It was wise in Moses to retire to the top of a hill, when he played off his fire and smoke thunder-cloud to the astonishment of the dupes below. His Deity wrought a clever miracle in creating the universe in six days; but what a falling off was there, when he required nearly seven times as long to engrave two tables of stone, which a man might "take in his hand." As a proof that this job could not be done in less than forty days, the same time precisely was taken to cut the second tables, after Moses had (forgetting his meekness) smashed the first. His well-dissembled rage about the affair of the golden calf* was, no doubt, the result of a cunning scheme, concerted between him and brother Aaron, in order to possess themselves of the gold that had been swindled from the Egyptians. To gull the fools, and save this gold for themselves, the priest had only to paint a wooden calf yellow, which was easily reduced to powder--gold could not, by burning: a little powdered charcoal would do the people no harm. When the sun was in Taurus (the Bull), at the vernal equinox, the astronomising priests of Egypt turned bulls and calves into gods, that were quite good enough for the vulgar; and when the sun entered the sign of the ram, a lamb answered equally well for a god, and does so to the present day. * In the story about this calf, our translation very modestly says, the people "rose up to play," though it acknowledges they "were naked;" but Dr. Clarke has had the singular honesty to tell us that, in the Hebrew Bible, this rising up to play was preparatory _to pairing for open sexual intercourse_. Bruce tells us that this open intercourse was common, and formed an essential part of festive entertainments amongst the Abyssinians. There is reason to believe that it was usual In many countries, both in Africa and Asia.