much deliberation had, on the matter. At length it was decided, that if, being included in an image of pure gold of either a woman or a cow, they should issue from it by the natural passage of parturience, they might then be regarded as new-born persons, to whom the offences of a former state could not attach. But a difficulty occurred: the quantity of gold necessary for the process as above described, was not had. It was, however, overcome by forming a figure of the sacred yoni, through which the men were drawn, and thus rendered new men, altogether pure and innocent. Can there be a just reason for surprize at the question asked by the Jewish Rabbi Nicodemus, "Can a man enter a second time into his mother's womb, and be born?"e The Celtic tolmens were most assuredly destined to the same offices. The new birth encouraged the belief that the ills of the former man might be miraculously done away by the new birth, and that even the reverential mention of the tolmen might be salutary in cases of ordinary birth and delivery. These evidences prove that the tolmens were sacred idols, exhibiting the presence of Ket, the female ruling goddess of the Celts. The perforations of some tolmens, especially those which appear to belong to a systematic arrangement with other similar stones, are small, so as to be utterly incapable of the transit of any living creature. The uses of these may be shown by a reference to ancient Indian usages described in the Ramayana, a poem of great celebrity in the Sanscrit classics. The poet Valmici gives a description of an aswameda, or sacrifice of the horse; a rite which, from the conditions prescribed for the performance, could have been offered only by a monarch of absolute power, of almost universal dominion, and unbounded riches. The account of the preparatory proceedings may be omitted, being altogether irrelevant to the present question. On the day of sacrifice, twenty-one e John iii. 4. yupa, or pillars of the most valuable kinds of timber, all covered with gold and decorated with cloth and flowers, were fixed, as the poet states, firmly in the ground, and the horse, together with three hundred animals of various kinds, were fastened to them. After the performance of many rites, which, with the Hindùs, as with other idolaters, constitutes almost the whole of their piety, the horse was loosed from his yupa, and was slaughtered by the king with his sacred scymitar. This done, the rest of the animals were slaughtered by the officiating priests, who dressed them agreeably to prescribed rules. The king having confessed transgressions, the parts of the horse were consumed in the fire, and the flesh of the other animals was eaten by the attending multitude.f This Indian sacrifice may be taken as an instance of Celtic sacrifices, even those given on the smallest scale and lowest cost. The tolmens with small openings were the yupas to which the victims were tied previously to their slaughter in sacrifice.g It cannot be doubted but that human victims were often bound to these tolmens before they received the fatal stroke, and were burned in the wicker images which British history records. Each of the tolmens was a pillar, representing, it may be supposed, some one of the many gods of the Celtic pantheon, and that a sacrifice was offered to that god, to whose pillar the victim was bound. The imagination may readily picture the murderous cannibal scenes that were often acted at these tolmens. How great the blessing to be born in an age when rites such as these have been suppressed, and when the religion of the Gospel enjoins the duty of affectionate benevolence as the true worship of the Creator, instead of rites of blood and horror! The obelisk is a species of column which, occurring in considerable numbers in ancient Egypt, has been erroneously supposed to have been first constructed there, and to have f Ramayana, book i. s. 12, p. 115. Borlase, book iii. c. 3. Its form is always belonged exclusively to that country. quadrangular, but yet the area of the base is never, it seems, an exact square. The diameter bears but a small proportion to the height of the shaft. The transverse sections at different heights diminish slowly, and consequently the form is taper. The proper obelisk never terminates in an acute point, but in what may be called a terminating obelisk, forming a cap, whose height is small in proportion to the diameter of its base, and it is therefore comparatively flat. The shafts of these columns consist of one stone variously oramented, in Egypt with hieroglyphics. Many of these structures are now standing in Rome, brought by the Roman emperors with great cost and labour. They were all wantonly thrown down during the troubles which prevailed at the fall of the empire, but have been since restored. Their heights vary from one hundred and forty to about thirty-five feet. The only one now extant in Egypt is situate near Memphis. It is about sixty feet high; and the traveller Clarke, judging from the rudeness of the sculpture, is of opinion that it was the first set up in the country.h The architecture of the Egyptians being of a character altogether low and massive in proportion to the height, and pillars being only used in the structure of their colonnades, the obelisk may be regarded as altogether anomalous to the taste, or rather the religious theories of the nation. The history of the introduction of the obelisk, given by Herodotus, confirms the truth of this observation. A king named Pheron, the immediate successor of the great Sesostris, having committed an act of impious outrage towards the divine river Nile, was deprived of his sight by the offended god. After the lapse of eleven years he was told by an oracle, that having been then sufficiently punished, his sight should be restored by the use of a lotion particularly described. Grateful for his recovery, he deposited offerings, h Clarke, vol. v. chap. 4. all of great worth, in all the temples; but to the temple of the sun he gave two structures most worthy of inspection— two obelisks, each formed of a single stone, one hundred feet long and eight broad.i The doctrines of the two great sects into which the heathen were divided, being duly considered, the reason why King Pheron should make the obelisk an offering to the sun, will be sufficiently evident. He had suffered for an insult offered to the aqueous principle; the vengeance of that power had been restrained; and his gratitude was very naturally turned toward the opponent principle, that of the sun and the element of fire. The influence of this example produced a kind of schism in the ancient religion of the Egyptians, for many obelisks were afterwards set up in the country. Ptolemy Philadelphus erected one of eighty cubits in gratitude for the affectionate kindness which he had received from his Queen, his sister Arsinoë,k The express words of Herodotus make it most certain that the obelisks were all dedicated to the sun, the symbol of the igneous principle, whose votaries all adopted the symbolical use of pillars. When, therefore, the Persian Cambyses subdued Egypt, and persecuted the Egyptian gods or worship with a violence equal at least to that exercised by the Auritæ of former centuries, after utterly destroying the celebrated and holy city of Thebes, he spared the mighty obelisk there found, partly because in principle it accorded with the Persian worship of the male symbol, fire, and partly because it impugned the worship of the female principle, which the disciples of Zoroaster held in abhorrence. The Roman naturalist, and almost all writers that have noticed the subject, maintain the opinion that the obelisk is held sacred to the sun because the tapering form resembles the divergency of the solar rays. This might be a reason for devoting all the columns of all the orders of architecture i Herodotus, lib. ii. c. 111. Plin. Hist. Nat. lib. xxxvi. c. 9. to the sun likewise, for they all have a certain degree of divergency; the upper transverse sections in all pillars diminish. Were the obelisk intended to represent the divergency of the solar rays, it would have been extended to a point, and not have terminated in a cone, quadrangular and almost flat. The obelisk owes its sacred character to the same causes as all other pillars, to the symbolism of the Divine power by which the world is sustained; the intended import being held up to demonstration by the quadrangular flattish cone which always crowns like a chapiter the tall and tapering structure. It Pheron, the son of Sesostris the great Egyptian conqueror, reared the first obelisk, according to the evidence above cited. The age of Sesostris is not by any means determined. has been thought to have preceded the exode of the Israelites from Egypt. It may be conjectured to have been in those years which followed the arrangement of the affairs of that nation made by the patriarch Joseph, which consolidated the power of the empire, and enabled Sesostris to undertake those expeditions both by sea and land, which may be believed to have been in retaliation of the invasions of Egypt by the shepherd kings. The history of the world is too well known to admit the supposition that the conquests of Sesostris were made after the exode and the settlement of the Israelites in the land of Canaan. This admitted, (and if rejected, nothing but utter uncertainty remains) it follows that the first obelisk was set up by king Pheron, the son of Sesostris, before the exode, perhaps during the bondage of the sons of Israel. Pliny states, that the first obelisk was erected by Mitras; mistaking the name of Mithra, the sun, the god to whom it was dedicated, for the person Pheron, by whom it was constructed. m The mythologist Bryant cites several authorities, shewing that the obelisk was anti-Egyptian as to 1 Rollin, Anc. Hist. vol. i. book 1, part 3. |