may be fitly clothed with blank numbers, by this admission he gives up the argument as it affects the Theogony. In disapproving of my illustration of Hesiod by the Bryantian scheme of mythology, the London Reviewer refers me for a refutation of this system to Professor Richardson’s preface to his Arabic Dictionary; where certain etymological combinations and derivations are contested, which Mr. Bryant produces as authorities in support of the adoration of the Sun or of Fire. Mr. Richardson, however, premises by acknowledging “the penetration and judgement of the author of the Analytic System in the refutation of vulgar errors, with the new and informing light in which he has placed a variety of ancient facts:” and however formidable the professor’s criticisms may be in this his peculiar province, it must be remarked that a great part of “The New System” rests on grounds independent of etymology; and is supported by a mass of curious evidence collected from the history, the rites, and monuments of ancient nations: nor can I look upon the judgment of that critic as infallible, who conceives the suspicious silence of the Persic historians sufficient to set aside the venerable testimony of Herodotus, and the proud memorials and patriotic traditions of the free people of Greece: and who resolves the invasion of Xerxes into the petty piratical inroad of a Persian Satrap. I conceive, also, with respect to the point in dispute, that the professor’s confutation of certain etymological positions is completely weakened in its intended general effect, by his scepticism as to the universality of a diluvian tradition. If we admit that the periodical overflowings of the Nile might have given rise to superstitious observances and processions in Ægypt; and even that the sudden inundations of the Euphrates and the Tigris might have caused the institution of similar memorials in Babylonia, how are we to account for Greece, and India, and America, each visited by a destructive inundation, and each perpetuating its remembrance by poetical legends or emblematical sculptures? Surely a most incredible supposition. Nor is this all; for we find an agreement not merely of a flood, but of persons preserved from a flood; and preserved in a remarkable manner; by inclosure in a vessel, or the hollow trunk of a tree. How is it possible to solve coincidences of so minute and specific a nature[3] by casual inundations, with Mr. Richardson, or, with Dr. Gillies, by the natural proneness of the human mind to the weaknesses and terrors of superstition?