So that the appearance of the name Thomas, is rather favourable to authenticity than the contrary; at all events the case would have been much worse, if the person mentioned had been John.

But a more alarming thing still, is that the interpreter in his ignorance falls foul of what may be called the synonymes, and writes levis for light, where there is manifestly intended the light of the sun. And what is worse, he is found writing diu and dum in distinct places in his key, while the use made of them in the text manifestly implies that diu dum is intended to stand for a long while. This last blunder is certainly a strong trial of

conquête, qu'à une époque très-reculée le christianisme avoit été prêché dans le nouveau continent. Des savans Mexicains (*) crurent reconnoître l'apôtre Saint Thomas dans ce personnage mystérieux, grand-prêtre de Tula, que les Cholulains connoissoient sous le nom de Quetzalcoatl. Il n'est pas douteux que le Nestorianisme, mêlé aux dogmes des Bouddhistes et des Chamans, (†) ne se soit répandu, par la Tartarie des Mantchoux, dans le nord-est de l'Asie; on pourroit donc supposer, avec quelque apparence de raison, que des idées chrétiennes ont été communiquées, par la même voie, aux peuples Mexicains, surtout aux habitans de cette région boréale de laquelle sortirent les Toltèques, et que nous devons considérer comme l'officina virorum du nouveau monde.'-Voyage de Humboldt et Bonpland, I ère partie. Relation Historique, p. 84.

The cosmogony of the Mexicans,-their traditions on the subject of the mother of mankind, falling from her first estate of happiness and innocence, the notion of a great inundation, in which a solitary family escaped upon a raft, the account of a building like a pyramid, raised by the pride of mankind and destroyed by the anger of the gods,-the ceremonies of ablution practised at the birth of children, their idols made of maize flour kneaded into paste, and distributed in portions to the people collected in the inclosure of the temples, their confessions of sin made by penitents,— their religious associations like our convents of men and of women,-the belief universally extended, that white men with long beards, and of great sanctity of manners, had changed the religious and political system of their countrymen, all these circumstances together, had led the ecclesiastics who accompanied the army of the Spaniards at the time of the conquest, to believe that at some very remote period Christianity had been preached in the newly found continent. Some learned Mexicans (*) thought they discovered the apostle St. Thomas, in the mysterious personage, highpriest of Tula, whom the Cholulans knew under the name of Quetzalcoatl. There is no doubt that the doctrines of the Nestorians, mixed with the opinions of the Buddhists and the Chamans, (†) found their way through Mantchou Tartary into the north-east of Asia. It is possible, therefore, to suppose with some appearance of reason, that ideas connected with Christianity may have been communicated by the same road to the Mexican races, and particularly to the inhabitants of that northern region from which the Tolteques migrated, and which may be considered as the great manufactory of men (officina virorum) in the new world.'-Voyage of Humboldt and Bonpland. Part I. Historical Account, p. 84.

(*) Siguenza, Opera ined. Eguiara, Bibl. Mexicanu, p. 78.

(†) Langlès, Rituel des Tartares-Mantchoux, p. 9 et 14. Georgi, Alphab. tibetanum, p. 298.

endurance; for it is not only English in word, but in thought and in deed. On the preceding instance of mistake, the answer is at hand, that the same ignorance which led an Englishman to translate the light of the sun by levis, would make him set down levis in his key, and the authenticity of the text is not affected by it. But the other is incomparably more perilous; and there seems to be nothing for it but the remote possibility, that a man receiving from an Indian interpreter the idea of a long interval of time' expressed by two terms or knots, may have set them down separately in his dog-Latin, in such a manner as on their junction to present the apparition of this portentous diu dum.

The positive contents of the knots as presented by the key, are in the main very analogous to the account given in the preceding extract from Humboldt and Bonpland. There are battles between the Sun and Moon, ending in a deluge; various white men appearing at different times upon the east shore of America, and thence very naturally concluded to have come from the sun; a great traveller called Thomas, coming from the cold regions, apparently in a sledge-diligence by way of Behring's Straits. These "besides a great many other interesting objects and remarkable events, &c. &c." are the contents of the book; which, as it may be had for almost the lowest imaginable price from the author at 17, Crown Court, Pall Mall, it would be injustice to forestall.

On the general authenticity of the knots, it is not intended to give any decided opinion. There are great difficulties in believing, and great difficulties in rejecting. As the liberal Mohammed says on a different subject, "Let there be no forcing in religion;"-all people are quite welcome to chuse their own opinion. It is however but fair to say, that the knots, as compared with the key, do really and truly represent the matter attributed to them. If they are a forgery, they are almost as great a curiosity in that view, as the productions of Chatterton and Psalmanazar. If they are authentic, it would have been lamentable to consign them to oblivion for the sake of a few difficulties. The box may perhaps be concluded without hesitation, to be a specimen of Peruvian sculpture; at a period most probably subsequent to the arrival of the Spaniards, and with some slight reservation touching the possibility of the Temple of the Sun, if it is one, being the addition of a later hand. The touchstone of the authenticity of the remainder, will be the discovery of similar productions in other places and, as it is improbable that this specimen, if genuine, should long continue to be unique, there may have been some utility in endeavouring to fix and extend the knowledge of its existence.

ART. XVI.-Edinburgh Review, No. XCVII: Article on Mill's Essays on Government, &c.

A GOOD enemy is sometimes worth a host of friends. In such a position the Edinburgh Review is placed, by the assault of arms made nominally against the author of the Essays, but announced at the top of the alternate pages as directed against what are there denominated Utilitarian logic and politics. If the author in question has been attacked where he was right and let alone where he was wrong, and an opening made for advancing the opinions intended to be opposed, it may be said in courtly language (which means the language of law courts), that the learned brother has taken little by his motion.

The pith of the charge against the author of the Essays is, that he has written an elaborate treatise on government,' and deduced the whole science from the assumption of certain propensities of human nature.' Now in the name of Sir Richard Birnie and all saints, from what else should it be deduced? What did ever any body imagine to be the end, object, and design of government as it ought to be, but the same operation on an extended scale, which that meritorious chief magistrate conducts on a limited one at Bow-street; to wit, the preventing one man from injuring another? Imagine then, that the whiggery of Bow-street were to rise up against the proposition that their science was to be deduced from certain propensities of human nature,' and thereon were to ratiocinate as follows.

'How then are we to arrive at just conclusions on a subject so important to the happiness of mankind? Surely by that method, which, in every experimental science to which it has been applied, has signally increased the power and knowledge of our species,-by that method for which our new philosophers would substitute quibbles scarcely worthy of the barbarous respondents and opponents of the middle ages,-by the method of Induction ;-by observing the present state of the world,by assiduously studying the history of past ages,-by sifting the evidence of facts, by carefully combining and contrasting those which are authentic, by generalizing with judgment and diffidence, by perpetually bringing the theory which we have constructed to the test of new facts,-by correcting, or altogether abandoning it, according as those new facts prove it to be partially or fundamentally unsound. Proceeding thus, patiently,-diligently,-candidly, we may hope to form a system as far inferior in pretension to that which we have been examining, and as far superior to it in real utility, as the prescriptions of a great physician, varying with every stage of every malady, and with the constitution of every patient, to the pill of the advertising quack, which is to cure all human beings, in all climates, of all diseases.'

Fancy now, only fancy,-the delivery of these wise words at Bow-street; and think how speedily the practical catch-poles would reply, that all this might be very fine, but as far as they had studied history, the naked story was after all, that numbers of men had a propensity to thieving, and their business was to catch them; that they too had been sifters of facts; and, to say the truth, their simple opinion was, that their brethren of the red waistcoat (though they should be sorry to think ill of any man), had some how contracted a leaning to the other side, and were more bent on puzzling the case for the benefit of the defendants, than on doing the duty of good officers and true. Such would beyond all doubt be the sentence passed on such trimmers in the microcosm of Bow-street. It might not absolutely follow that they were in a plot to rob the goldsmiths shops, or to set fire to the House of Commons; but it would be quite clear that they had got a feeling,—that they were in process of siding with the thieves,-and that it was not to them that any man must look, who was anxious that pantries should be safe.

If indeed it could be proved, that Bow-street at large had been mistaken in its men ;-that the flash gentlemen to whom it had been in the habit of much directing its surveillance, were in reality meritorious persons filled with zeal for the public good, and in short the best and only representatives and guardians of the public interests ;-then indeed, the opinion of the ancient and venerable thief-takers would fall down before the new discovery. And this it is, the Whigs essay to prove.

And first, that it is not true that all despots govern ill;'whereon the world is in a mistake, and the Whigs have the true light. And for proof, principally,-that the king of Denmark is not Caligula. To which the answer is, that the king of Denmark is not a despot. He was put in his present situation, by the people turning the scale in his favour in a balanced contest between himself and the nobility. And it is quite clear that the same power would turn the scale the other way, the moment a king of Denmark should take into his head to be Caligula. It is of little consequence by what congeries of letters the majesty of Denmark is typified in the royal press of Copenhagen, while the real fact is that the sword of the people is suspended over his head in case of ill behaviour, as effectually as in other countries where more noise is made upon the subject. Every body believes the sovereign of Denmark to be a good and virtuous gentleman; but there is no more superhuman merit in his being so, than in the case of a rural squire who does not shoot his land-steward, or quarter his wife with his yeomanry sabre.

ÈS Tæ fat der are partial exceptions to the rule, that all MEN 15 NIWA as bad as they dare. There may have been SILI Zings is amatu neg-drivers and sentimental masters of mess-rays; and here and there among the odd freaks of DUMAI DEZUTE, there met het beer specimens of men who were “My Tyrants, Thongi brat ur 1: Tax. But it would be as WISE 27 PAZARMEnt waves fe nurses in the Foundling, on the crečt of Komics and Remus IS 2 SIDSCLC the exception fie the general fare, and acrise mankind zo zake to trusting to ALTEN DOWER au de creta of these specimens.

Secondly, that a government na under the control of the commony ie there is DP TDESTUE 1901 BTT (cher) • may soon de scribed Tale wen Bow-szert, whisper it not in Hanna-garden-that there is a pian ir preventing i ustice by “amax' Wan win pells If They Dement, would Minos, £acus, and Khadimirths be used room their benches, if the "bight wings á siêu mà of time should bear this theory into their gen damens. Why do not the owners of pocket-banck erritES TY T ́SELEY Wer does not the cheated pubican beg leave or check the gulosity of his defrauder with a repetirar bass, and the pummeled pie neutralize the malice of his aversŁY ŻY MEDISting to have the rest of the beating in presence of the court, - In the such conduct would run courer to all the oraclusions of experience, and be the procreation of the mischief an affected to destroy. Woeful is the man, whose wealth depends on his hiring more than somebody else can be persuaded to take from him; and woeful also is the people that is in such a case.

Thirdly, that though there may be some tastes and propensities that have no point of sarantior, there exists a sufficient check in the desire of the good opinion of others." The misfortune of this argument is, that no man cares for the good opinion of those he has been accustomed to wrong. If oysters have opinions, it is probable they think very ill of those who eat them in August; but small is the effect upon the autumnal glutton that engulphs their gentle substances within his own. The planter and the slave-driver care just as much about negro opinion, as the epicure about the sentiments of oysters. M. Ude throwing live eels into the fire as a kindly method of divesting them of the unsavoury oil that lodges beneath their skins, is not more convinced of the immense aggregate of good which arises to the lordlier parts of the creation, than is the gentle peer who strips his fellow man of country and of family for a wild-fowl slain. The goodly land-owner, who lives by morsels squeezed indiscriminately from the waxy hands of the