring of the conflagration and the thundering sound of falling timbers. The echoes of the mountains replied or brought back the shrieks of the people on the heights; all along the walls resounded screams and wailings; men who were expiring with famine, rallied their remaining strength to utter a cry of anguish and désolation.

The slaughter within was even more dreadful than the spectacle from without. Men and women, old and young, insurgents and priests, those who fought and those

who entreated mercy, were hewn down in indiscriminate carnage. The number of the slain exceeded that of the slayers. The legionaries had to clamber over heaps of dead to carry on the work of ext rmination. John, at the head of some of his troops, cut his way through, first into the outer court of the Temple. afterwards into the upper city. Some of the priests upon the roof wrenched off the gilded spikes, with ther sockets of lead, and used them as missiles against the Romans below. Afterwards they fled to a part of the wall, about fourteen feet wide; they were summoned to surrender, but two of them, Mair, son of Belga, and Joseph, son of Dalai, plunged headlong into the flames.

No part escaped the fury of the Romans. The treasuries, with all their wealth of money, jewels, and costly robes-the plunder which the Zealots had laid up-were totally destroyed. Nothing remained but a small part of the outer cloister, in which about six thousand unarmed and defenceless people, with women and children, had taken refuge. These poor wretches, like multitudes of others, had been led up to the Temple by a false prophet, who had proclaimed that God commanded all the Jews to go up to the Temple, where he would display his almighty power to save his people. The soldiers set fire to the building: every soul perished

The whole Roman army entered the sacred precincts, and pitched their standards among the smoking ruins; they offered sacrifice for the victory, and with loud acclamations saluted Titus as Emperor. Their joy was not a little enhanced by the value of the plunder they obtained, which was so great that gold fell in Syria to half its former value.

WILLIAM F. SKENE.

An eminent Celtic antiquary, versant in both branches of the language, the Cymric and Gaelic, Mr. WILLIAM F. SKENE, has published two important works- The Four Ancient Books of Wales,' 2 vols., 186; and Celtic Scotland,' vol. i., History and Ethnology,' 1876. The former contains the Cymric Poems attributed to the bards of the sixth century-to Aneurin (510-560 A.D.); to Taliessin (520– 570); to Llywarch Hen, or the Old (550-640 ;) and to Myrdden, or Merlin (530-600). These dates are uncertain. The Four Books are much later: (1) the Black Book of Caermarthen, written in the reign of Henry II, (1054-1189); (2) the Book of Aneurin, a manuscript of the latter part of the thirteenth century; (3) the Book of Taliessin, a manuscript of the beginning of the fourteenth century; and (4) the Red Book of Hergest, completed at different times in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It is in these four books or manuscripts that the oldest known texts are to be found, and Mr. Skene has had them translated by two of the most eminent living Welsh scholars-the Rev. D. Silvan Evans of Llanymawddwy, the author of the‘English and Welsh Dictionary,' and other works; and the Rev. Robert Williams of Rhydycroesau, author of the 'Biography of Eminent Welsh men,' and the Cornish Dictionary.' Besides the poems in the Red Book of Hergest, the manuscript also contains the text of several prose tales and romances connected with the early history of Wales, published with an English translation by Lady Charlotte Guest, in1849, under the title of The Mabinogion.'

Date of the Welsh Poems.

During the last half-century of the Roman dominion in Britain, the most important military events took place at the northern frontier of the province, where it was chiefly assailed by those whom they called the barbarian races. and their troops were massed at the Roman walls to protect the province. After their departure it was