_ FABER’S§ DISSERTATION ON ‘THE MYSTERIES OF THE CAPIRI. 
etcommunion.of properties than that 
imple sound... In the system of Mr. 
er, however, the Hebrew language 
md its cognate dialects, instead of be- 
one Ah to the south-west of Asia, 
have been diffused over the globe with a 
' dispersion far more extensive than that 
to which the Jewish exiles have been 
doomed. 
i Patiibus in terris, qu sunt a gadibus usque 
Auroram et Gangen. 
In short, the great talisman, with 
) which all the magical wonders of these 
volumes are wrought, is a vocabulary 
*onsisting principally of two orthree hun- 
dred oriental roots, chiefly monosyllables, 
one or other of which it is hard if a 
skilful artist cannot detect in most words 
_ proposed to his examination, and con- 
_ trive in some way, direct or indirect, to 
_ connect with the deluge, or the host of 
heaven. 
_ Mr. Faber, however, assumes still 
Hi greater licences of derivation. His words 
are often put together, in the most ar- 
bitrary order, to complete the sense 
which he wishes to extract ; a connect- 
ing link is sometimes requisite to be sup- 
plied; and sometimes a single letter, in 
defiance of grammar, is made to stand 
for a whole root. In more than one 
instance, the letter N signifies the patri- 
- arch Noah. Cylindrus, for example, 
i He Cola-nah-ador, ‘ the illustrious arkite 
) Noah.” Different languages are not 
_ untrequently united in the same appel- 
lation. 
- Thus ductile are words to the touch 
of our author. With equal success he 
finds means of adapting them to his sub- 
ject. For this purpose he has collected 
a number of objects, which he considers 
as symbols of the heavenly bodies, or 
of the deluge and its concomitant cir- 
| cumstances. We extract the following 
) catalogue. “ The most usual symbols 
of the sun were a lion and a serpent; 
those of Noah, a bull, a horse, and a 
ish united with a man; those of the 
wk, a heifer, amare, a fish united with 
_awoman, aram, a boar, a cup, a sea- 
monster, and a beautiful female, who 
Was sometimes described as a virgin, 
ia and sometimes represented as the mother 
| of the gods, and as the consort, the 
‘ia daughter, the parent, or the sister, of 
_ the principal arkite deity.”” If therefore 
| any syllables of a.word, pruned or ex- 
tended into any similitude to Mr. Faber’s 
ol! 
) Monosyllables, bear any ccferance to 
” 
448 
any of these objects, it is immediately 
pressed into the service of the helio- 
arkite mysteries, 
' Mr. Faber reduces all the personages 
of ancient mythology toa very small 
number of archetypes. He is some- 
times informed by an obscure scholiast, 
that certain different names are only 
different appellations of the same god 
or hero. Where this information is 
wanting, he does not scruple, if neces- 
sary for his object, to confound geneae 
logies, and to represent the son, and the 
grandson, and a whole line of descen- 
dants, as the same person with their 
progenitor. In the course of this work, 
Noah. has perhaps fifty different names 
bestowed on him, and the ark and the 
dove, (to borrow an expression from 
our author,) a proportionate polyonymy. 
Thus another advantage is gained, that 
what is not found applicable to the pur- 
pose under one name or character, may 
be found under another; and thus from 
the whole encyclopedia of fable, a to- 
lerable narrative of the diluvian events 
may be at length compiled. 
Such are the principal features of the 
system here devised for the discovery of 
remote and long-forgotten facts. If 
‘this key can be employed with success 
in opening the close repositories of his- 
torical truth, may we not hope that, in 
the progress of discovery, arguments 
may be developed by machinery, and 
poems constructed by engines ? 
‘To give the system an appearance of 
consistency and arrangement, a number 
of technical terms has been adopted, 
such as the arkite ogdoad, and the helio- 
arkite worship. 
To say much respecting the subordi- 
nate parts of an hypothesis, in its fun- 
damental principles so outrageous to all 
probability, would be needless. ‘The 
vocabulary is collected somewhat arbi- 
trarily from different languages, He- 
brew, Coptic, Greek, and Gothic. To 
do all that Mr. Faber has done in this 
work, nothing more than the slightest 
degree of acquaintance with the oriental 
languages is requisite, though we mean 
to say that his knowledge is not-really 
more extensive. To analyze his work, 
which is often defective and obscure in 
arrangement, would be also difficult. 
We shall only mention some of the chief 
topics. The first chapter consists of 
preliminary observations, intended to 
ulustrate the system and the principles 
on which it is constructed. The second 
