And all amid them stood the tree of life,
High eminent, blooming ambrosial fruit
Of vegetable gold; and next to life,

Our death the tree of knowledge grew fast by,
Knowledge of good bought dear by knowing ill.
The river which ran through the garden

fed

Flow'rs worthy of Paradise, which not nice Art
In beds, and curious knots, but Nature boon
Pour'd forth profuse on hill and dale and plain,
Both where the morning sun first warmly smote
The open field, and where the unpierced shade
Imbrown'd the noontide bow'rs: Thus was this place
A happy rural seat of various view;

Groves whose rich trees wept odorous gums and balm,
Others whose fruit burnish'd with golden rind
Hung amiable, Hesperian fables true,

If true, here only, and of delicious taste;
Betwixt them lawns, or level downs, and flocks
Grazing the tender herb, were interposed,
Or palmy hilloc; or the flow'ry lap

Of some irriguous valley spread her store,
Flow'rs of all hue, and without thorn the rose ;
Another side, umbrageous grots and caves
Of cool recess, o'er which the mantling vine
Lays forth her purple grape, and gently creeps
Luxuriant; meanwhile murm'ring waters fall
Down the slope hills, dispersed, or in a lake,
That to the fringed bank with myrtle crown'd
Her crystal mirror holds, unite their streams.
The birds their quire apply; airs, vernal airs,
Breathing the smell of field and grove, attune
The trembling leaves, while universal Pan
Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance
Led on th' eternal spring. Not that fair field
Of Enna, where Proserpine gathering flowers,
Herself, a fairer flow'r, by gloomy Dis

Was gather'd, which cost Ceres all that pain

To seek her through the world; nor that sweet grove

Of Daphne by Orontes, and th' inspir'd

Castalian spring, might with this Paradise

Of Eden strive; nor that Nyseian ile

Girt with the river Triton, where old Cham,

Whom Gentiles Ammon call and Lybian Jove,
Hid Amalthea and her florid son,

Young Bacchus, from his stepdame Rhea's eye;
Nor where Abassin kings their issue guard,
Mount Amara, though this by some supposed
True Paradise under the Ethiop line
By Nilus' head, inclosed with shining rock,
A whole day's journey high, but wide remote
From this Assyrian garden, where the Fiend
Saw undelighted all delight, all kind

Of living creatures new to sight and strange.

Paradise Lost, B. iv.

THE SITE OF THE GARDEN OF EDEN, AND THE
SCENE OF CREATION.

Though we may not be able to find out with complete certainty the particular spot which was the scene of creation (knowledge, it may be, wisely hid from us to prevent superstitious uses being made of it); and, though tradition has handed down nothing to be depended on concerning the exact site of Paradise, and, though the labours of travellers in the East to discover it have been attended with no success; we have, notwithstanding the otherwise defective state of our knowledge, enough told us, in the two first chapters of Genesis, to guide us to the district in which the garden of Eden was situated, with a river running through it, and the scene of creation in its immediate neighbourhood; and this knowledge enables us to discover, both the land, and the extent of the land, covered by the flood, which was miraculously removed on the third creative day.

It is exceedingly improbable, that the Creator would, by a miraculous display of his power, remove the waters of a flood from one quarter of the globe, merely to be the scene in which he was to put forth some of

his creative energies, if he did not intend that quarter to be the immediate dwelling-place of the creatures he was about to form. A husbandman, we shall say, has a farm which naturally divides itself into four distinct parts; but, of these parts, one is cold and marshy, and altogether unfit for use, till it has been thoroughly drained. Now, can we suppose our farmer would be at the trouble and expense of draining, and otherwise improving this boggy portion of his land, if he did not intend to turn it to immediate use? And, much less can we imagine the Creator would clear one quarter of the earth of the waters of a deep flood, and, leaving it to lie idle and void, forthwith proceed to plenish and adorn, with a profuse hand, another quarter which required no previous preparation. Such a thing is utterly incredible. Then the land laid dry on the third day, is the land planted on the same day, as soon as the waters are drained off, and furnished with living and sentient beings on the sixth day. The chief of these living and sentient beings was man. Immediately after man was made, God put him in the garden of Eden, and anon brought into the garden the inferior creatures of all kinds, that Adam might give them names. Now, the circumstance of the animals being brought into the garden shows, that the scene of creation, and the garden of Eden, were in close juxtaposition, in a northern district (as shall presently be shown) of that quarter of the world, which had been miraculously relieved of the flood in the third day. But, had we been told no more than that the garden in which God placed man was in Eden, we never could have arrived at anything like a definite conception of either the site of the garden, or of the scene of creation. From the expression "eastward in Eden," we would have known, that the garden was on the east side of Eden; but then-where is Eden? It would be a very useless waste of time and room to point out

the gross absurdities which many learned men have published, respecting the situation of Eden; and, all through sheer inattention, to what Moses has written on the subject. In the second chapter of Genesis we have been favoured with a copious description of a river which ran through the garden, and the various branches into which it was divided, after it had left the garden; and, this description is highly valuable in enabling us to find the quarter of the globe, which had, for a time, been laid under water; and also the particular district in that land, in which Eden was situated; though, in consequence of physical changes to which the country is liable, not the particular spot in that district, in which the garden lay. The following is the description referred to:

Gen. ii. 10. "And a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads."

Ver. 11. "The name of the first river is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold."

Ver. 12. "And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx-stone."

Ver. 13. "And the name of the second river is Gihon; the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia."

Ver. 14. "And the name of the third river is Hiddekel that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates."

God made the garden: two whole verses are taken up in telling us that he made it, and in describing the different sorts of trees he caused immediately to grow in it. Five verses more are employed in giving an account of the river that ran through the garden; but, neither in these, nor in any other part of the Record, is it said that God made the river that ran through the garden. The previous existence of the river there

fore does not admit of a doubt; and, one reason for making choice of the particular spot which was converted into Paradise, appears to have been, because there-in addition to rich soil, good exposure, &c.the river had arrived at a sufficient volume of water to irrigate the ground. Now, this river is represented as extending during the creative week from that part of the north of Asia, where the Tigris and the Euphrates originally had their source, southward considerably beyond the northern extremity of the Persian Gulf. At its upper extremity it ran through the district in which lay the garden of Eden, and the scene of creation, and must therefore have been overwhelmed with the flood which laid that district wholly under water. This affords evidence, that that flood stretched from the north to the very southern extremity of Asia; and we may safely conclude, both from its depth and the purpose which it was designed to serve, that its breadth from east to west was duly proportioned to its length from north to south. But, we must follow the river from near its source in the north, till it reaches the sea in the far south. By pursuing this method, we shall be likely to fall in with some of the countries, which had for a time been deluged by the flood. It does not appear, that the river had its rise in the garden. Entering the garden a full-formed and well-supplied stream, it ran through it, probably in a meandering course, and watered it. That this was no small brook or rivulet, is evident from the circumstance of its parting into two branches, soon after it quits the garden, and is left to its own freedom; and, these two channels, from the increasing volume of their waters as they flow south, are each, at its lower end, divided into two -in all forming what is termed in the Record "four heads." These four branches or heads some commentators, in obvious contradiction of the description of the sacred historian, have represented as the springs