THE ROYAL PERSONAGE. 
669 
are given in all the Prophets, and most of them with the same 
attributes more or less ; but in Ezekiel, we find a vision of 
seraphic forms, who appear in something like the radiated car 
of the Persian Ferwer , as it is seen on the tombs. 
“ And I looked, and behold a great cloud, and a fire infolding 
itself, and a brightness was about it; and out of the midst 
thereof, as the colour of amber, came the likeness of four living 
creatures; and this was their appearance, they had the likeness 
of a man. As for their rings, they were so high that they were 
dreadful; and their rings were full of eyes, round about them 
four. And when the living creatures went, the wheels went by 
them: and when the living creatures were lifted up from the 
earth, the wheels were lifted up. Whithersoever the spirit was 
to go, they went; for the spirit of the living creature was in the 
wheels.” (Chap. i. part of verses 4, 5. 18,19, 20.) Though the 
further context of these verses is universally accepted as symbolical 
prophecies of the four great empires in that part of the world, 
which succeeded the Jewish captivity; yet the imagery is quoted 
here, to shew whence Zoroaster drew the attributes, and even the 
general ideas of his Ferwer; that which the Prophet presents as 
symbolical, the impostor advancing as reality. Ezekiel wrote 
about a century before the appearance of Zoroaster, who did 
not promulgate his reformation, as he called it, of the Mithratic 
religion, till nearly fifty years after the restoration of the Jews to 
their country; and, indeed, we may trace a second more in¬ 
sidious plunder of the temple, its ordinances, and mysteries of 
the law and the prophets, in many of the perverted doctrines 
and rites of the Persian sage. 
But to return to the bas-relief of the king, his winged prototype 
having carried me so far away. Three rows of figures, with a 
