between Egypt and Syria, during which period they were sustained by a supernatural supply of manna, and by water which accompanied them by the way-side, their apparel remaining unimpaired, and their shoes waxing not old,' they at length came within sight of the promised land. The mysterious cloud had guided them by day, and the pillar of heavenly fire by night; they resting as the pillar rested, and moving as the cloud moved. At length the illustrious lawgiver having reached the summit of Mount Pisgah, whence he could obtain a prospect of Canaan, yielded up his spirit 1451, at the age of one hunhundred and twenty, to his heavenly guide, who buried him unseen by his people, nor were they ever able to discover the place of his sepulture. EVENTS. Tithes were instituted by Moses, about 1460. As the priests and Levites had no share in the division of the land, beyond a number of cities, they were supported by the tithe or tenth part of the produce of the lands this tenth was paid to the Levites, who again paid a tenth of all which they received to the priests. This method of maintaining those employed upon the divine service seems to have been adopted that they might have leisure for their sacred offices, and that their thoughts might not be diverted by the business of tillage and other such employments; but it is impossible to assign any direct reason why a tenth, and neither more nor less, was awarded to the ministers of religion. It has been observed, that tithe of the spoils of war was paid long prior to this period; and it was from time immemorial a right amongst the people of the east. Aristotle mentions it as an ancient law in Babylon, and the same law also obtained in Athens. Romulus devoted a third of the lands to religious uses. Jewish Memoranda. The feast of Passover was instituted to commemorate God's having passed over' his chosen people, when he brought destruction in one night on the firstborn of the Egyptians and it is still annually held, though with corrupted forms, by the modern Jews. The feast Pentecost was a thanksgiving for the beginning of wheat-harvest; and that of Tabernacles, held, when the harvest was gathered in, was to commemorate their having lived so long in tents in the wilderness; the people quitting their houses, and dwelling seven days in booths. The Neomenia were feasts held equally by the Hebrews, Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, and Persians, in honour of the new moon. Even in The Olympic Games. The public England there are remote traces of games of Greece were instituted at a similar observance at the present various periods, in honour either of a day; where, in the provinces, the god or hero. Running, leaping, wrest- rustics turn what money they chance ling, boxing, and throwing the quoit to have in their pockets, and sing were exhibited, beside horse and cha- invocations to the planet, lest some riot-races, and contentions in poetry, misfortune should befal them during eloquence, and the fine arts. As fame the month. The ten plagues, which was the idol of the ancients, the re- Moses was permitted to bring upon wards were not of a pecuniary nature. the Egyptians were-1. the waters There were only four eminent games-turned into blood; 2. frogs; 3. lice; the Olympic, the Isthmian, the Py- 4. flies; 5. death of the cattle; thian, and the Nemean; and each 6. boils on man and beast; was celebrated at least once in four lightning and hail; 8. locusts; 9. years, and attended by the great and thick darkness; 10. death of the first 7. born. The Decalogue, or ten com- neighbour, in six. The Pentateuch (or mandments, were given by God to five volumes) written by Moses, inMoses on Mount Sinai, three months cludes Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, after the departure from Egypt, on Numbers, and Deuteronomy, the intwo tables of stone; the first contain-spired and only account of the creaing man's duty to God, in four pre- tion and the origin of evil, and the cepts, and the other his duty to his most ancient book extant. EMINENT PERSONS. promised in marriage, to murder them on the day of their nuptials. His orders were executed by all but Hy Pilpay, an oriental philosopher, of whom nothing is known except that he was vizier of Dabshelim, king of India, and author of fables, called Kelile permnestra, who saved her husband Wadimine, or the Fox,' which animal Lynceus, and who reigned with is made the principal interlocutor. him over Argos on the death of DaThey have been translated into most naus. The forty-nine sisters were modern languages; but the best ver- condemned in the kingdom of Pluto sion is in French, by Galland. to pour water continually into a vessel full of holes, so that their labour was infinite, and their punishment eternal. Danaus, son of Belus, king of Egypt, had been joint sovereign of Egypt with his brother Ægyptus; but disagreeing with him, had sailed to Greece, with his fifty daughters, in quest of a settlement. He dethroned Gelanor, king of Argos, 1485, thus extinguishing the house of Inachus, and beginning that of the Belides. The success of Danaus invited the fifty sons of Egyptus to embark for Greece, and they were kindly received by their uncle, who, warned by an oracle that a son-in-law should ruin him, caused his daughters, to whom they were Aaron, the elder brother of Moses, was the friend and assistant of his brother; and as being more happily gifted with eloquence, attended him in all his interviews with Pharaoh. Though he offended God by making a golden calf, in compliance with the wishes of the rebellious Israelites, he was allowed to be made the first high-priest, but not to enter the promised land; and the chief office of the priesthood was made hereditary in his family. SECTION II. THE RULE OF JOSHUA. 1451 TO 1426-25 YEARS. Joshua, the son of Nun, and chief captain of Moses, succeeded the lawgiver as leader, and proved himself a brave and fearless conductor of the Jewish people. He routed out many of the idolatrous nations of Canaan, and obtained possession of a large portion of that promised land. His miracle of staying the earth's diurnal progress for some hours, was an admirable proof to the Canaanites, and to his own followers, who had so constantly witnessed the adoration of the sun in Egypt, that the heavenly bodies are creatures, and therefore not objects of worship. Joshua died, aged 110. EVENTS. The Heathen gods. The false gods children were sacrificed; and Dagon, of Canaan, were Baal or Bel, god of whose statue fell before the ark of the the sun; Astarte, of the Moon; Che- covenant. The chief gods of the mosh, of feasting; Molech, to whom | Egyptians, were Bel, the sun; Apis, Serapis, or Osiris, the ox; Isis, the of Jupiter, in whose honour were cow; and Anubis, the dog.-The instituted by the pagans, long before Greeks had twelve chief gods, called the foundation of Rome, the festivals Consentes: 1. Jupiter, father of gods called Saturnalia, to commemorate the and men; 2. Neptune, god of the freedom and equality of the golden sea; 3. Vulcan, god of fire and in- reign of Saturn; 2. Janus, king of ventor of arms; 4. Mars, god of war; Italy, whom Saturn endowed with the 5. Mercury, god of arts and sciences power of ascertaining future events, and messenger of Jupiter; 6. Apollo and of remembering the past: hence or Phoebus, god of the sun, and of the he was double-faced; 3. Pluto, god of fine arts. The island of Delos, one of the infernal regions; 4. Plutus, of the Cyclades, was especially sacred to wealth; 5. Bacchus, of wine; the Apollo. An altar there built by the Anthesteria were festivals in honour god himself, when only four years old, of Bacchus, celebrated in all the Grewas religiously kept pure from blood; cian states in the month of February, and so great was the veneration, even which was called Anthesterion ; 6. Cyof the Persians, for the place, that bele, mother of the gods; 7. Aurora, although they pillaged all the other daughter of the sun, and his daily temples of Greece, they abstained from precursor; 8. Astræa, goddess of jusany injury to that of Delos. The tice; 9. Circe, goddess of magic; common treasures of Greece were there 10. Bellona, of war; 11. Hygeia, of deposited. 7. Juno, wife of Jupiter, health; 12. Hebe, of youth; 13. Neand queen of heaven; 8. Minerva or mesis, of revenge; 14. Iris, of the Pallas, goddess of wisdom; 9. Vesta, rainbow; 15. Thetis, of the sea; of fire or vital heat; 10. Ceres, of 16. Hymen, god of marriage; 17. Æoagriculture; 11. Venus, of beauty; lus, of the winds; 18. Morpheus, god 12. Diana, goddess of hunting. Some of sleep; 19. Comus, god of revelry; of the minor deities were-1. Sa- 20. Momus, of laughter. Amounting turnus, god of time and father in all to 30,000! SECTION III. OTHNIEL, JUDGE OF ISRAEL. 1426 to 1354-72 YEARS. Othniel. On the death of Joshua, Judah and Simeon, two brothers, who acted as officers in the army, led the Israelites against Jerusalem and took it: and Othniel having taken the strong city of Debir, and obtained a wife and large possessions by so doing, was some time after chosen principal leader and judge. His most remarkable conquest was that of the king of Mesopotamia; after which he ruled Israel in peace forty years. EVENTS. The laws of Minos promulgated. Minos I. king of Crete, fabled to be Jupiter's son, gave a code of laws to his subjects, 1406, which remained in force more than a thousand years. His justice and moderation procured him the appellation of the favourite of the gods in every city of Greece; and, according to the poets, he was rewarded for his equity, after death, with the office of supreme judge in Corinth was founded 1376, by Si syphus. He gave it the name of them under a load of stones, he was Ephyre, and it subsequently took that condemned, after death, to roll to the of Corinth from Corinthus, son of top of a hill a large stone, which had Pelops. It became a very important no sooner reached the summit, than state of Greece, and colonized Syra- it fell back into the plain with impecuse in Sicily, delivering it from its tuosity, and rendered his punishment oppressors by means of Timoleon. eternal. The artists of Corinth were famous The Eleusinian mysteries were introfor the metal called Corinthian brass, duced at Athens by Eumolpus, 1356, which was estimated beyond pure and observed every fourth year, in gold. The government was monar-honour of Ceres and Proserpine her chical until 779 B. C., when officers daughter, for nine days in September. called prytanes were appointed. Si- This institution was by far the most syphus was the most crafty prince of celebrated of all the religious cerethe heroic ages. For his excessive monies of Greece. Any one who recruelty to strangers, whom he mur-vealed what passed thereat was indered after robbing them, by stifling stantly put to death. SECTION IV. EHUD, JUDGE OF ISRAEL. 1354 to 1316-38 YEARS. Ehud. Eglon, king of Moab, when Othniel was dead, made an irruption into the territory of the Israelites, who had been of late years unaccustomed to war; and made them tributary. At length, however, Ehud, a Benjamite, although a left-handed man, was chosen the successor of Othniel, to deliver the people from the oppressive taxation of the Moabites, whom he routed on the banks of Jordan, and of whose fat soldiers he slew 10,000. Affecting to have a secret message to deliver, the monarch admitted him to the summer parlour wherein he was sitting alone, when Ehud drew a dagger, and stabbed him in the abdomen with his left hand. It is recorded also that the haft of the instrument went in after the blade, and that the fat closed upon the whole, so that it could not be extracted. EVENT. The Isthmian games were instituted The king drove her, with her son in at Corinth, 1326, and celebrated on her arms, from a rock into the sea, the isthmus there, to commemorate taking her, in a fit of insanity, for a the arrival on that shore of the dead lioness. The games consisted of all bodies of Melicerta, and his mother kinds of combats, and the rewards Ino. Ino was daughter of Cadmus, were garlands of pine-leaves, and and wife of Athamas, king of Thebes. crowns of parsley. EMINENT PERSON. Perseus. He was son of Danae ; have gone to Libya to attack the forand an oracle having foretold that midable gorgon Medusa, Minerva, Acrisius, king of Argos, Perseus's the goddess of wisdom, having lent grandfather, should fall by Danae's him her shield. He cut off the gorson, he and his mother were thrown gon's head, and placed it upon the into the sea. They escaped drowning, shield, that it might convert to stone however, and Perseus is fabled to 'all who dared to look upon it. After He performing many wonders, especially his grandfather, who was amongst the the deliverance of Andromeda from a spectators, in hurling a quoit. sea-monster, he visited the games of built Mycenæ, 1344. Larissa, where he accidentally killed SECTION V. SHAMGAR, JUDGE OF ISRAEL. 1316 to 1296-20 YEARS. Shamgar. Nothing more is recorded of this leader of the Israelites than that he routed the army of the Philistines, occasioning it a loss of 600 men by miraculous means; that is to say, he slew that number himself with an oxgoad, and secured his people from further annoyance. What precise nation of Canaan the Philistines were, as the term applies indefinitely to every inhabitant of that land, cannot now be decided. EMINENT PERSON. Triptolemus, son of Celeus king of were frustrated by Neræa his mother, Athens, whose history is involved in who disturbed the goddess during the fable, was cured in his youth of a performance of a sacred rite; she severe illness by the goddess Ceres, therefore resolved to make him useful who had been invited into the palace to his fellow-men, and instructed him by the monarch's children, when tra- in the method of sowing corn, which velling in quest of her daughter. Her had not been before practised by attempts to render him immortal mortals. SECTION VI. DEBORAH, JUDGE OF ISRAEL. 1296 to 1249-47 YEARS. Deborah, an acknowledged prophetess, succeeded Shamgar; and issued her decrees under a palm-tree in mount Ephraim. She instructed Barak to lead the army against Jabin, king of Canaan, and defeated that monarch's general, Sisera. When Sisera, in his flight, sought refuge in the tent of Heber the Kenite, Jael, the wife of Heber, gave him food, and encouraged him to take rest; but when he was asleep, she drove a nail through his temples and destroyed him. The song of Deborah is one of the finest specimens of Hebrew poetry. EVENTS. The Argonauts. Athamas, king in order to obtain the golden fleece of Thebes, married Ino, and then of the ram, eventually murdered him. Nephele; but Nephele's children, When Jason demanded his father's Phryxus and Helle, were first born, throne of Iolchos from Pelias, the and hated by Ino. To escape her usurper, Pelias 'promised it him if he vengeance, they fled on an enchanted would avenge the murder of their ram towards Colchis; but Helle fell common kinsman, Phryxus. into the sea, on crossing the Hel-sembling, therefore, fifty of the most lespont, whence its name. Phryxus illustrious men of Greece, amongst reached the court of king Eetes and whom were Orpheus, Castor, and was kindly received; but that king, Hercules, Jason embarked in the ship As |