"When 'Belshazzar' the king of the Chaldeans is found wanting, Darius takes the kingdom. It is not given him by the popular voice; he asserts his right, and this is not denied. He takes it when about sixty-two years of age. The language of Daniel is prophetic, and Darius has in another an antitype. The writer was born July 18th, 1803; and the claim was asserted at the close of 1865, when he was about sixty-two years of age. "The claims which have been asserted demand a settled faith, and which could only be reached through a long course of divine teaching." When I was a little boy at school, one of my school-fellows took it into his head to set up a lottery of marbles: the thing took, and he made a stony profit. Soon, one after another, every boy had his lottery, and it was, "I won't put into yours unless you put into mine." This knocked up the scheme. It will be the same with the prophets. Dr. Thorn, Mr. Biden, Mrs. Cottle,[281] etc. will grow imitators, until we are all pointed out in the Bible: but A will not admit B's claim unless B admits his. For myself, as elsewhere shown, I am the first Beast in the Revelations. Every contraband prophet gets a few followers: it is a great point to make these sequacious people into Buridan's asses, which they will become when prophets are so numerous that there is no choosing. {162} SIR G. C. LEWIS. An historical survey of the Astronomy of the Ancients. By the Rt. Hon. Sir G. C. Lewis.[282] 8vo. 1862. There are few men of our day whom I admire more than the late Sir G. Lewis: he was honest, earnest, sagacious, learned, and industrious. He probably sacrificed his life to his conjunction of literature and politics: and he stood high as a minister of state in addition to his character as a man of letters. The work above named is of great value, and will be read for its intrinsic merit, consulted for its crowd of valuable references, quoted for its aid to one side of many a discussion, and opposed for its force against the other. Its author was also a wit and a satirist. I know of three classical satires of our day which are inimitable imitations: Mr. Malden's[283] _Pragmatized Legends_, Mr. Mansel's[284] _Phrontisterion_, and Sir G. Cornewall Lewis's _Inscriptio Antiqua_. In this last, HEYDIDDLEDIDDLETHECATANDTHEFIDDLE etc. is treated as an Oscan inscription, and rendered into Latin by approved methods. As few readers have seen it, I give the result: "Hejus dedit libenter, dedit libenter. Deus propitius [est], deus [donatori] libenter favet. Deus in viarum {163} junctura ovorum dape [colitur], deus mundi. Deus in litatione voluit, benigno animo, haedum, taurum intra fines [loci sacri] portandos. Deus, bis lustratus, beat fossam sacrae libationis."[285]