they united her with this god to drive away the usurper from the throne. The priests considering Osiris as the father of time, might bestow the name of his son on Horus, who reigned three months in the year.

Jablonski, who has interpreted the epithet of Arueri, which the Egyptians gave to Horus, pretends that it signifies efficacious virtue. These expressions perfectly characterize the phenomena which happened during the reign of this god. It is in summer, in fact, that the sun manifests all his powers in Egypt. It is then that he swells the waters of the river with rains, exhaled by him in the air and driven against the summit of the Abyssinian Mountains; it is then that the husbandman reckons on the treasures of agriculture. It was natural for them to honour him with the name of Arueri, or efficacious virtue, to mark these auspicious effects."__ (Savery's Letters in Egypt), etc.

The reasons which the inhabitants of northern climates have for lamenting the absence of the sun when in the southern hemisphere, is thus beautifully portrayed by Dupuis :

"We have, in our explanation of the labours of Hercules, considered the sun principally as the potent star, the depository of all the energies of nature, who creates and measures time by his march through the heavens, and who, taking his departure from the summer solstice or the most elevated point of his route, runs over the course of the twelve signs in which the celestial bodies move, and with them the different periods or revolutions of the stars, under the name of Osiris or of Bacchus, we shall see this beneficent star, who, by his heat, in spring, calls forth all the powers of generation; who governs the growth of plants and of trees; who ripens the fruits, and who dispenses to all seeds that active sap which is the soul of vegetation, and is the true character of the Egyptian Osiris and the Greek Bacchus. It is above all in spring-time that his humid generator developes itself, and circulates in all the rising productions; and it is this sun, by its heat that impels its movements and gives it fertility.

"We may distinguish two points in the heavens which limit the duration of the creative action of the sun, and these two points are those where the night and the day are of equal length. All the grand work of vegetation, in a great art of northern climates, appears to be comprised between these two limits, and its progressive march is found to be in proportion to that of light and heat. Scarcely has the sun, in his annual route, attained one of these points, than an active and prolific force appears to emanate from his rays, and to communicate movement and life to all sublunary bodies, which he brings to light by a new organization. It is then that the resurrection of the great God takes place, and, with his, that of all nature. Having arrived at the opposite point, that power seems to abandon him, and nature becomes sensible of his weakness. It is Atys, whose mutilation Cybele deplored! it is Adonis, wounded in the virile parts, of which Venus regretted the loss; it is Osiris, precipitated in the tomb

by Typhon, and whose organs of generation the disconsolate Isis never found.

"What picture more effectual to render man sorrowful than that of the earth when, by the absence of the sun, she finds herself deprived of her attire, of her verdure, of her foliage, and when she offers to our regard only the wreck of plants dried up or turned to putrefaction, of naked trunks, of arid lands without culture, or covered with snow; of rivers overflowed in the fields, or chained in their bed by the ice, or of violent winds that overturn everything. What has become of that happy temperature which the earth enjoyed in the spring and during the summer? that harmony of the elements, which was in accord with that of the heavens? that richness, that beauty of our fields loaded with grain and fruits, or enamelled with flowers whose odour perfumed the air, and whose variegated colors presented a spectacle so ravishing? All has disappeared, and the happiness of man has departed with the god, who, by his presence, embellished our climes; his retreat has plunged the earth into mourning from which nothing but his return can free her.

"He was then the creator of all these benefits, since we are deprived of them by his departure! he was the soul of vegetation, since it languished and ceased as soon as he quitted us. What will be the term of his flight and of his descent into other regions? Is he going to replunge nature into the eternal shade of chaos, from whence his presence had drawn it ?"

"Such were the inquietudes of these ancient people, who, seeing the sun retiring from their climate, feared that it might one day happen that he would abandon them altogether: from thence arose the feasts of Hope, celebrated at the winter solstice, when they saw this star check his movement, and change his route to return towards them. But if the hope of his approach was so sensibly felt, what joy would not be experienced when the sun, already remounted towards the middle of heaven, had chased before him the darkness which had encroached upon the light and usurped a part of its empire. Then the equilibrium of the day and the night is re-established, and with it the order of nature. A new order of things as beautiful as the first recommences, and the earth, rendered fruitful by the heat of the sun, who had renewed

* I will here remark, that all the talk put into the mouth of masonic candidates about "wanting light and more light," relates to a physical and not to a mental benefit: it has reference to the light of the sun. In fact, on taking the bandage from the eyes of a candidate the blaze of many tapers is exhibited before him in satisfaction of his desires, with this declaration of the master," And God said let there be light, and there was light." These ceremonies are emblematical of the sun's return to the northern hemisphere -EDIT.

the vigor of youth, embellishes herself under the rays of the lord.” (Abrègè de l'Origine de tous les Cuites, p. 142.)

The civil year— Isis.

We might here reasonably enough call the order of the feasts the ecclesiastical year, since they were religious assemblies. But this order of the days appointed for working or for religious purposes being the rule of society, we shall call it the civil year.

The figure of the man, who rules over everything on earth, had been thought the most proper emblem to represent the sun, which enlivens all nature and when they wanted a characteristic of the production of the earth, they pitched upon the other sex. The changes of nature, the succession of seasons, and the several productions of the earth, which no doubt were the subject of the common thanksgivings, might easily be expressed by the several dresses given this woman.*

When the sacrifice was intended to be made in the day, Isis was dressed in white, but if in the night she was dressed in black. They put a sickle in her hand to denote the time of harvest. When the purpose of a feast was to remind the people of the security afforded by their

"On comparing the different explanations given by Plutarch, and other ancient writers, it will appear that Osiris is the type of the active, generating and beneficent force of nature and the elements; Isis, on the contrary, is the passive force, the power of conceiving and bringing forth into life in the sublunary world. Osiris was particularly adored in the sun, whose rays vivify and impart new warmth to the earth, and who on his annual return in the spring, appears to create anew all organic bodies. Isis was the earth or sublunary nature, in general; or, in a more confined sense, the soil of Egypt inundated by the Nile, the principle of all fecundity, the goddess of generation and production. United to one another, Osiris and Isis typify the universal being, the soul of nature, the Pantheus of the Orphic verses. *

"The Egyptians solemnized, at the new moon of Phamenoth (March,) the entrance of Osiris into the moon, which planet he was believed to fecundate that it might in turn fecundate the Earth. (Plut. de Is et os.) Finally, on the 30th, of Epiphi, (24th of July) the festival of the Birth of Horus took place, (of Horus the representative of Osiris, the conqueror of Typhon,) in the second great period."-Anthon's Lemp. Class. Dict. Art. Isis.)

The first conquest of Osiris over Typhon was at the winter solstice, and then the birth of a renewed sun was celebrated; the second conquest, as above stated, was attributed to Horus, Apollo, as before observed, was the name given to the sun when in the northern hemisphere, or at least after his passing the summer solstice.

One of the grand festival days of masons is on the 24th of June. The cause of this variation from the ancient custom arises from the procession of the equinoxes, which has caused the northern solstice to occur on that day, when the sun is in the sign Cancer; whereas it was in Leo (July 24th) that this solstice took place in ancient times during 2160 years. This is the reason why the Egyptians consecrated this animal to the sun, while in its full strength, and as the forerunner of the summer solstice, of the rise of the Nile and its succeeding overflow, which caused the fertility of Egypt.-See "Truth drawn from Fables," by Dr. Constantio.

dwellings, Isis was crowned with small towers.* To intimate the winter neomenia, the head of Isis was covered with little fillets and with skins sewed together; sometimes with feathers ranged one over the other or with small shells neatly set by each other. There were sometimes on the head of Isis a craw-fish or crab, sometimes the horns of a wild goat, according as they had a mind to signify either the entering of the sun into the sign cancer, or the feast that was solemnized at his entering nto that of capricorn. In Egypt, where the inhabitants can with tertainty judge of the product of the year by the state of the river, they proclaimed a plentiful crop by surrounding Isis with a multitude of breasts; on the contrary, when the presage of fertility was not favorable, they exposed an Isis with a single breast; thereby to warn the people, to make amends for the smallness of the harvest by the culture of vegetables, or by son.e other industry.

All these changes had each its peculiar meaning, and Isis changed her dress as often as the earth.

Next to the symbolical king, or the emblem of the sun, the Egyptians had no figure that appeared more frequently in their assemblies than Isis, the symbol of the earth, or rather the sign of the feasts that were successively characterized by the productions of the earth in each season.

In looking for the origin of this woman, they ran into the same mistake which had caused them to take the governor of the earth, the symbol of the sun, for Ammon their common father. Isis was looked upon as his wife she partook of the titles of her husband; and being in their opinion raised to a real person and a considerable power, they invoked her with confidence; they gave her the honorable titles of the Lady, the Queen, the Governess, the common Mother, the Queen of heaven and earth.

What contributed most to seduce the Egyptians, was the frequent joining of a crescent or a full moon to the head-dress of Isis. Thence they took occasion to give it out that Osiris' wife, the common mother of the Egyptians, had the moon for her dwelling place.

"It was formerly a general custom to make sacrifices and public prayers upon eminent places, and more especially in groves to shelter

It is a little remarkable, that one of the significations given to tower, is high HEAD-DRESS.-EDIT.

This is Mosaic-work, and was no doubt intended to represent in anticipation the variegated face of the earth in the approaching season, after the sun had changed his course to return to the northern hemisphere -EDIT.

The Roman Catholics seem to have borrowed from the Egyptians the style of their address to the Virgin Mary, which is as follows:

"Holy Mary-Holy Mother of God--Mother most amiable-Mystical rose -Tower of David-Tower of ivory-Gate of Heaven-Morning star-Queen of Angels-Queen of Virgins-Queen of all Saints," etc.-Edit.

the people from the heat of the sun. When the Isis which proclaimed the feasts, and whose figures were one of the finest parts of the ceremonial, was once become the object of it and had been looked upon as the dispenser of the goods of the earth, of which she still bore the marks; her several representations, which only foreboded abundance and joy, becoming most agreeable to the people, always eager and credulous on that head, the false sense attributed to these figures made them pass for the surest means of obtaining plentiful harvests. These images were worshipped with solemnity and placed in the finest woods. Crowds of people flocked to the religious feasts of the lovely queen who loaded them with blessings. No doubt they had everything from her. The coolness and beauty of the place where she was worshipped, had no less an influence on the assistants than the attire of the goddess, and instead of calling her the queen of heaven, they often styled her the queen of the groves

She also became the queen of herds Asteroth, the great fish, or queen of fishes, Adirdagal, or by way of excellence the queen of Amalcta Appherudoth.

The Greeks softened the sound of these words, and gave them the inflection and turn of their own language. The queen of herds became Astarte; that of fishes became Atergatis ; and the mother of corn became the Aphrodite of the Cyprians and the Greeks. The name Appherudoth, the mother of harvests, changed into that of Aphrodite, was no more than an empty sound void of all meaning. But it seeming to the Greeks to be derived from a word in their tongue, which signified the froth of the sea, they thereupon built the wonderful story of the goddess engendered of the froth of the sea, and suddenly springing out of the bosom of the watery main, to the great amazement both of gods and men.

They represented the Amalcta Aphrodite, the queen of harvest, holding with her left hand a long goat's horn, out of which they make ears of corn, vegetables, and fruits to spring. She had a sickle or some other attribute in her right hand; and thus they united without any reason the mark of the opening of the harvest, together with the horn of the wild goat, which signified anciently the end of all harvests, and the beginning of winter. This is then the plain original of the horn of abundance, and of the Amalthean goat. That horn being always full, (a privilege it evidently had) could not proceed from a goat which had done some important service to mankind. They contrived that this goat had been nurse to Jupiter. But the god and the nurse are both alike. The one existed as little as the other. This single instance is fully sufficient to prove that most of the tales of the poets are little stories grounded on quibbles of the same kind, and invented only to have something to say upon figures always presented at certain feasts, but no longer understood. They made all these figures so many tutelar deities.