OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 297 



Rhodes, or Cyprus. As to vulgarisms and local and slang terras, 

 which abound in every district and large town, they cannot with any 

 degree of propriety be classed with dialectic peculiarities. Their ex- 

 istence is usually ephemeral, and as a general thing they are of little 

 value to the philologist. 



A few centuries ago, a Greek by the name of Kabhasilas asserted 

 that the number of dialects into which the popular Greek was sub- 

 divided was over seventy. Now, if by dialects he meant anything, he 

 must have meant patois ; and if so, he ought to have added many 

 more ; for the illiterate of almost every village have their peculiar 

 barbarisms. If it be asked why he selected seventy as the round 

 number, we may answer that Kabhasilas, in common with all the 

 ignorant of the East, was a believer in the marvellous properties of 

 certain numbers, of which seventy is one. For, in the first place, it is 

 the product of tlie sacred number seven and of the perfect number 

 ten ; the perfection of the latter emanating -from the mystical fact that 

 it is contained in the quaternary, the source of inexhaustible nature, as 

 the Pythagoreans express it. Secondly, this number appears more 

 than once in the Bible. Thus, we have threescore and ten palm-trees 

 in the desert of Sinai, and seventy disciples. Thirdly, the Old Testa- 

 ment was translated by seventy interpreters (the celebrated Septua. 

 gint), every one of whom was inspired during the laborious process 

 of translating, and often mistranslating, Hebrew into Greek. It is 

 true that, according to the legend, the version was the work of sev- 

 enty-two learned Jews, each tribe having furnished six accomplished 

 scliolars ; but as seventy-two is not remarkably mystical, it was 

 thought proper by the regulators of religious opinion to reduce it to 

 seventy. Further, the ignorant believe that Saint Luke the Evan- 

 gelist painted seventy wonder-working pictures of the Virgin, one of 

 which is now in the principal church of Tenos, and another in Bo- 

 logna. And if any one doubts whether Luke was a painter, the priest 

 informs him that Saint John of Damascus, one of the great fathers of 

 the Cliurch, distinctly states that the Evangelist painted the picture of 

 the Virgin, and sent it as a present to his frierld Theophilus.* And 

 if he could paint one, hp might have paiiated seventy. 



* Joannes DamascENUS, I, p. 618 D BXeVf fioi km rbu ehayyiKi(jTr]v Ka\ 

 atvoaroKov hovKav • oi)(i ^^f navaxpavrov Koi aenvapBivov Mapi'us rr^v Tifxiav 

 elKOva dviaroprjae Koi rrpos Of6(pi\ov e7rep\JAe ; 

 VOL. V. 38 



