more fo on their religious architecture. In tracing the veftiges of Druidifm, he confiders them in the following order: the Rock Idol-be Logan Stone—the Rock Bafon-the fingle Stone Pillar-wo, three, or more Stone Pillars- Circular Stone Pillars-Infcribed Stone Pillars and the Cromlech. The Orientals, we know, were ftrongly devoted to the worthip of ftone deities, and the Druids profeffed to believe, that rocky places were the favourite abodes of their divinities. This fimilarity is fo ftriking, as to prove a wonderful fupport to Mr. Polwhele's hypothesis of the origin of the Danmonians. Devonshire abounds with fuch remains of Druidical worship, and our hiftorian has given a full and pleafing defcription of the moft confiderable of them. That which appears the moft remarkable of thefe, is the Valley of Stones, in the vicinity of Exmoor. "This is fo awfully magnificent, that we need not hesitate," fays Mr. P. in pronouncing it to have been the favourite refidence of Druidfm. And the country around it is peculiarly wild and romantic. This valley is about half a mile in length, and, in general, about three hundred feet in breadth, fituated between two hills, covered with an immenfe quantity of ftones, and terminated by rocks which rife to a great height, and prefent a profpect uncommonly grotesque. At an opening between the rocks, towards the clofe of the valley, there is a noble view of the British Channel and the Welsh coaft. The fcenery of the whole country, in the neighbourhood of this curious valley, is wonderfully Atriking.' A further, and more particular defcription of this romantic spot is thus given by a correfpondent who fately vifted it: "At the lower end, where the valley of ftones was the wideft, about four hundred feet in the middle (as it were topping up the valley), arose a vast bulwark of rocks, tier upon tier, like fome gigantic building in part demolished, and the ftones that compofed it flung acrofs each other in the wildest confufion-a mafs more rude and enormous than any I had yet obferved. More than half of the valley was thut from the fea by its broad bafe, which tapering by degrees, clofed at its apex in a conical form. The imagination would be at a lofs to figure a ruder congeries than was here beheld. Rocks piled upon rocks at one time in unequal and rough layers; at another,

tranfverfe, and diagonally inclined against each other; in fhort, in every form poffible to be conceived; threatening, however, every moment to be releafed from their contiguity to one another, and to precipitate themselves into the valley or the depth of waters. On the left fide, one only rock attracted my notice. This projected boldly from the inclining fteep, and thrufting itself forward, braved the cold blafts of the Severn fea with its broad perpendicular front. chequered with creeping ivy, and teinted with variegated mofs. The valley loft itfelf rapidly on either fide the conical mountain in the fea. Beyond it, the cliffs rofe higher and higher, upright from the waters towards the interior country cloathed with wood, which, though at a distance, formed a pleafing and ftriking contraft with the fcenery on this fide, which had nothing of the picturefque in it, but comprised every thing that was wild, grand, and terrific." We have given these accounts of this wonderful scene, because we have ourselves been uncommonly pleafed in the view of it, and because we believe it to be less known than it deferves.

Among the rude stone monuments of the Druids, the Logan, or Rocking Stone, is very remarkable. There are a number of thefe in Devonshire. The following account of one of thefe, and its furrounding fcenery fhall fuffice -"In the parish of Drewfteignton, un der Piddledown, and in the channel of the Teign, is a Druidical monument of this defcription. The Moving Rock is thus poifed upon another mass of stone, which is deep grounded in the bed of the river: it is unequally fided, of great fize, at fome parts fix, at others feven feet in height, and at the Weft end ten. From its Weft to Eaft points, it may be in length about eighteen feet. It is flatteft on the top. It feems to touch the ftone below in no less than three or four places; but, probably, it is the gravel which the floods have left between that causes this appearance. I eafily rocked it with one hand; but its quantity of motion did not exceed one inch, if fo much. The equipoife, however, was more perceptible a few years fince; and it was, probably, balanced with fuch nicety in former times, as to move with the flightest touch. It is remarkable that the furface of the lower ftone is fomewhat floping, so that it should feem easy to fhove off the upper

Stone

and particularly of the inhabitants of Devonshire, to join heartily with us in this with.

We muft, of neceflity, defer our confideration of the remaining contents

of this well-written and entertaining volume to our next Review.

(To be continued.)

W.

T HE Third Chapter of this truly elaborate work is divided into three fections. In the first Mr. Whitaker till keeps hold on his favourite authority Philo, nor will he let him depart till he has drawn from him all that can be obtained in proof of this important point of theology. Under the full perfuafion that Philo was the author of the apocryphal Book of Wifdom (and it must be owned that ftrong evidences are brought forward in fupport of his title to it), Mr. Whitaker adduces from it many and weighty proofs of the belief of the early Jewish Church in the divinity of the Logos, or their expected Mellah. In the fecond fection fome other apocryphal writings of the Jews are confidered as concurring in evidence of the fame belief. But the laft fection will afford the moft pleasure to the reader, in which we have teftimonies brought from a quarter little expected, and obfervations as novel as they are pertinent and ingenious.

In that valuable performance the "Preparatio Evangelica" of Eufebius, are a few fragments of hiftorical commentaries made by one Alexander, concerning the events of the Jewish annals, and which, from their multiplicity, gave him the appellation of Polylitor in antiquity. Nothing remains of this industrious compiler, but what the above work of our ecclefiaftical hiftorian affords. "On fuch a precarious tenure," observes Mr. W. "do authors hold their existence in this world of diffolution, unless there be a ftate of renovation for uthors as for men, and the ufeful and virtuous are to be rescued from the violence of time, and their writings to come forth again in a form as immortal as their readers !"

Polyhiftor produces the evidences of many heathens on the fubject of the Jewish history, but the most remarkable is that of Demetrius Phalereus, who gained himself fo much honour by his government of Athens; and who had

even the higher honour of being an inftrument in the hands of Providence for publishing the Jewith revelation to the kingdoms of the earth. He lived, therefore, about two hundred and eighty years before our Saviour, about eighty before Polyhiftor, and about fix hundred before Eufebius.

This writer gives a pretty clear ac count of the hiftory of the Patriarchs, and the appearances of the Angel of God unto them, which Angel he fometimes calls exprefslyGod; and this fhews evidently that the ancient Jews looked upon the Logos as the God of their nation, and of their fathers. But what ftrikes us as most curious in this collection are Demetrius's quotations from one Ezekiel, a Jewith dramatic author. "He was," as Mr. Whitaker remarks, "the only play-wright I think that we have in all the hiftory of the Jews." But his plays were merely fuch spiritual dramas as were formerly common in our own country, and are fo ftill in other regions of Christendom. Of fuch, that mott religious of all our old poets, Milton, appears from fome loofe sketches ftill preferved in his own hand-writing, to have formed feveral plans. His " Paradife Loft," it is well known, was originally modelled for a tragedy; and the addrefs of Satan to the Sun was the opening of it. But Ezekiel had formed, like Shakespeare, a train of plays upon a fucceffion of events in the hiftory of his country. It began with the migration of Jacob to Jofeph in Egypt; and purfued the courte of facts, till the narrative of s family fwelled out into the hiftory of a nation. He then wrote one tragedy upon the departure of Jofeph out of Egypt, and denominated it Exywyn, or, the Eduction. In this play Ezekiel notices, of course, that introductory incident to all the greater events of Mofes's life, the appearance of the glory in the burning buth. Philo has already intimated the glory to be that of the Logos. But Ezekiel expreffes

But go, and in my words announce again,

First to the very Hebrews all at once, Then to the King, what is by me enjoin'd;

That out of Egypt thou shalt bring my race."

Having thus given a quotation from this ancient play-wright, we feel ourfelves neceffitated to prefent to our readers what we are certain will afford them confiderable fatisfaction, Mr. Whitaker's obfervations. "A play like Ezekiel's," fays he, "would be a prodigy, even in this land of Chriftianity, and one more wondered at than admired. The introduction of an angel, and especially of the God-man

into a tragedy, however religious in its defign, and however conformable to holy hiftory in fact, would be confidered as licentious profaneness by many of the ferious, and as fanctified impertinence by all the giddy. We do not love to mingle our religion with our amufements ; and we feem defirous to keep the former tequettered from all the gaieties of life, and referved for the folemnities of re

collection. There is more or lefs of this fpirit in all nations, and all ages, farther than our fathers did. Shakebut we have carried the humour much fpeare's mind, however great and exalted in itfelf. was unhappily tinctured too little with religion; yet even he has thrown out thofe ftrokes of religioufnefs at times, which every great and exalted mind muft occafional Ty conceive; which no averfion to fuch trokes in the audience of a play-house which no modern play-writer now then, folicited him to fupprefs; but dares to imitate. And that fine addrefs of his Henry the Fifth to God, the has shocked the prejudices of many, night before the battle of Agincourt, believe, in the prefent generation, though it pleafingly awes the heart of the judiciously religious. But the plays of Ezekiel were not calculated for exhibition on the ftage. The Jews, I think, had no play-houses. Milton's "Sampfon," and perhaps like all his other projected tragedies, This circumftance undoubtedly allowed they were intended only for the ciofer. heavenly perfonages; Ezekiel, aca greater fcope for the introduction of of the tragedy which I have not cited, cordingly, introduces an angel in a part relating the deftruction of the Egyptians in the Red Sea, and, as we have feen above, he even brings in God himself holding a dialogue with Mofes; but then it is be buman God, it is the Logos, who fo frequently appeared in a human form to the worthics of the Old Testament; and who at last came, and tabernacled as, a human being among us, at the commencement of the New."

Like

Mr. Whitaker, as well as Biop Horley, confiders the manifeftation to Mofes in Horeb as fimilar to the scene exhibited to St. Paul in his journey ta Damafcu, and as concurring in evidence of the divinity of the Son of God. What our prefent Author ob ferves upon the latter circumftance, is

more

more amplified than the learned Prelate's remarks, but is not perhaps lefs , elegant." Of the extraordinarinefs of fuch a conduct in Ezekiel," fays Mr. W." and confequently of the preeminence of fuch a faith in his cotemporaries, we may form a judgment at once, from the light in which a playwriter would appear to us at prefent, who should take that fimilar incident in the Chriftian difpenfation, the appearance of Our Saviour to St. Paul near Damafcus, and infert it in a tragedy for the parlour. A glory fuperior to that of the burning buth, and even more vivid than the meridian luftre of Damafcus fun, would be defcribed as burfting fuddenly from the fky, over the head of St. Paul. A human form would be faid to appear before his lifted eye, arrayed in all the lightning of the Godhead, and leaning from the clouds towards him; and a human voice would be equally faid to addrefs him in that "voice of God," thunder, as he lay thrown to the ground upon his back, and, as he was gazing in wild amazement at the terrible fplendors of the Logos of Mofes before him, to expoftulate with him on his oppofition to irrefiftible power, and to declare the God feen by and talking to him to be that very Jefus whom he was oppofing. Such a tragedy as this was planned for an English reader. Milton, whofe high-fet foul was fo much higher ftill by the elevating fpirit of religion within, is the only one of our old writers, I think, who projected any religious tragedies at all. He even projected a number of them; one upon each of various incidents in the Jewish history, yet in none of thefe did he venture to think of introducing God, even the God who is fo often introduced in the hiftory: in his room he brings in thofe fancy-formed exiftences, Juftice, Mercy, and Wifdom, and fo violates the effential laws of the drama, by introducing the perfonified attributes of God, to avoid the introduction of the Divine Perfon himself. And, fince the days of Milton, I know not of any writer that has projected a tragedy founded on religious ftory, except only one, whofe flighteft merit is. to be a woman of genius and tafte, as religioufnefs is infinitely fuperior to any mental accomplishments Yet even Mifs H. More has not ventured in her

never

Sacred Dramas to introduce any fuper natural perfonage. She has even, like Ezekiel, a tragedy upon Mofes; but on Mofes in the bulrushes, not at the burning bufh. Ezekiel, however, knew his countrymen to be better theologues in general than Englishmen are; more ftudious to form juft notions concerning the elementary principles of their religion, and more tenaciously adhering to them when they had formed them."

Our learned Author justly concludes, that the divinity of the Logos must have been the commonly-received opinion of the ancient Jews, otherwife a poetical writer would not have introduced it into fuch a familiar work as a play. "The fentiment," he remarks," evidently lodged in the very heart of his readers, there acted as a vital spark of their religion, and was there felt as the animating foul of their theology."

was

From the fame early and refpectable fources of authority, our acute enquirer produces ftrong evidences of the belief of the Jews in the divinity of a Third Perfon in the Godhead," thus compleating the circle of the Christian theology among the Jews."

This chapter is concluded with the evidence of a perfon to whom we confefs that we do not feel ourselves inclined to allow any confiderable credit. It is the fabulizing, if not the fabulous Orpheus. Mr. Whitaker brings forward one of Orpheus's poems in the original, accompanied with a translation of his own, the latter of which we shall, without fcruple, prefent to our readers.

Of