With this preface I proceed to show that the episcopal _mitre_ and the papal _tiara_ are respectively the copies each of a distinct head-dress originally worn by the kings of Persia and the conterminous countries, and by the chiefs of their priesthood, the Magi. The nomenclature alone indicates a foreign extraction. It comes to us through the Romans from the Greeks; both of which nations employed the terms [Greek: mitra], Lat. _mitra_, and [Greek: tiara], Lat. _tiara_, to designate two different kinds of covering for the head in use amongst the Oriental races, each one of a distinct and peculiar form, though as being foreigners, and consequently not possessing the technical accuracy of a native, they not unfrequently confound the two words, and apply them indiscriminately to both objects. Strictly speaking, the Greek [Greek: mitra], in its primitive notion, means a long _scarf_, whence it came to signify, in a secondary sense, various articles of attire composed with a scarf, and amongst others the Oriental _turban_ (Herod. vii. 62.). But as we descend in time, and remove in distance from the country where this object was worn, we find that the Romans affixed another notion to the word, which they used very commonly to designate the Asiatic or Phrygian cap (Virg. _AEn._ iv. 216.; Servius, l.c.); and this sense has likewise been adopted in our own language: "That Paris now with his unmanly sort, With _mitred_ hat."--Surrey, Virgil, _AEn._ iv. Thus the word _mitra_ in its later usage came to signify a _cap_ or _bonnet_, instead of a turban; and it is needless to observe that the priests of a religion comparatively modern, when they adopted the term, would have taken it in the sense which was current at their own day. Now, though the common people were not permitted to wear high bonnets, nor of any other than a soft and flexible material, the kings and personages of distinction had theirs of a lofty form, and stiffened for the express purpose of making them stand up at an imposing elevation above the crown of the head. In the national collection at Paris there is preserved an antique gem, engraved by Caylus (_Recueil d'Antiq._, vol. ii. p. 124.), on which is engraved the head of some Oriental personage, probably a king of Parthia, Persia, or Armenia, who wears a tall upstanding bonnet, _mitred_ at the top exactly like a bishop's, with the exception that it has three incisions at the side instead of a single one. These separate incisions had no doubt a symbolical meaning amongst the native races, although their allusive properties are unknown to us; but it is not an unwarrantable inference, nor inconsistent with the customs of these nations as enduring at this day, to conclude that the numbers of one, two, or three, were appropriated as distinctions of different degrees in rank; and that their priests, the Magi, like those of other countries where the sovereign did not invest