CEDAR OF LEBANON. 165 



of constancy and purity, from its incorruptible 

 nature and constant verdure. 



Nearly a thousand years after the time of 

 Israel's wise monarch, Virgil tells us 



" Yet Heaven their various plants for use designs, 

 For houses cedars, and for shipping pines." 



We read that Sesostris, or Rameses, the 

 most celebrated of the ancient kings of Egypt, 

 built a vessel of cedar of two hundred and 

 eighty cubits, which was covered with gold, 

 both without and within. According to 

 Lenglet, this was about 600 years before the 

 building of Solomon's temple; but the exact- 

 epoch of Sesostris's reign seems uncertain, as 

 Dr. Blair makes it about 133 years later. We 

 are told, that during his reign of 59 years, he 

 extended his dominions, by conquest, over 

 Arabia, India, Persia, and Asia Minor. Thus 

 encircling both the gold and the cedars 

 within his grasp. 



Amongst the wonders related as to the 

 durability of cedar wood, it is recorded, that 

 in the temple of Apollo, at Utica, a city of 

 Africa, on the coast of the Mediterranean, 

 which Cato's name has rendered celebrated, 

 there was found timber of near two thousand 

 years old ; and at Saguntum, in Spain, there 

 was, says Pliny, a temple consecrated to 



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