Littralure. 287 



tion, tended to give to our earth a inucli higher orio;in thau our 

 received chronology attributes to it. According t'o fome phi- 

 lufophers, we muft go back from the prel'ent period 15,000 

 years; and even then we Ihall only arrive at the tin)e in 

 which the figures of the zodiac were contrived : but tlic 

 world may have undergone many previous revolutions. 



With all the femblance of fanacity and truth which accom- 

 panies this inode of argument, nothing can be more unphilo- 

 fophical than the inference. Is it not an admitted faft, that 

 one of the firlt efibrts of allronomers, after their fcience had 

 attained a certain degree of perfection, was to draw from it 

 luch modes of arrangement and calculation as might be uleful 

 in adjufting the current time; and that the period from which 

 ihQ.y J uppojtd \.\mx account to fct out was in a ffreat meafurs 

 arbitraij, depending on the multiplication of cycles into each 

 other, counting backward from any polition of the heavenly 

 bodies in the then current age, to the period in which thefe 

 bodies (according to their tables) muft have Itood in a pofi- 

 tion fitting the purpofe they had in view? 



l^oes not the evidence adduced in different papers in the 

 Afiatic Refearches amount almoft to a demonitration that, 

 excepting a period whicii accords very well with the Scripture 

 accounts, the whole Bramin chronology of myri^/a'^- of years 

 is merely a clumfy aftronomical fidion, which'at firll was not 

 even intended to deceive ? 



We may alfo Itate here another well known faft, — that it 

 was long a favourite opinion wuh aftrologcrs, that all the pla- 

 nets muft have been in conjunction* In the firft fcruple of 

 the fign Aries when the wujrid was made; becanfe then, 

 according to tliem, was the proper time t j bcffin a year 1 

 Others might have been for a diHerent arrangement, i. e. a 

 differently conftrurted zodiac ; but whichever had the grcateft 

 number of fuffrages at any period, can never prove any thino- 

 as to the fact in ({ueftion. 



But, not to dwell on a ful)jeft fo unprofitable, or on the 

 early propenfity of diiiercnt nations to forge for thcmfelves 

 an high antiquity, is it not known to every one that tho 

 Julian period had an arbitrary etmmicncenicnt ? If the hif- 

 tory of this fact had been loft, and crjrrelponding zodiacs had 

 been found, would it have been corred to liave inferred iliat 

 they were made 6500 years ago ? 



LITl'KATUnE. 



Lord Elgin, onr amballador at Conftantinople, having 

 fent from that city to Athens feveral artilts, who caufed dili- 



Lct the plantti be ail without anj lariiudc in fuch a coniunft.ion*- 

 whcn did it tiikc place ? 



gent 



