In the Acts of the holy Apostles, we read, that the chief magistrate, at _Ephesus_, begun his harangue to the people, by saying, "Ye men of Ephesus, _what man is there that knoweth not how that the City of the Ephesians is a worshipper of the great goddess Diana, and of the_ IMAGE _which fell down from Jupiter_?" (or rather, as the original Greek has it) "_of_ THAT _which fell down from Jupiter_?" And the learned _Greaves_ leads us to conclude this image of Diana to have been nothing but _a conical, or pyramidal stone_, that fell from the clouds. For he tells us,[L] on unquestionable authorities, that many others of the images of heathen deities were merely such. Herodian expressly declares,[M] that the Phoenicians had no statue of the sun, polished by hand, to express an image; but only had a certain _great stone, circular below, and ending with a sharpness above, in the figure of a cone, of black colour. And they report it to have fallen from heaven, and to be the image of the sun_. So Tacitus says,[N] that at Cyprus, _the image of Venus was not of human shape; but a figure rising continually round, from a larger bottom to a small top, in conical fashion_. And it is to be remarked, that _Maximus Tyrius_ (who perhaps was a more accurate mathematician,) says, the stone was _pyramidal_. And in Corinth, we are told by _Pausanias_,[O] that the images both of _Jupiter Melichius_, and of _Diana_, were made (if made at all by hand) with little or no art. The former being represented by a pyramid, the latter by a column. _Clemens Alexandrinus_ was so well acquainted with these facts, that he even concludes[P] the worship of such stones to have been the first, and earliest idolatry, in the world. It is hard to conceive how mankind should ever have been led to so accursed an abomination, as the worship of stocks, and stones, at all: but, as far as any thing so horrid is to be accounted for, there is no way so likely of rendering a possible account; as that of concluding, that some of these pyramidal stones, at least, like the image of _Diana_, actually did fall, in the earliest ages, from the clouds; in the same manner as these pyramidal stones fell, in 1794, in Tuscany. _Plutarch_, it is well known, mentions[Q] a stone which formerly fell from the clouds, in _Thrace_, and which _Anaxagoras_ fancied[R] to have fallen from the sun. And it is very remarkable, that the old writer, from whom Plutarch had his account, described the cloud, from which this stone was said to fall, in a manner (if we only make some allowance for a little exaggeration in barbarous ages,) very similar to _Soldani's_ account of the cloud in Tuscany.--It hovered about for a long time; seemed to throw out splinters, which flew about, like wandering stars, before they fell; and at last it cast down to the earth a stone of extraordinary size.