places. The eastern nations who had adopted him, and who looked. on their temporal advantages as the effect of this devotion, called him. Moloch or Melchom, that is the king; some, Baal or Adonai, or Adonis, or Hero,* all which names signify the lord. Others called him Achad, which the old inhabitants of Latium have rendered by that of Sol,unicus; and others finally named him Baalshamain or Beelsamen ‡ the lord of the heavens. But it was always the sun which these figures of a king and these names immediately signified.

Dionyisus, Bacchus.

In the times when things were expressed by symbols, and the several parts of these symbols were varied to be the better understood, far from being designed to conceal any mystery; the figure of Horus changed its name and attributes according to the exigency of the circumstances in which it was employed. The first use it was applied to in certain feasts was the representation of past events. The second was the instruction and the regulations fit for the people.

The representation of the ancient state of mankind consisted, not only in the commemorative signs that were carried either upon a winnowing van or in the small chest before mentioned: they joined thereto ceremonies or set forms of prayers regarding the same intention. They, in these feasts, invoked the name of God with great lamentations. They called him the mighty, the life, the father of life. They implored his assistance against wild beasts, and made show of giving them chace, running hither and thither, as if they were going to attack them. They even did it in good earnest completely armed.

It was the custom to say with a sigh: Let us cry unto the Lord, io terombe, or disterombe. Let us cry before the Lord, or God see our tears, io Bacche, io Baccoth. Thou art the life, the author of being. Thou art God and the mighty: Jehova, hevan, hevoe, and eloah. They chiefly said in the east: God is the fire and the principle of life. Thou art the fire; life proceeds from thee: hu esh: atta esh.* All these words and many others, which were the expressions of grief and

* See the name of hero in that sense in the interpretation of the obelisk of Ramesses in Ammian Marcellin, or in Marsham's rule of times. From that hero, the Latins made their herus and hera, the lord, the lady. The Philistines called him the lord of men, marnas, from the word maran, which signifies the master, and from as which signifies man. And this comes to the sense of the foregoing names.

achad, unicus, and by a softened pronunciation, adad, one, the only. The ancient kings of Syria, who styled themselves his children, assumed the name of Benadad son of God. See Macrob. Saturnal.

Dominus cælorum.

§ Hu esh - ipse est ignis, Deuteron, 4: 24. Atta esh, tu vita es. See Strabo, 1, 10.

adoration, became so many titles, which the people, without understanding, gave to this child or imaginary deity. He was then called Bacchos, Hevan, Evoe, Dithyrambus, Jao, Eleleus, Ves, Attes. They knew not, what all this signified; but they were sure that the god of the feast delighted in all these titles. They never failed to give them him, and thus these expressions became cries of joy, or extravagant roarings.

When people went about pursuing the wild beasts that thwarted the endeavors of husbandmen, they cried aloud: Lord thou art an host to me, io Sabio. Lord! be my guide, io Nissi, or with a different accent Dionissi. Of these warlike cries, which were repeated without being understood, they made the names of Sabasius and Dionysius Of all these names, that were most used in Italy was Baccoth. The delicate ear of the Greeks, who could not indure harsh sounds, gave the preference to the name of Dionysius. These several titles (and the series of them was long) gave birth to as many histories. Thus they called this god Dionysius, because he was son of Jehov or Jupiter, and born at Nysa an Arabian city. He was named Evius, because, as he was fighting with one of the giants, Jupiter encouraged him in the Greek language, and—But if we now are sure of truth, why should we busy ourselves in enumerating such sorry tales? We are no way concerned to hear all the nonsense, which the want of understanding these names † has caused to be built upon each of them.

Let us now pass on to the retinue of Bacchus. We shall there find a proof, that Bacchus was no more than a mask or figure, and not any man that ever existed.

When the arts were once invented, the remembrance of the roughness of the first ages, and the comparison of the hardships which mankind had at first experienced with the conveniences and inventions of latter times, rendered the rural feasts or the feasts of the representation of the ancient state of men, more brisk and lively than all the rest.

One of the most essential points of this feast was then to appear

• The supplications in Masonry are similar to the above. In the degree of royal arch, the following ejaculations are utered :-"Lord I cry unto thee: make haste unto me: give ear unto my voice. Mine eyes are unto thee O God the Lord; in thee is my trust; leave not my soul destitute. I cried unto thee, O Lord; I said, thou art my refuge, and my portion in the land of the living. Attend unto my cry; for I am brought very low deliver me from my persecutors; for they are stronger than I. Hear my prayer, O Lord;, give ear to my supplications in thy faithfulness answer me and in thy righteousness."(Webb.)-Edit.

+These fables may be seen in the hymns attributed to Orpheus and Homer; in the poems of Hesiod and Ovid; in the hymns of Callimachus; in the mythologies of Neal Le Comte, and others.

there covered with skins of goats buck's, tygers, and of other tame and wild animals. They smeared their faces with blood, to bear the marks of the danger they had run and the victory they had obtained.

Instead of a child of metal mysteriously carried about in a chest, they by degrees contracted a custom of choosing a good fat jolly boy, to play the part of the imaginary god. They in process of time gave him a chariot; and to render the whole more admirable, the pretended tygers offered to draw him, whilst the bucks, and goats were jumping and capering round him. The assistants disguised and masked in this manner had names agreeable to what they were doing. They were called Satyrs, a word which signifies men disguised † or Fauni, that is masks. These etymologies which are very plain, and strictly connected with what precedes, are still confirmed by the usage which the assistants at these rural feasts observed of consecrating to Bacchus, and of suspending on the tree under which they made their last station, the mask of bark or other matter, wherewith they had covered their face, that they might have a share in the ceremony. The feasts of Bacchus have been abolished by the preaching of the gospel; but we see the remains of them among us in our winter rejoicings. It is the same concern, and, with no great difference, the same idolatry.‡

Those who followed or attended the chariot of Bacchus, were called Bacchants, that is, mourners, because the feast began with woes and complaints, and with frequent invocations on the assistance of God."

The woman, who carried the small chest or the sacred baskets, or at least a thyrsus, which was sometimes a javelin, in memory of the first chaces; sometimes a torch of resiny wood, were called Menades Thyades, and Bassarides. They were named Menades, which signi

This is what the Latins expressed by Thyasos inducere: to form choruses of people dressed like goats and rams. thiasim hirci et arictes, Genes. 30; 35.

+fatur, hidden, disguised,- -panim or phanim, facies, prosopa, persɔnæ, oscilla, masks. Those panim or hideous masks could not fail frightening your children. For this reason it is, that fears occasioned by appearances of evil void of reality, have been called terreurs panigues, panick terrors. Such is evidently the origin of the name given to the god of Mendes, viz. Pan, in whose horns and hair the philosophers thought they had found a very noble emblem of general nature. Those who are fond of these admirable conceptions, may look out for them in the allegoric explications of Plutarch, Iamblichus, Psellus, the emperor Julian, and Plato.

I have read in an English paper, that anciently it was not unusual for a wag, on the first of January, to burst into a neighbor's house disguised in an ox's hide, including that of the head with the horns attached.-Edit.

$Thyrsus, a rod or lance twisted round with ivy, which was put into the hand of the soldiers of Bacchus, or of those who celebrated his festivals. Ovid describes them as wound about with vine branches.

The Jews do at this day carry a sort of Thyrsii or something like them, in the feasts of Tabernacles and especially in the Hosanna Rabba. They are branches of willow,myrtle and palm-tree, bound up together with citrons or oranges, which they wave or push in a religious manner towards the four quarters of the world.-(Bailey.)-Edit.

fies, the women who carry the public signs, because the feasts or the regulations, and all the sacred figures inseparable from them, were in the ancient language called Manes, that is, regulations. This the Greeks rendered Thismoi. The extravagant attitudes of these mad women, who strove to outvie each other by the lamentations and representing gestures authorized by custom, were thence called Mania. These woman again were called the Thyades, that is vagrant or wandering, when they dispersed themselves in the mountains like so many huntresses. They were called Bassarides or grape-geatherers, because these feasts were celebrated after vintage, and when new wine began to be drinkable.*

After the vagaries and the whole train, at last appeared an old man upon an ass, who advanced with a sedate countenance, offering wine to the tired youth, and inviting every body to take some rest. †

If any body should complain that this explication of the origin of the Bacchanals does not establish a relation sufficiently sensible between wine and the feasts of Bacchus, who from all antiquity, has been looked upon as the inventor and propagator of the vine, whereas we reduce it to the proclamation of a few instructions, which the people stood in need of; I shall reply, that the feasts of Bacchus and Ceres are every where styled among the Greeks and Romans, the feasts of the regulations; because they confusedly remembered, that the purport and intention of the figures of Isis and Horus was to regulate the conduct of the people. And I shall at the same time desire such, to take notice of what Horus carries over his head at the solemnity of the Pamylia, or at the beginning of the winter. Among other objects. capable of pleasing, there appear three large pitchers of wine. This was the finest part of the ceremonial: and the feasts where this liquor was drunk in plenty could not but be the most brisk and most enliv ened of all.

I have considerably abridged the preceding article. That the Bacchus honored in the processions here described was not, as the author states, a man that ever lived, is very evident; but that the figure representing him was merely a symbol of husbandry as he endeavors to show, is not so clear. The festivals were religious thanksgivings, in

After the virgins, followed a company of men carrying poles at the end of which were fastened phalloi. The heads of these men were crowned with ivy and violets, and their faces covered with other herbs. They marched singing songs upon the occasion of the festival.-Anthon's Lemp, class Dict.-Edit.

+ Ibat pando Silenus asello.

"It was the custom, at the celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries, as we are told by the Scoliast on the place, to have what was wanted in those rites, carried upon Asses. Hence the proverb, Asinus portat mysteria."-Warb, Div. Leg.-Edit.

which grateful acknowledgments were rendered for the favors received from the hand of divine providence, and the image intended to represent the god who was supposed to bestow these blessings, was ceremoniously carried in procession. The Bacchanals were similar to the feasts noticed in the memorials of past events, with trifling variations arising from a difference of taste, and misconceptions in the conveyance of customs from one country to another.

The Roman Catholic processions of the Host are of the same nature as the above, and no doubt the custom, like most of the practices of the church of Rome, has been derived from the ancient pagan ceremonies. The catholic processions, it seems, are conducted with more mystic, solemn pomp than those of the ancients, but the ruffian assaults of the guards or assistants in this affair, of persons walking in the streets, who are not even within the pale of their order, for neglecting to fall upon their knees, on the passage of the host, is more outrageous than the extravagancies of their prototype.

The masonic processions are identically the same thing as the Bacchanals, but got up with more taste and refinement, owing to the influence of civilization. In these are carried, besides other articles, which will hereafter be enumerated, a box or chest, called the lodge, about which much secrecy is pretended, and which is kept covered from the eyes of the profane or uninitiated. The utmost decorum is observed, and no person is annoyed for not paying homage to the sacred contents of of the mysterious chest.

The author himself in the next article to the foregoing, has told us who Bacchus really was, and which fully explains the understanding that should be applied to these Bacchanalian processions; as follows:-

The scepter and empire of heaven and earth fell to the share of Osiris. The chariot, the whip, and the reins were assigned to Apollo; whence it is that we so commonly find in one god the characters of another. The Horus Apollo, who was only related to the rural year or the order of works, was the more easily mistaken for the sun which rules nature, that they put the whip and the attributes of the sun into the hands of the Horus, in order to shorten and abbreviate the marks of the solar year, and of the works suitable to each season. Thus Horns became the same with the Moloch of the Ammonites, the Adonis of Byblos, the Bel of the other Phenician cities, and the radiant Belenus honoured in Gaul. This driver of the chariot, which gives light to the world, is the son of Jupiter; but the son of Jehov the son par excellence, liber, is no other than Horus, Bacchus or Dionysius. Osiris, Horus, Apollo, Bacchus, and the sun, are then confounded. This the author of the Saturnals has sufficiently demonstrated. Virgil himself makes no distinction between Bacchus and Appollo or the sun, when he gives Bacchus and Ceres or Isis the government of the year and the light.