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that their knowledge of them descended to the post-diluvians-witness the assertions of Moses, Herodotus and all olden writers, whose works survive to our time,-that within the first ten centuries which succeeded the all but universal destruction of man by the flood, were achieved some of the sublimest efforts recorded by history-Babel, Pyramid and a hundred nameless cities now whelmed by the sand of the desert Afric,-that when Alexander diverted, by his astonishing conquests and by his liberal patronage of learning, the lore of India and Persia from the profundities or the Braminical and Perseeian polity into a Grecian channel, much apocryphal matter, gendered by that subtle and vain nation, was amalgamated therewith, and, finally, upon the subjection of Greece by the Romans and the reception in the fourth century by the latter - with the doctrines of Jesus Christ-of the ancient Vedas or Scriptures of the Hebrews, that the Gnostic heresy, having accomplished the ruin of all Cite other Asiatico-European bastard progeny, fell-the last crowned horror of long-since forgotten blasphemies-and with it the concomitants necessary to the evolution of another of that species. For then began the manifestation of a principle which - in the hands of the Roman and Byzantine pontiffs-was destined to enslave Europe many a century: which should reduce all men, save the crafty priest, to impotence and such utter imbecility that nothing short of miracle could effect his redemption. And when the first dawn came upon that horrid literal darkness, ages elapsed ere man could assure himself that he was verily safe-during which he was effectually prevented from a consideration of the more abstract circumstances that it concerned him to know. But France, the pioneer in every thing intellectual, fated to the distinction of mind, of which she brings forth the earliest blossom but the latest and most unsound fruit - less fortunate than England in her struggles for liberty,-dared to anticipate the terrors both of the Romish dominion, that incarnate Antichrist, her archfoe, and the judgment of heaven, by forswearing the state religion of the former and the divine revelation of the latter, by which alone man can hope to succeed to that blessed inheritance of his, the title to which his father Adam forfeited both for himself and heirs. Then, Voltaire, archapostate, was no less the spokesman of general France when he ignorantly pretended that the shells found upon the Apennines, and erroneously attributed by the zealots of the day to the deluge, were dropped there by the million pilgrims that had journeyed to the golden shrines of "the Eternal City" than which he scoffed at the name of God and with the malice of Satan himself called HIM " wretch." And when the terrible revolution smote that unhappy nation with anarchy and deluged it with the blood of her tutelary deities, the high and the best-born, the fierce demons that governed the storm, Marat and Robespiere, Danton and St. Just, were but the familiars of those Titan rebels that sought the destruction of the altar, well knowing that that of the throne must follow their impious success as an inevitable consequence: they acquired just so much of the venom of the latter as added to their natural ferocity sufficed to constitute them the most enormous criminals that ever disgraced and afflicted the earth by their accursed sight, while, the Macchiavals, the real master-demons, chewing in their closets the fatal apple of the tree of knowledge of good and evil which had already cost so much, defied God and man at their leisure and escaped the, oh how well merited! execrations heaped upon their wretched instruments. And France once so redolent of heaven bath been Pandemonium ever since, and to this tremendous declension - the Catholic Priesthood by their wicked and Jesuitical arts and superstitious cheats unconsciously affording them opportunity-nor philosophers heralded her. And one of their most potent artifices wherewith she was and still is blinded to the truth, was drawn from the appearances of this planet, which were impudently said to challenge the veracity or Sacred Writ; and lo! France has no Samson to lift up the standard of truth and to proclaim that she hath believed in a lie. Britain - less confiding than France, and considering the signs of the times wisely so-paused when wild tales militant against the faith were rehearsed in her private ear by the apostles of infidelity, who came from the Continent flushed - with the success that had there attended them. The national genius, essentially suspicious, heard, but refused consent until demonstration should be brought to the assistance of theories which, if incautiously admitted, might lead to irremediable consequences-those in fact which did befall France, and which now imminently threaten Germany also. And then began a few of our philosophers to address themselves to this subject, but, as might have been expected from the novelty of the pursuit, their conceptions of the

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