first time, on the day when the patriarchal family descended to their new empire, what could be a more impressive attestation of the Divine will, than a magnificent meteor, seeming to connect the earth with the heavens; and, in its singular serenity and radiance, an almost direct emblem of peace and power. It is true that the rainbow is formed by the simple law of refraction. But, though it is the child of the shower, who can tell us that the dwellers in the land of Eden had ever seen rain, until the day of the deluge? Who sees the rainbow in three-fourths of Arabia? In Upper Egypt, and the v.st districts spreading to the south, rain is said to be unknown. And yet its absence is consistent with great fertility.

"The Prince of Fezzan (a kingdom bounded on the north by Tripoli,) says that, in his country, it never rains; but that innumerable soft springs serve to moisten the earth, and keep the country in the state of a beautiful, well-watered garden. The fruits produced there are remarkably fine, and the Fezzan dates surpass in richness all others in Africa."-Tully's Letters from Tripoli.

Fezzan lies within the natural range of the clouds and winds of the Mediterranean; but its protection is, that it is surrounded by a mountain belt on all sides, but the west, where it looks to the Great Desert. If Eden were thus surrounded, it might be equally a stranger to the shower. The whole point in question is merely, whether the small and secluded tribe of the Sethites must have already seen or heard of the phenomenon? That the Cainite tribes, the rovers over the great continents, might have witnessed this meteor, in common with every other of their various climates, is not in dispute. If the Sethites, from their locality, in a province circled by hills, had, like the Fezzaners, never seen the rainbow before; its first appearance, connected with a Divine declaration, might have fully answered the purpose of a memorial. A fall of snow in Nubia, connected with a Divine declaration, would, at this moment, answer the purpose of a memorial; inferior, however, to the one originally chosen, in beauty, in evident alliance with the restored tran

quillity of the elements, and in frequency of return. It is remarkable that, as if with a view to cavils of this order, we are expressly told to attribute the irrigation of the Garden of Eden to its rivers, and to the "dew, that went up and watered the ground."

CHAPTER XXI.

THE DIVISION OF THE EARTH.

THE descendants of Noah were now in possession of one of the most commanding and most productive regions of the world, a natural seat of empire. The Tauric Chain, stretching from Cilicia through nearly the whole extent of the greater Asia, throws out, from Armenia, two mountain ridges to the South, inclosing the vast plains of Assyria, Mesopotamia, and Susiana, watered by the Euphrates and Tigris. The first settlement is supposed to have been made in the plain of Erivan at the foot of the mountain, a district still remarkable for its fertility, and peculiarly for the vine1.

2 Ararat, the highest peak in Armenia, is called by the natives the Macis, or "Mother of the World ;" and by the Turks, Agridah, or the "Great Mountain." From its steepness and its perpetual snow, the summit is completely inaccessible. To the Armenians it is a holy hill; and on their journeys, they acknowledge its first sight, which sometimes occurs at the distance of ten days' journey, by prayer, and kissing the ground! The mountain,

A memorable event soon followed, which showed that man was still the same mixture of weak

ness as his ancestors. Noah planted a vineyard; "and he drank of the wine and was drunken. His son Ham contemptuously called his brothers to look upon the humiliation of their father; but Shem and Japhet, with filial virtue, refusing to join in this mockery, would not lift up their eyes, but "took a garment, and went backward, and covered him as he lay '." The candour of the Scriptures, which know no respect of persons, has here been perverted into a charge against the Patriarch and against Providence. But ensnared, as Noah undoubtedly was, by appetite; it must be considered, that he might have been totally unacquainted with the nature of his hazard. The grape, of all the fruits of earth the one most directly given for enjoyment, had probably never ripened under the curse of the old

nearly a cone, and covered with snow half way down from its pinnacle, presents a magnificent object in the pure air and transparent sky of that fine country. The natives believe, not only that the ark rested upon its summit, but that it still exists there. It is now the subject of much popular fable. The Armenian patriarch, living at Erivan, told Tournefort that the ark had been actually seen, yet seen but once in the memory of man, by a monk of peculiar sanctity; who, after fifty years of fasting and supplication that he might be honoured with the sight, was borne up miraculously, but was so pierced with the cold, that immediately on his return he died.

1 Gen. ix. 20.

world; the simplicity of its manufacture into wine would require no previous knowledge of its properties; and the draught might have been swallowed, after a day of toil under the burning sky of Asia, without a sense of danger in an indulgence hitherto unknown to man. The error of Noah was the error of ignorance; and consequently, we cannot discover any direct mark of the Divine displeasure visited on the Patriarchal head. The disrespect of Ham was wilful, was charged as a crime, and was the source of a prophetic declaration, that his descendant, Canaan, should be "a servant of servants to his brethren."

It has been tauntingly asked, why the punishment was turned from the criminal to his posterity? But Ham, having been already blessed as one of the sovereigns of the earth, it might be inconsistent with the ways of Providence to visit him with personal exclusion;-the punishment which degraded his line might be more severely felt by himself, and be more important as a lesson to mankind, than any personal suffering finally, the curse was not to take place, until it had been earned by the actual crimes of the Canaanites, when the iniquity of the land was full, 430 years after Abraham.

In the same spirit it has been asked, Was the Patriarch entitled to call down vengeance on his