ON KRISHNA, AND SOLAR MYTHS. 157 
version of the Sun-God. ‘The four archangels are the four 
seasons, and the twenty-four Elders the twenty-four hours. 
Elisha, whose name is ‘‘ God that Saves,” like Samson, is still 
another version of the Sun-God. It is obvious how easy it is 
to transform pictures in this way. Why should not David 
also be the Sun-God ?—indeed, he may be so represented by 
some of these allegorists for anything I know—his harp, like 
the lyre of Apollo, picturing the music of the spheres, the 
delights of summer, the merry songs of the summer woods ; 
Saul, the scowling and gloomy winter, seeking with his deadly 
javelin to pin the sun to the winter solstice, but not quite 
killing him? Why, also, should not Solomon be the Sun- 
God under still another aspect—the Queen of Sheba and her 
retinue being nothing else than the moon, with her retinue of 
stars, approaching till lost in the beams of the glorious orb of 
~ day, and so quelled by his overpowering brightness that “there 
was no more spirit in her”; but again receiving “of his royal 
bounty,” so that she “‘ turned and went to her own land, she and 
her servants ’’—that is, of course, to be manifested again as 
queen of the night? And, at this rate, may not future 
philosophers, in the ages to come, turn even the stories of 
Julius Cesar and Napoleon Bonaparte, and perhaps a whole 
host of heroes, and even statesmen, into solar myths also ? 
Cesar, so named from his hair, which, as in the case of 
Samson, was but an emblem of the sun’s rays, was the 
“hairy-headed one ”—perhaps the ‘‘ red hairy-headed one ”?— 
or the bright-rayed Sun-God. Napoleon Bonaparte was a 
Greek-Latin Sun-God; to the Greek the “Lion of the 
forest,” meet emblem of the king of day; to the more 
domesticated Latin, the “ Dispenser of good.”? Both marched 
out, overpowering the Kuropean Philistines, or the clouds, 
till themselves overpowered by the weather ; the latter most 
markedly bearing the characteristics of the Sun-God in his 
approach to the utmost bounds of day at the winter solstice, 
quelled by the snows and storms of winter, and forced back 
again, to arouse the southern nations once more with his fire. 
Future criticism may show, too, that the legend of his being 
born in Corsica is only a relic of the cayve-birth myth, and 
the adoration of shepherds common to all Sun-Gods in their 
infancy; for is not Corsica (the very name of which is 
indicative of pens, sheepfolds, or stables), a land of caves, 
which are to this day the resort of the mountain shepherds ? 
And so any history may be converted into astrological 
allegories and solar-myths without much difficulty. Nay, it 
is impossible to exaggerate the licence that belongs to such a 
system of allegorising as this. 
N 2 
