given them lands? did they never calumniate wife princes who gave them nothing? I know very well that the Franks who invaded Gaul, were more cruel than the Lombards who feized upon Italy, or the Vifigoths who reigned in Spain. We meet with as many murders, and as many affaffinations, in the annals of the Clovis's, the Thierres, the Childeberts, the Chilperics, and the Clotarius's, as in thofe of the kings of Judea and Ifrael. Nothing certainly could be more brutal than thofe barbarous times; nevertheless, is it not allowable to doubt of the execution of Queen Brunehaut ? She was near eighty years of age when he died, in 613 or 614. Fredegaire, who wrote towards the end of the eighth century, one hundred and fifty years after the death of Brunehaut, (and not in the feventh century, as we find it by an error in the prefs in the Chronological Abridgment,) Fredegaire, I fay, affures us that Clotarius, a very pious prince, greatly fearing Gud, humane, patient, and meek, made Queen Brunehaut ride round his camp upon a camel, and afterwards had her tied by the hair, an arm and one leg, to the tail of a vicious mare, which dragged her violently along the ground, broke her head upon the flint ftones, and tore her to pieces, after which he was burnt to afhes. The camel, the vicious mare, a queen eighty years of age, tied by the hair and a foot to the mare's tail, are not things that frequently occur. It would perhaps be difficult to faften a women of that age by her head of hair, it being fo thin, to a horfe's tail; and to tie her at the fame time by the hair and a foot. And whence arofe the pious defign of burying Brunehaut in a tomb at Autun, after having burnt her in a camp! The monks Fredegaire and Aimoin affert it; but were these monks de Thous and Humes ? There was another monument erected for this queen in the thirteenth century in the abbey of St. Martin d'Autun, which he had founded. In this fepulchre was found the fragment of a fpur. This fpur it is faid was used upon the vicious mare. It is pity that the fkin of the camel, which the queen mounted, was not alfo found. Is it not poffible that this fpur came there accidentally, or rather to do her honour. For in the fifteenth century a gilt fpur was a great mark of honour. In a word, is it not reasonable for us to fufpend our judgment upon this ftrange adventure fo badly authenticated? It is true, that Paquier fays the death of Brunehaut, " was foretold by the Sibyl." All the barbarous ages are ages of horror and miracles. But is all that the monks have written to be believed? They were almoft the only people who knew how to read and write, when Charlemagne did not know how to fign his name. They have acquainted us with the dates of fome great events. believe with them that Charles Martel defeated the Saracens, but that he killed three hundred and fixty-nine thoufand in battle, is faying a great deal. We They fay that Clovis, the fecond of that name, became an idiot; the thing is not impoffible; but that God afflicted his brain, to punish him him for having taken an arm of St. Denis in the church of thofe monks to place it in his oratory, is not fo probable. If there were no other, than fuch like ftories to be erased from the history of France, or rather the hiftory of the kings of the Franks and their mayors, we might prevail upon ourselves to read it. But how can we endure the barbarous lies with which it is replete ? Villages and fortreffes that never exifted, are continually befieged. There was nothing beyond the Rhine but a few hamlets without walls, defended by wooden ftakes and ditches. We know that Germany, before the time of Henry the Fowler, had no walled or fortified towns. In a word, all the details of thofe times are fo many fables, and, what is worse, tiresome fables. Obfervations on the books, and materials and mode of writing in amongst the easterns. IN ing in the eaft, which is defigned many of thofe of the miferable, immediately loft in inattention "or forgetfulness, but that they "were written, fo as to be fixed in the memory!" There are few, fays Dr. Shaw, who retain what they have learned in their youth; and without doubt things were often wiped out of the memoufery of the Arabs in the days of Job, as well as out of their writing tables, as it now often happens in Barbary. Job therefore proceeds to say ; "O that they were written " in a book! from whence they "fhould not be blotted out!" In conformity to which Mofes fpeaks of writing things for a memorial in a book. But books likewise were liable to injuries; for which reafon Jeremiah commanded that the book containing the purchase he made of fome lands in Judea, just before the captivity, fhould be put into an N the book of Job we meet with a remarkable diftinction between the writing of words, and writing them in a book: it is in the following ejaculation of that great pattern of holy patience. Oh that my words were now written! Oh that they were printed in a book! that they were graven--in the rock for ever! ch. xix. 23, 24. To explain this, it may be proper to obferve that there is a way of writ * See his travels, p. 194. Bp. Pocock reprefents the Coptis, who are employed by the great men of Egypt to keep their accounts, &c. as making_ule of a fort of pafteboard for the purpofe; the writing on which is wiped off from time to time with a wet fponge, the pieces of pafteboard being used as flates. See his travels, vol. I. p. 191. earthen earthen vesel, that might continue many days, Jer. xxxii. 12, 14. For this reafon, in like manner, Job wishes that his words might be even graven in a rock, the most lafting way of all, and much more effectual to perpetuate them than a book. Thus the diftinction betwixt writing, and writing in a book, becomes perfectly obvious: and the grada, tion, which is loft in our tranflation of the paffage, appears in its beauty. In our Bible, the word printed is introduced; and, befides its impropriety, conveys no idea of Job's meaning: records defigned to laft long, not being diftinguished from lefs durable papers by being printed. As to the form of the books ufed by the eastern world, and the materials of which they were compofed, we may obferve, that in the time of our Lord their books were rolled up, instead of opening in the manner of ours, as appears from fome remains of antiquity; and that they were of the fame form much more anciently, we learn from Jer. xxxvi. 2. Pfal. xl. 7, &c. The materials of their books deferve our more particular confideration. The ancient Egyptian books were made of the papyrus, a fort of bulruth of that country, which rofe up to a confiderable height, and whose ftalk was covered with feveral films, or inner kins, upon which they wrote. The ufe of the papyrus, for thefe purpoles, was not found out till the building of Alexandria: fo that the rolls, mentioned in the prophets, were not formed of this plant; fince Alexander the Great, who founded that city, lived after the prophetical times. The art of engraving on tones and metals was very ancient; as old at least as the days of Mofes, as appears from Exod. xxviii. 11, 36. But thefe ancient books were not formed of tablets of ftone, or plates of metal; inafmuch as they appear to have been rolled up in the manner before mentioned; befides which, we find that the book written by Baruch from the lips of Jeremiah, was CUT IN PIECES by king Jehoiakim with a penknife, and the pieces thrown into the fire which was burning on the hearth before him, Jer. xxxvi. 23. Circumstances, which determine that it was compofed neither of tone, nor of metal. Parchment was a later invention than the Egyptian paper; and therefore one would imagine it could not be the matter of which the old Jewish books were formed: Dr. Prideaux, however, is of the contrary opinion; imagining that although Eumenes of Pergamus was the first among the Greeks who ufed parchment, he could not however have been the inventor of it, fince the Jews long before had rolls of writing; " and who," fays he, 66 can doubt but that thefe rolls "were of parchment? It must be acknowledged, that the authen"tic copy of the law which Hil"kiah found in the temple, and "fent to king Jofiah, was of this "material; none other used for *See Prideaux's Connection, Part I. Book VII. Egyptians Egyptians ufed to write upon linen thofe things which they defigned fhould last long; and we are affured by those who have examined mummies with attention, that the characters fo written, continue to this day. Thus Maillet, in his 7th letter, p. 278, tells us, that the fil. letting, or rather, (as it was of a confiderable breadth) the bandage of a mummy which was prefented to him, and which he caused to be opened in the houfe of the Capuchin monks of Cairo, was not only covered from one end to the other with hieroglyphical figures; but "they alfo found certain un"known characters, written from "the right hand towards the left, " and forming a kind of verses. "Thefe, he fuppofed, contained the eulogium of the perfon whofe body this was, written in the language used in Egypt in the "time in which fhe lived. Some ac part of this writing was after"wards copied out by an engra"ver in France, and thefe papers "were fent to the virtuofi through"out Europe, that, if poffible, they might decypher them, but " in vain.' 22 Now, might not a copy of the law of Mofes, written after this manner, have lafted 830 years? Is it unnatural to imagine that Mofes, who was learned in all the arts of Egypt, wrote after this manner on linen? and doth not this fuppofition perfectly well agree with the accounts we have of the form of their books; their being rolls; their being easily cut in picces with a knife, and liable to be burned? The old Jewish books therefore might indeed be written on other materials; but thefe confiderations are fufficient to engage us to think, that their being written upon parchment is not fo indubitable as the before-mentioned learned writer fuppofes. The most confiderable arguments brought by Dr. Prideaux, are quotations from Diodorus Siculus and Herodotus, which give an account of the writing on skins by the old Perfians and Romans long before the time of Eumenes; and yet it is furprising that he should fo confidently prefume, that those skins muft of course be dreffed like parchment. It is evident that they must have been prepared in a much more rude manner, and muft have been very unlike the parchment of which, we are affured, Eumenes was the inventor; and which, if found out before, would have rendered the want of the Egyptian papyrus no inconvenience to that prince. Such fkins might do for records, and fome occafional writings, but would have been by no means agreeable for books. Is it not then, upon the whole, most natural to fuppofe that the ancient Jews wrote on linen, as the Egyptians did? And if fo, ink, paint,, or some, thing of that kind, must have been made ufe of; whereof accordingly we read, Jer. xxxvi, 18. But their pens must have heen very different from ours; accordingly the word which is used for a pen, Judg. v. 14. [They that handle the PEN of the writer,] fignifies a fceptre, rod, or branch of a tree; and confequently may be thought to have much more nearly resembled the modern pens of Perfia, which are canes or reeds, their paper not bearing such pens as ours,-than the quills we make ufe of. See Olearius, p. 857. and Rawolff in Ray's collection of travels, f It is travels, p. 87. The other word, which we tranflate a pen, feems precifely to fignify a thing with which they lay on colours; and confequently is equally applicable to a quill, a pencil, or a reed. the ufing the other word in poetry, which explains the nature of their pens, of which we might other wife have been ignorant; the proper word for them not at all determining their nature. St. John evidently fuppofes paintings, or drawings, in that volume which he faw while in the vifions of God in Patmos, which was fealed with Jeven feals. The first figure being that of a man on a white horse, with a bow in his hand, &c. Rev. vi. We are used to expect copperplates in our printed books, but, it may be, never thought of drawings in a manufcript. The eastern manufcripts, however, are not without these ornaments. Thus Olearius, p. 636, defcribing the library belonging to the famous fepulchre of Schich Sefi, fays, that the manafcripts are all extremely well written, beautifully bound, and thofe of hiftory illuftrated with many reprefentations in miniature. in this manner. The more ancient books of the Eaft are alfo found to be beautified Dr. Pocock speaks of two manuscripts of the pentateuch, one in the monastery of Patmos, the other belonging to the bishop of Smyrna, adorned with Several paintings well executed for the time; one of which is fuppofed to be above nine hundred years old. Such a fort of book, it should feem, was that which St. John faw in vifion. Of the coffins anciently ufed, and the method of embalming amongst the Egyptians and Jews, with fome remarks on the fepulture of our Lord. THE fepulchral honours paid to the manes of departed friends in ancient times demand attention, and are extremely curious. Their being put into a coffin has been particularly confidered as a mark of diftinction. With us the poorest people have their coffins. If the relations cannot afford them, the parish is at the expence. On the contrary, in the Eaft, they are not at all made ufe of in our times; Turks and Chriftians, as Thevenot affures us, agree in this. The ancient Jews feem to have buried their dead in the fame manner; neither was the body of our Lord, it fhould feem, put into a coffin; nor that of Elisha, 2 Kings xiii. 21. whofe bones were touched by the corpfe that was let down a little after into his fepulchre. However, that they were anciently made ufe of in Egypt, all agree; and antique coffins of ftone, and ycamore-wood, are ftill to be feen in that country, not to mention those faid to be made of a kind of pasteboard; formed by folding and glewing cloth together a great many times, curiously plaiftered, and then painted with hieroglyphics. Its being an ancient Egyptian cuftom, and not practifed in the neighbouring countries, were, doubtlefs, the caufe that the facred hiftorian exprefly obferves of Jofeph, that he was not only embalmed, but that he was put into a coffin too, Gen. 1. 26. both being managements |