(LXXXVII.) This Relation of Pot and Potter to Man and his Maker figures far and wide in the Literature of the World, from the time of the Hebrew Prophets to the present; when it may finally take the name of «Pot theism,» by which Mr. Carlyle ridiculed Sterling's «Pantheism.» _My_ Sheikh, whose knowledge flows in from all quarters, writes to me-- «Apropos of old Omar's Pots, did I ever tell you the sentence I found in Bishop Pearson on the Creed? ‹Thus are we wholly at the disposal of His will, and our present and future condition framed and ordered by His free, but wise and just, decrees. _Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?_ (Rom. ix. 21.) And can that earth-artificer have a freer power over his _brother potsherd_ (both being made of the same metal), than God hath over him, who, by the strange fecundity of His omnipotent power, first made the clay out of nothing, and then him out of that?›» And again--from a very different quarter--«I had to refer the other day to Aristophanes, and came by chance on a curious Speaking-pot story in the _Vespæ_, which I had quite forgotten. Φιλοκλέων. Ἄκουε, μὴ φεῦγ'· ἐν Συβάρει γυνή ποτε 1. 1435 κατέαξ' ἐχῖνον. Κατήγορος. Ταῦτ' ἐγὼ μαρτύρομαι. Φι. Οὑχῖνος οὖν ἔχων τιν' ἐπεμαρτύρατο· Εἶθ' ἡ Συβαρῖτις εἶπεν, εἰ ναὶ τὰν κόραν τὴν μαρτυρίαν ταύτην ἐάσας, ἐν τάχει ἐπίδεσμον ἐπρία, νοῦν ἂν εἶχες πλείονα. «The Pot calls a bystander to be a witness to his bad treatment. The woman says, ‹If, by Proserpine, instead of all this «testifying» (comp. Cuddie and his mother in «Old Mortality!») you would buy yourself a rivet, it would show more sense in you!› The Scholiast explains _echinus_ as ἀγγος τι ἐκ κεράμον.» One more illustration for the oddity's sake from the «Autobiography of a Cornish Rector,» by the late James Hamley Tregenna. 1871. «There was one old Fellow in our Company--he was so like a Figure in the ‹Pilgrim's Progress› that Richard always called him the ‹ALLEGORY,› with a long white beard--a rare Appendage in those days--and a Face the colour of which seemed to have been baked in, like the Faces one used to see on Earthenware Jugs. In our Country-dialect Earthenware is called ‹_Clome_›; so the Boys of the Village used to shout out after him--‹Go back to the Potter, old Clome-face, and get baked over again.› For the ‹Allegory,› though shrewd enough in most things, had the reputation of being _saift-baked_, _i.e._, of weak intellect.» (XC.) At the Close of the Fasting Month, Ramazan (which makes the Musulman unhealthy and unamiable), the first Glimpse of the New Moon (who rules their division of the Year) is looked for with the utmost Anxiety, and hailed with Acclamation. Then it is that the Porter's Knot may be heard--toward the _Cellar_. Omar has elsewhere a pretty Quatrain about the same Moon--