"Let him kiss me with a kiss of his mouth, for thy breasts are better than wine. Let him put his left hand under my head, and embrace me with his right hand. How beautiful art thou, my love: thy eyes are like those of the dove; thy hair is as a flock of goats; thy lips are like a ribbon of scarlet, and thy cheeks like pomegranates; how beautiful is thy neck! how thy lips drop honey! my beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, and my bowels were moved for him; thy navel is like a round goblet; thy belly is like a heap of wheat set about with lilies; thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins; thy neck is like a tower of ivory; thy nose is as the tower of Lebanon; thy head is like Mount Carmel; thy stature is that of a palm tree. I said, I will ascend the palm tree and will gather of its fruits. What shall we do for our little sister? she has no breasts. If she be a wall, we will build upon her a tower of silver; if she be a door, we will enclose her with boards of cedar." It would be necessary to translate the whole canticle, in order to see that it is an emblem from beginning to end. The ingenious Calmet, in particular, demonstrates that the palm tree which the lover ascended is the cross to which our Lord Jesus Christ was condemned. It must however be confessed, that sound and pure moral doctrine is preferable to these allegories. We find in the books of this people a great number of emblems and types which shock at the present day, and excite at once our incredulity and ridicule, but which, to the Asiatics, appear clear, natural, and unexceptionable. God appeared to Isaiah, the son of Amos, and said to him, "Go take thy girdle from thy loins and thy shoes from thy feet," and he did so, walking naked and barefoot. And the Lord said, "Like as my servant Isaiah hath walked naked and barefoot for three years for a sign upon Egypt and Ethiopia, so shall the king of Assyria lead away the Egyptian and Ethiopian prisoners, young and old, naked and barefoot, with their hind parts uncovered, to the shame of Egypt." This appears to us exceedingly strange: but let us inform ourselves a little about what is passing in our own times among Turks, and Africans, and in India, where we go to trade with so much avidity and so little success. We shall learn that it is by no means unusual to see the santons there absolutely naked, and not only in that state preaching to women, but permitting them to salute particular parts of their body, yet neither indulging or inspiring the slightest portion of licentious or unchaste feeling. We shall see on the banks of the Ganges an innumerable company both of men and women naked from head to foot, extending their arms towards heaven, and waiting for the moment of an eclipse to plunge into the river. The citizens of Paris and Rome should not be too ready to think all the rest of the world bound down to the same modes of living and thinking as themselves.