NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS ΤΟ LETTER II. (a) Page 208. WITHOUT reckoning an island Atlantis in the Gulph of Egina, not far from Athens, there was also another island of that name between that of Euboea and the Locrian coaft, detached as the antients fuppofed from thefe contiguous lands by a great inundation; or rather this fpot remained in the ftreights when the island of Euboea itself was torn from Boeotia by the irruption of the lake of Theffaly, which according to Herodotus formerly covered the plains of this laft country. This island Atlantis was conquered by the Athenians, but was soon after funk and almost entirely destroyed by an earthquake. Is it not this island which Plato, taking advantage of Egyptian tales, has tranfported beyond the ftreights of Gibraltar, in order to give us an ideal hiftory of felicity fpringing from virtue, and of punishment and misfortune confequent to corruption? It is true, one fees not how fuch an island could conquer Libya; but the inhabitants of an island in the Atlantic ocean were not more likely to make war on Egypt or Athens. Wars in the western world, yet thinly inhabited, were, in the times we fpeak of, that is to say, about 3300 years ago, little more than the defcents of restless pirates who frequently changed their habitations, and made no long voyages, unless forced by storms beyond their knowledge. It is then much more probable that the coafts of Egypt and the yet village of Athens fhould have been affaulted by adventurers from an ifland in the Egean fea, than attacked by a great nation living beyond the columns of Hercules. Beyond the interior of Afia and Egypt, nations, fome centuries after formidable, were yet petty tribes compofed of a few families of adventurers. Fifty or a hundred perfons united to feek new fettlements on the defert coasts of Europe and Africa, and to seize on the first country to their liking. These were not unfrequently expelled by fucceeding ones, and were again forced to seek new feats wherever they found the leaft oppofition. In times much later, in all civil contentions the emigration of the weaker party was the conftant and fufficiently wife advice of the oracles of old. Such is the whole history of these parts of the world in those times. Can we doubt that the renovation of the human race was little diftant from them? Some adventurers from the Grecian iflands of Atlantis were probably caft on the western coasts of Africa, and gave the name of their country to mount Atlas and to the neighbouring fea; as difcoverers in more modern times have given their own names, or those of their original countries or towns, to much more extenfive regions. (b) Page 209. Some have fuppofed Sanconiatho contemporary with Jofhua; Sir Ifaac Newton, with more probability, to have flourished about the year 760 before Chrift. He wrote in Phoenician, and his works were tranflated into Greek by Philon of Byblos, of which Eufebius has preserved fome fragments. However faulty his description of the origin of the world, we cannot but remark several traits correfponding with the narration of Moses. It is true the hand of the great architect, of God, is wanting, but the chaos therein mentioned is the abyfs; the wind is the breath of God; the mud he speaks of represents the first liquid state of the earth. Light is produced, and foon after the fun and stars appear. Marine and terrestrial animals are fucceffively animated; and lastly, the first man and woman vivified by the wind or breath of God. The fame order of production is obferved. The doctrine doctrine of Orpheus, as it is preferved to us in abridgment by Timotheus the chronographer, is, that God, or the firft being, invifible and incomprehenfible, author of all things material and immaterial, created, in the beginning, the æther or the heavens, and beneath them chaos, and night or darkness, which laft covered all things under the æther, which, as well as the earth, was by that means invifible until light, which he feems to think God himself, piercing through æther, enlightened the whole creation: the Divinity then formed man from the earth, and communicated to him a reafonable foul. This fyftem of the creation, as well as that which Ovid fings, probably taken from the doctrine of the great myfteries, approaches ftill nearer to the Mofaic account, and is vifibly drawn from the fomewhat obfcured and mutilated traditions tranfmitted from the firft men escaped from the deluge. As the true religion wore out in the minds of men, these were variously accommodated in different countries to the reigning mythology, till at laft fceptic philofophy substituted plastic Nature to an intelligent author, and is now again ftraining every nerve to reduce us to the fame point. Our advanced knowledge in the admirable concatenation of all exifting beings, and the avowed infufficiency of fortuitous Nature to produce one fingle new entity, or to fwerve one line beyond the bounds affigned to it, are inadequate to reprefs the ambition of framing new fyftems, however abfurd. Intoxicated by the pride of fome fortunate discovery in the ordinary course of nature, the vain philofopher thence prefumes to scan the power of the Almighty by his own narrow conception : according to the process of his little laboratory, he fcruples not to measure out time to the operations of that Being from whofe fiat fhe received her laws, and literally makes himself the god of God. (c) Page 214. The ramparts of Gog and Magog, fo often mentioned in oriental history, fhew us the first feats of thofe children of Japhet called by thofe names by Mofes and the fcriptures. From thofe mountains they defcended into China, which to this day retains their name. These names foftened, as Mr. K k Bailly Bailly informs us, into Gin and Magin, Tchin and Matchin, by the oriental Tartars and Chinefe, fufficiently prove the origin of the latter. The denominations of Tching, of Thing, of Tfin and Tfi, given by the Chinefe to feveral of their dynafties, are further teftimonies of the genealogical claims of their first sovereigns. We fee thence, that Mofes indicates to us with no less truth the fathers of far diftant nations than the origin of thofe who had nearer connections with the children of Abraham. Their defcendants, unknown to the Jews, and no lefs fo to thofe nations who fucceffively lorded it over the western world, were only made known to us a few centuries ago, still bearing the very name of that Mofaical patriarch. Mr. Huet, the learned bishop of Avranches, tells us, that the oriental Scythia of the antients was the country to which the Arabs, who alone in the fouth retained the memory of antient appellations, gave the name of Gog and Magog. In the most eastern parts of Afia, he says, the antients placed three nations, the oriental Scythians, who occupied Chinese Tartary; the Seres, who inhabited northern China, or, as I am more apt to believe, northern India; and the Sine, who held the southern part of China. These laft were faintly known to the Romans by the commerce in filk during the reigns of their emperors. The names of Sinæ or Thinæ, indifferently attributed to this nation, are fuch flight variations of Tchin or of Tfin, that we cannot doubt but that the Chinese were thereby meant, though the Romans were yet ignorant of the true fituation of their country, undifcovered till the Portuguese failed round the Cape of Good Hope. In procefs of time the country of the oriental Tartars was known under the name of Caracathay, or black Cathay, and that of the Seres was called Cathay, the fame as the Cathæan region of Strabo inhabited by the Chatean Scythians of Ptolemy. In the 14th century fouthern China was called Mangi, or Matchin, by the Tartars. Those who wished to give an impofing antiquity to the Chinese empire, have reprefented it as having from earliest times reunited all its prefent provinces; but it is certain that, conformable to this divifion of the antients, the northern and fouthern parts of it continued till after that time entirely separate and diftinct dominions. Northern China itself long continued divided into feparate |