in perfect harmony with the sentiments which they who sought that asylum are supposed to utter. "The Lord seeth us not," i. e. regardeth not his creatures: "the Lord hath forsaken the earth," as he did at the time of the Deluge. Warburton observes, that "the paintings and imagery on the walls of this subterraneous apartment answer exactly to the descriptions which the ancients have given us of the mystic cells of the Egyptians';" those cells in which the mysteries of Isis and Osiris were celebrated, and in which none were initiated but the most eminent men; for so, in this instance, the seventy ancients of the house of Israel, the members of the Sanhedrim, were there assembled. Now it has been sufficiently shown, that the mysteries were Arkite ceremonies, and the Egyptians an Arkite people. If it be asked why this was a smaller abomination than the weeping for Tammuz, which was an allusion to the same event, though little information is given us to decide the question, yet thus much may be reasonably conjectured. It has been shown, that the weeping was occasioned by the death, which the image or person representing the Patriarchs was supposed to undergo, when buried in the mystic cell, that represented the Ark. Hence the initiated being thus transferred as it were to Hades, had the credit of ob taining a degree of supernatural knowledge, and a closer communion with the gods2; for which rea 2 1 Divine Legation of Moses. Sub nocte silenti son, when Isaiah complains of the people provoking the Lord by remaining among the graves, and lodging in the monuments, and saying, "Stand by thyself, come not near to me, for I am holier than thou," Lowth very justly observes, that they dwelled in the sepulchres, and lodged in the caverns, for the purposes of necromancy and divination to obtain dreams and revelations. For thus the Augilæ, a people of Africa, who thought there were no gods but the Manes of their ancestors, were accustomed to repair to Tumuli, when they wanted to consult the oracle2; and the dreams of those who slept there were deemed a divine answer and at the present day a similar seclusion from the world for a short period is practised by those who pretend to be magicians in Syria. Madan informs us, on the authority of Lady Esther Stanhope, whose long residence in that country has made her quite familiar with the habits of the natives, that thirty days fasting and silence is considered necessary to prepare a man for intercourse with spirits. An Italian doctor underwent this first trial in a cave, and at the expiration of that term, he was visited by a spirit in dark attire, which terrified him so much that he had not courage to venture on the second step of initiation. Multa modis simulacra videt volitantia miris, 1 Lowth on Isaiah, lxv. 3, 4, 5. Virg. Æn. viii. 76. 2 Pomponius Mela, de Situ Orbis, lib. i. c. 8. 3 Madan's Travels, ii. 283. LECHS OR ARTIFICIAL CAVES IN IRELAND WALES — AN- SCOTLAND THE Cave of Trophonius near Lebadea in Boeotia was a remarkable oracle of this description; and notwithstanding the total ignorance of its real origin, which like the ivy on a ruin conceals the form of truth in the writers who have mentioned it, yet on a closer inspection we can easily detect the various members of a genuine Arkite monument. It was discovered by bees; that is, Melissæ, or priestesses. It was the residence of serpents, who were to be disarmed of their fury by those who entered it. It was the sepulchre of Trophonius; concerning whose history the reports are so very contradictory, and destitute of evidence, that we may conclude they were all fictions. In Hebrew the etymology of his name will be Toreph Ani, The Mighty Ship.' It was on the top of a mountain, in a circle formed of white stones. Its shape was like an oven; beneath which through a narrow passage there was another cavern, where the consulter of the oracle heard or saw things which the priests afterward interpreted; no difficult matter to those, by whom the whole had been ar ranged beforehand. But previously it was necessary to pass some days in a cell dedicated to the good Genius and to Fortune, and to be purified in the waters of the river Hercyna.' This is the account which Pausanias gives. Dr. Clarke describes it thus:- the cave of Trophonius is a Hieron surrounded with rocks, bare and rugged, rising in fearful precipices to a great height, the silence of the place being only interrupted by the roaring of waters bursting with uncommon force from their cavernous abyss. This is the source of the river Hercyna. The Adytum2 is small and low; barely capacious enough to admit the passage of a man's body. Mr. Cripps, having introduced his whole body into it, found by pushing forward a long pole, that the passage was entirely closed beyond. Immediately below this aperture, which is close to the ground, a fountain issues into a bath a few paces distant from the other source. The most sacred part of the Hieron is a perpendicular rock of black marble, on the summit of which there had been a large pillar of the same stone; but the whole space along the banks of the river, from the ancient city of Lebadea to the residence of the oracle, was covered with temples, Hiera, images, and every species of votive decoration. Pausanias mentions obelisks of brass. Now the celebrity of the oracle 1 Τὸ δὲ οἴκημα Δαίμονός τε ἀγαθοῦ καὶ Τύχης ἱερόν ἐστιν ἀγαθῆς.. Pausan. Boot. c. 39. 2 Hesychius says, that the Adytum was a cave or the secret part of a temple. 3 Clarke's Travels, vii. 56-167. was by no means proportionate to all this apparatus of devotion, neither is it possible on that ground alone to account for its influence extending so far. But when it is considered, what a lively image of that day, in which the fountains of the great deep were broken up, must have been conveyed to the mind of him who lay in the sanctuary, half stunned with the rush and roar of waters just below him, it is not difficult to understand why such a purifying efficacy was attributed to the stream, that even to a considerable distance from its source it would be esteemed peculiarly holy. Above the Adytum there are twelve sanctuaries, or niches, as Clarke calls them, because he could not see that they had any other use than to receive votive offerings; and yet one of these niches he owns to be a chamber nearly twelve feet square, and more than eight in height, and with a stone bench, which he takes for the seat, or throne, of Mnemosyne; though Pausanias's statement, that it lies not far from the Adytum, gives more the idea of a detached rock than that of a seat hewn out of the solid stone in a chamber immediately above the Adytum.' This niche was doubtless the cell in which those who came to be initiated passed some days, in order that as Noah was permitted to enter the Ark, because he found grace in the eyes of the Lord, so they might be prepared to enter the sanctuary by ingratiating themselves with the divinity of the place; for no other mode of doing this occurred to their uninstructed minds, than a temporary morti 1 Pausan. Boot. c. 39. |