It is a remarkable fact, says Ward, that "the sceptical part of mankind have always been partial to heathenism. Voltaire, Gibbon, Hume &c. have been often charged with a strong partiality for the Grecian and Roman idolatries; and many Europeans in India are suspected of having made large strides towards heathenism. Even Sir William Jones, whose recommendation of the Holy Scripture (found in his Bible after his death,) has been so often and so deservedly quoted, it is said, to please his Pundit, was accustomed to study the Shastras with the image of a Hindoo god placed on his table; and his fine metrical translations of idolatrous hymns are known to every lover of verse. In the same spirit, we observe, that figures and allusions to the ancient idolatries are retained in almost all modern poetical compositions and even in some Christian writings." It has been very wisely remarked by a philosophical traveller, Dr. Clarke, that "by a proper attention to the vestiges of ancient superstition, we are sometimes enabled to refer a whole people to their original ancestors, with as much, if not more certainty, than by observations made upon their language; because the superstition is engrafted on the stock, but the language is liable to change." Writing on the same subject, Sir William Jones remarks, "if the festivals of the old Greeks, Persians, Romans, Egyptians and Goths, could be arranged with exactness in the same form with the Indian, there would be found a striking resemblance among them; and an attentive comparison of them all, might throw great light on the religion, and perhaps on the history, of the primitive world." The Egyptians described the source of the Nile as flowing from Osiris; so the Hindoos represent the holy stream of the Ganges as flowing from the head of Iswara, which Sir William Jones so beautifully describes in his hymn to Ganga: "Above the reach of mortal ken, On blest Coelasa's top, where every stem Flowed with a vegetable gem, Mahasa stood, the dread and joy of men; While Parvati, to gain a boon, Fixed on his locks a beamy moon, And hid his frontal eye in jocund play, With reluctant sweet delay; All nature straight was locked in dim eclipse, Till Brahmins pure, with hallowed lips And warbled prayers restored the day, When Ganga from his brow, with heavenly fingers free, Sprang radiant, and descending, graced the caverns of the west."