Truly he would say it may be called a dynamic letter; and not without mystery did the Hebrews call it Daleth, the door, as though it were the door of speech. Then its form! how full of mysteries! The wise Egyptians represented it by three stars disposed in a triangle: it was their hieroglyphic of the Deity. In Greek it is the Delta. Δ In this form were the stupendous Pyramids built, when the sage Egyptians are thought to have emblematised the soul of man, which the divine Plato supposed to be of this shape. This is the mysterious triangle, which the Pythagoreans called Pallas, because they said it sprang from the brain of Jupiter, and Tritogeneia, because if three right lines were drawn from its angles to meet in the centre, a triple birth of triangles was produced, each equal to the other. [Figure: a tetrahedron] I pass reverently the diviner mysteries which have been illustrated from hence, and may perhaps be typified herein. Nor will I do more than touch upon the mechanical powers which we derive from a knowledge of the properties of the figures, and upon the science of Trigonometry. In its Roman and more familiar form, the Letter hath also sublime resemblances or prototypes. The Rainbow resting upon the earth describes its form. Yea, the Sky and the Earth represent a grand and immeasurable D; for when you stand upon a boundless plain, the space behind you and before in infinite longitude is the straight line, and the circle of the firmament which bends from infinite altitude to meet it, forms the bow. For himself, he said, it was a never failing source of satisfaction when he reflected how richly his own destiny was endowed with Ds. The D was the star of his ascendant. There was in the accident of his life,—and he desired it to be understood as using the word accident in its scholastic acceptations,—a concatenation, a concentration. Yea he might venture to call it a constellation of Ds. Dove he was born; Daniel he was baptized; Daniel was the name of his father; Dinah of his mother, Deborah of his wife; Doctor was his title, Doncaster his dwelling place; in the year of his marriage, which next to that of his birth was the most important of his life, D was the Dominical letter; and in the amorous and pastoral strains wherein he had made his passion known in the magazines, he had called himself Damon and his mistress Delia. CHAPTER CLXXVI. THE DOCTOR DISCOVERS THE ANTIQUITY OF THE NAME OF DOVE FROM PERUSING JACOB BRYANT'S ANALYSIS OF ANCIENT MYTHOLOGY.—CHRISTOPHER AND FERDINAND COLUMBUS.—SOMETHING ABOUT PIGEON-PIE, AND THE REASON WHY THE DOCTOR WAS INCLINED TO THINK FAVOURABLY OF THE SAMARITANS. An I take the humour of a thing once, I am like your tailor's needle; I go through. BEN JONSON.