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after a period of four thousand years ; and to this day have 

 furnished us with proofs of its perversion — became the im- 

 posing elevation upon which tlie future destinies of men were 

 confidently predicted, from the aspect of the heavens at the 

 time of their nativity. The High Places mentioned in Holy 

 Scripture, before they became seats of the Sabsean idolatry, 

 were chosen or erected to construct tlie horoscopes of an 

 already bigoted and superstitious people. From the ruins of 

 Babel, as I said before, we dig up continual proofs of this 

 system of astrology, in the cylinders and other gems, so many 

 of which have been sent to tliis country. Let us direct our 

 attention to two of these, by way of examples of a period in 

 which we find the sculpture, no less than the principles, sadly 

 fallen. On the first of these we might at first have hesitated 

 to acknowledge the astronomical allusion. It is the magnified 

 impression from one of those cylinders which the Chaldeans 

 used as seals or signets, and which resembled little garden 

 rollers, revolving on an axis. But the first figure cannot be 

 mistaken for Aquarius. The Egyptian figure from the oblong 

 zodiac of Dendua very closely resembles it — a proof, by the 

 way, of its Chaldean origin, since the double stream, which 

 cannot represent the Nile, bears a direct allusion to the Tigris 

 and Euphrates, the two boundary rivers of Assyria. The next 

 figure appears to represent the sun coming forth from this 

 watery sign ; he drives before him the peculiar kneeling figure 

 found in all the ancient planispheres, called therein Engonasis 

 or the kneeler, and by the Greeks, Herarles. Before him the 

 Great Bear appears to cringe for protection to the figure on 

 the right, having the bright star over his head, and in his 

 hands the implements of husbandry, which in all the ancient 

 planispheres denote Bootes the constellated husbandman, and 

 still preserved in the modern constellation. 



Time would fail me to give you all the interesting proofs 

 that Bootes was a constellated representation of the Patriarch 

 Noali, the Bacelus of India, the Osiris of Egypt, who began 



