ed by the monks of the neighbouring abbey, called Strata Florida Abbey, about the year 1087, but this is not correct, as the abbey itself was not founded till 1164. The country people, in superstitious days, deeming it a work of supernatural ability, gave it the strange name by which it is now generally known. Giraldus mentions having passed over it in 1188, when travelling through Wales with Baldwin, Archbishop of Canterbury, to preach in favour of the Crusades. The upper arch was built over the other at the expense of the county, in 1753, and the iron balustrades were added by Mr. Johnes in 1814. The lower arch may be distinctly viewed by looking over the upper bridge; but the whole scene is so enveloped in wood, that the depth is not perceived; and many an incurious traveller has passed the Devil's Bridge without distinguishing its circumstances from an ordinary road. The cleft over which these two bridges extend has evidently been enlarged, and was perhaps originally produced by the incessant attack of the impetuous river Mynach on the solid wall of rock.

In order to view the scenery of this romantic spot, the visiter should first cross the bridge, and then descend by the right of it to the bottom of the aperture, through which the Mynach drives its furious passage, having descended from the mountains about five miles to the north-east. The effect of the double arch is picturesque; and the narrowness of the cleft, darkened by its artificial roof, increases the solemn gloom of the abyss.

On regaining the road, the second descent must be made by passing through a small wood, at the distance of a few yards from the bridge, to view the four successive falls from the point of a rock in front. Each of these is received into a deep pool at the bottom, but so diminished to the eye, at the present point of view, as almost to resemble one continued cascade. The first fall takes place at a short distance from the bridge, where the river is confined to narrow limits by the rocks. It is carried about six feet over the ridge, and projected into a basin at the depth of eighteen feet. Its next leap is sixty feet, and the third is diminished to twenty, when it encounters rocks of prodigious size, through which it struggles to the edge of the largest cataract, and pours in one unbroken torrent down a precipice of 110 feet.

The height of the various falls is as follows:-first fall, 18 feet; second fall, 60; third fall, 20; and fourth fall, or grand cataract, 110; from the bridge to the water, 114; making altogether, 322 feet.

As, however, no allowance is here made for the inclined direction of the river in many parts (and there are numerous interruptions to its passage,) the total height from the bridge to the level of the stream, at its junction with the Rheidol, may be computed at nearly 00 feet. The rocks on each side of the fall rise perpendicularly to the height of 800 feet, and are finely clothed with innumerable trees, vegetating between the crevices, and forming one vast forest.

awful sound of many waters-in the thunder of numerous cataracts; whilst in front of the spectator the Rheidol is seen rushing down a chasm in the mountains with tremendous fury.

The woods in the vicinity of the Devil's Bridge abound with nests of the Formica Herculanea, th largest species of ants that are natives of Britain; these nests are composed of small ends of twigs, forming a heap a yard or two across, and from one to two feet high. The insects themselves exceed in size three of the ordinary black kind, and are possessed of uncommon strength.

In the superstitious times before alluded to, it was common for great works of art, or peculiar formations of nature, to be called by the name of the Devil. Thus the famous bridge over the Reuss, in Switzerland, is also called the Devil's Bridge; and in our own country we have the Devil's Punch-Bowl, in Hampshire, and the Devil's Dyke near Brighton. In Germany is the Devil's Wall, erected by the Romans, the building of which commenced in the time of the Emperor Adrian, and occupied nearly two centuries. It extends for 368 miles over mountains, through valleys, and over rivers; in some places it now forms elevated roads and paths through woods; buildings are erected upon it, and tall oaks flourish upon its remains.-Saturday Magazine.

The view from the windows of the Hafod Arms, near the Devil's Bridge, is perfectly enchanting. Im mediately below, and only separated from the house by the road, is a profound chasm, stretching east and west about a mile, the almost perpendicular sides of which are covered with trees of different kinds. At the bottom of this abyss runs the river Mynach, its roaring tide hidden from the eye by the deep shade of surrounding woods, but bursting upon the ear in the

the daughter of Saturn and Ops: her singular beauty made the gods themselves her lovers and admirers. Her very brothers, Jupiter and Neptune, fell in love with her. She had Proserpine by Jupiter. By Neptune it is uncertain whether she was the mother of a daughter, or a horse called Arion. Upon the mountain in Arcadia, an altar was dedicated to her; her image had the body of a woman, but the head of a horse; it remained perfect and entire in the midst of fire. The Arcadians thought it a wicked thing to call her daughter

leus,

by any other name than "the lady," or "the great goddess," which were the usual names of her mother Ceres.

she could not obtain the least rest or sleep, Jupiter gave her poppy to eat: for this plant is endued with a power to cause sleep and forgetfulness. Her grief was a little allayed by sleep, but she forgot not her loss, and after many voyages and journeys, she at last heard where Proserpine was; as we shall hear in its proper place. "The Egyptians worshipped a goddess called by them Isis; who, like the Ceres of the Greeks, conferred the gifts of corn, bread, and separated property. The mythologists say, that Isis and Ceres are the same goddess, worshipped under those different names, in different countries in the pagan world.

"She holds a lighted torch, because when Proserpine was stolen away by Pluto, her mother Ceres was greatly afflicted at the loss of her daughter, and, being very desirous to find her again, she kindled her torches with the flames of mount Etna, and with them sought her daughter through the whole world.

"After having overrun the whole globe in vain, the disconsolate mother arrived at Eleusis, a village in Attica, where she sat herself mournfully down upon a stone in the street. Here she was seen by Celeus, an inhabitant of the place, and hospitably invited by him to enter his dwelling, though it was a habitation of wo, because a beloved son of his was breathing his last. The goddess, feeling the loss of a beloved child in its whole extent, was moved at beholding the grief of a depressed father, and the tears of a lamenting mother, and resolved on restoring the son of Celeus to life. She made him healthful, and, with the intention of bestowing the gift of immortality upon the flourishing boy, she wrapped him in flames every night, to purify him from every mortal particle contained in his body. But the benevolent intention of the divine benefactress was rendered vain, by the untimely curiosity of the boy's mother. Desirous to know what the stranger was performing every night, she watched her, and, upon beholding her child in flames, broke forth into loud screams. Thus the work of the goddess was disturbed for ever. Nevertheless, Ceres found means of showing her gratitude and benevolence to the hospitable Celeus in another way. She bestowed on his elder son, Triptolemus, a chariot drawn by two flying dragons, and presented him with the inestimable wheat, that he might spread it all over the earth, and that thus every where a blessing might follow his footsteps. Triptolemus, after having traversed the earth, and taught mankind husbandry, is said to have succeeded his father in the sovereignty of Eleusis, and to have become the high-priest of Ceres.

Although Ceres is one of the most placid and meek among the divine beings, yet she made Erisichthon, who had violated one of her devoted groves, sensible of her dreadful power. He was warned by the goddess herself, when going to cut down a sacred poplar; but, carrying on the cruel stroke, without paying any regard to the warning voice, he atoned for his crime by feeling a continual hunger, which he was never able to satisfy. At another time, when on her journey in search of her daughter, tired and languishing, she entered a cottage to slake her burning thirst, and was scoffed at by a rude boy, named Stellio, because of her eagerness in drinking; not bearing the ignominy, she bespattered the offender with water, by which he was immediately transformed into a spotted lizard, bearing witness, in this shape, to the formidable power of the goddess.

"She carries poppy, because, when through grief

"Persons of both sexes were admitted by the high priest, called the Hierophant, to the mysteries of Eleusis. It was pretended that those who enjoyed this privilege, were under the immediate protection of the god. dess, not only in this life, but after death. Those who broke the vow to conceal what they were instructed in, in these mysteries, were accounted execrable.

"The Eleusinian mysteries were of two sorts, the greater and the less; one qualification requisite to both, was to be able to keep a great secret. Though Triptolemus had appointed that no stranger should be initiated into the great mysteries, yet Hercules, to whom they durst refuse nothing, demanded to be admitted to them; and upon his account other ceremonies were instituted, which they called the less mysteries, and these were celebrated afterwards at Agra and Athens. Those who were ambitious to be admitted to them repaired to this place in the month of November, sacrificed to Jupiter, and kept the skins of the victims to lay upon their feet, when they were purified upon the banks of the river Ílissus. We know not exactly what sort of ceremonies were made use of in those purifications. These less mysteries served as a preparation for the greater ones, which were celebrated at Eleusis; and by their means persons were initiated into the secret ceremonies of Ceres. After having passed through a good many trials, the person was Mystes, that is, qualified for being very soon initiated into the greater mysteries, and to become Epoptes, or the witness of the most secret mysteries, which were not procured till after five years probation; during which, he might enter into the vestibule of the temple, but not into the sanctuary.

"When one was initiated, he was introduced by night into the temple, after having his hands washed at the entry, and a crown of myrtle put upon him. Then was opened a little box wherein were the laws of Ceres, and the ceremonies of her mysteries; and after having given him these to read, he was made to transcribe them. A slight repast, in memory of that which the goddess had got from Baubo, succeeded this ceremony; after which, the Mystes entered into the sanctuary, over which the priest drew the veil, and then all was in darkness in the twinkling of an eye. A bright light succeeded, and exhibited to view the statue of Ceres magnificently adorned; and while they were attentive in considering it, the light again disappeared, and all was once more wrapped in profound darkness. The peals of thunder that were heard, the lightnings that flashed from all hands, the thunder that broke in the midst of the sanctuary, and a thousand monstrous figures that appeared on all sides, filled the initiated with horror and consternation; but the next moment a calm succeeded, and there appeared in broad day-light a charming meadow, where all came to dance and make merry together.

"After having spoken of the initiated, we must, before we close, say something of the ministers who officiated in the festivals. The first was a Hierophantes or a Mystagogos, that is, a man who shews the sacred

VOL. I.

LITERATURE.

[From Good's Book of Nature.]

ON LEGIBLE LANGUAGE, Imitative and SYMBOLICAL.

[Concluded.]

It should be observed, however, as a farther proof of the tendency of picture-characters to advance towards literal, that even in China itself, the Mantcheu, or Tartars, have an alphabet, or system of verbal writing, and and that the Mantcheu practice has long been acquiring a growing reputation. It should be observed, also, that the Chinese characters themselves have of late been resorted to at Canton, and by Chinese natives, as merely expressive of sounds, and been employed in the formation of an English vocabulary; in consequence, as Sir George Staunton remarks, of the great concourse of persons residing at this station who use the English language. In like manner, the Japanese, fond as they are of copying from the Chinese, have long since departed from their system of marks for things, and addicted themselves to alphabetic characters; sometimes writing them horizontally, and sometimes perpendicularly; both which methods are found in Chinese records, though the perpendicular is by far the most

common.

Attempts have been made to prove that the picturewriting of the Egyptians, the Chinese, and the Mexicans has proceeded from one common source; yet nothing can be more fanciful, and, apparently, nothing more unfounded; for each possesses a distinct style, derived from an attachment to distinct classes of images, for the most part of a local nature; as the sea-horse, the crocodile, the ibis, the ichneumon, the lotus, and papyrus, birds and other animals with human heads, and men with the heads of birds and dogs, in the Egyptian system; the rabbit, cane, reed, flint, house, flag, and circle, in the Mexican; and cross, parallel, crooked, and angular lines, as the abbreviated symbols of pictures, in the Chinese; derived, for the most part, as Dr. Morrison ingeniously conjectures, from the impressions of the feet of birds on the sand, and the lines on the bodies of shell-fishes. Each has had a distinct origin, according as mankind in these different parts of the world, and under different circumstances, have found a necessity for recording facts and ideas in remote periods of antiquity; and each, as I have already observed, has an obvious tendency to run into arbitrary and, ultimately, into alphabetical characters, though of different forms and descriptions.

Of all these, the system whose origin we are, perhaps, best capable of tracing historically, is the Phoenician; and here the voice of history completely coincides with the theory now advanced. The oldest Phoenician historian whose writings have reached us in a few fragments and quotations, is Sanchoniatho, who was contemporary with Solomon, and drew up a history of Phoenicia from existing monuments, and archives preserved in the college of the Phoenician priests. This history was dedicated to Abibalus, the Phoenician monarch, father of Hiram, king Solomon's ally; and was allowed by the king and the official censors appointed to examine it to be a work of great truth and accuracy. In this history Sanchoniatho places mankind, on their first creation, in Phoenicia; and gives us a genealogy

No. 43.

of the Patriarchs, from Adam, or Protogonus, as he calls him, to Taaut, Athoth, or Hermes, the successor of Menes, the first king of Egypt. In a passage of this very curious history, preserved by Eusebius, the author distinctly states, that picture-writing was invented by Ouranus, king of Phoenicia, who appears to have been contemporary with Miser or Misraim, the son of Ham; and that Taaut, the son of Misor, improved upon and abbreviated the picture-writing of Ouranus, either during the reign of Ouranus or of his son Cronus or Saturn; and that Cronus having given Taaut the throne of Egypt upon the death of Menes, the Egyp tian monarch, the latter carried with him this improved picture or symbolical writing into that country. And in another passage he asserts that Taaut afterward carried forward this improvement to the invention of alphabetic characters. Misor," says he, "was the son of Hamyn; the son of Misor was Taaut, who invented the first letters for writing. The Egyptians call him Thoth; the Alexandrians, Thoyth; and the Greeks, Hermes, or Mercury." He tells us, in a third place, that having thus invented letters, Taaut ordered the Cabiri and Dioscuri, the priests and sages of the country, to employ them in drawing up a history of Phoenicia.

This is a very curious and important relic of profane history and it is interesting to observe its coincidence with the Mosaic narrative. It makes no mention, indeed, of the deluge, and it introduces two more generations in the line of Cain, from Protogonus, or firstformed, as the term literally implies, (the Adam of Moses,) to Agroverus, or Noah. It places, however, the first race of mankind in Phoenicia, which, in the latitude in which this term was generally understood, included, as I shall have occasion to show presently, the banks of the Euphrates, on which Moses fixes the garden of Eden: it allows nearly the same period of time between the creation and the era of Misor, or Misraim, and nearly the same number of generations as Moses does; and gives, as closely as may be, the same names to the son and grandson of Noah,-Ham and Misraim being merely transmuted into Ham-yn and Misor. There is coincidence enough in the two accounts to reflect authenticity upon each other; and had there been more, an advantage would eagerly have been taken of the Phoenician narrative, by sceptical polemics, and Moses would have been boldly accused of having stolen his history from this quarter.

This account of Sanchoniatho, moreover, is not only supported generally by the sacred records, but is distinctly corroborated in regard to the point immediately before us, that of the invention of letters, by the suffrages of Porphyry, Eusebius, Pliny, Quintus Curtius, Lucan, and, indeed, all the Latin writers. And although the Greeks entertained a somewhat different opinion, and ascribed the invention of letters to a younger Taaut, or Hermes, than the son of Misraim, and who flourished about four centuries afterward, and was born in Egypt, as the first Taaut was born in Phoenicia, nothing is more evident than that the Greeks were less acquainted with the history of both Egypt and Phoenicia than the Romans, in consequence of the greater range of the Roman power; and that they confounded two personages of the same name, who possessed the same crown, and attributed to the one what ought to have been attributed to the other. The oldest

Egyptian historian is Manetho, who probably drew up his dynasties about two centuries and a half before the Christian era; these only touch upon the subject indirectly, but, so far as they go, they rather support than oppose the testimony of Sanchoniatho.

There is some degree of doubt whether Greece ved its letters from Egypt or from Phoenicia: the best authorities, however, incline to the latter opinion, and suppose them to have been introduced by the Phonician Pelasgi, upon their settlement in Peloponnesus. The oldest Greek letters are nearly Pelasgic in form; and, according to the usual fashion in the East, are written from right to left. This last, however, is by no means a decisive argument; for upon the earliest use of letters in most countries, there seems to have been no settled rule: and hence, in, perhaps, all of them, we meet with letters running from right to left, and from left to right; in many very ancient specimens of Greek, running alternately, the one line in one direction, and the ensuing in the other, like the course taken by a plough, whence it was denominated, from this machine, the ploughing style; and in both Persia and Egypt, running perpendicularly, like the common style of the Chinese, instead of horizontally, whether to the right or the left.

That the Romans derived their alphabet from the Greeks is unquestionable: and hence, admitting the authority of Sanchoniatho, confirmed as it is by a variety of collateral evidences, the first invention of writing seems to rest with the Phoenicians, and we are able to trace it to within one hundred and sixty years of the flood.*

I am purposely, however, using the term Phoenician in a very extensive sense; in that sense in which it appears to have been used by Herodotus, and the generality of ancient writers, in consequence of Phoenicia being the earliest and most extensive commercial nation; as embracing not merely the maritime coast of Palestine, of which Tyre and Sidon were the chief cities, but the whole country of the Canaanites and the Hebrews, under whatever name it may have passed at different periods, and from different circumstances; as Syria, Assyria, Syrophœnicia, Sidonia, Aram; and, of course, as touching upon, or rather crossing, Mesopotamia, Babylonia, and Chaldea. And I hence obtain an answer to those, on the one hand, who contend that alphabetic characters had their origin in Syria; and to those, on the other, who assert the same in respect to Chaldea, persuading themselves, upon a tradition current among the Jews and Arabians, that Abraham introduced them into Egypt on his migrating from Ur of the Chaldees, at the command of the Almighty, seven generations after the period we have just been contemplating. The fact is, that all these countries spoke the same language, or at the utmost, dialects of the same language, that in no instance differed farther from each other than the Scotch differs from the English; and all used the same alphabet, or alphabets that possessed as little variation: and hence there can be no doubt that, in whatever part of this quarter of the globe the system of alphabetic characters originated, they were readily and rapidly introduced into every other part. Abraham might hence have learned them in Chaldea, or in Canaan, and communicated them wherever he sojourned; as Ishmael probably communicated them shortly afterwards to Arabia, upon his exile from his father's house.

The proper Phoenician alphabet seems to have consisted of not more than thirteen letters at first; it afterward had three added to it, making sixteen in the whole, and in this number it seems to have been earliest employed by many of the adjoining countries, and is distinguished by the name of the Samaritan, or ancient Hebrew, the terms and characters being nearly the same as the Phoenician. The Chaldeans introduced some kind of change into the form of the letters, made them more elegant, and added six other letters, since the

Over a very extensive portion of this last continent, however, we meet with an alphabet that has no common origin or conformity of principle with any hitherto described. This is the Nagari, or Deva-nagari, as it is called by way of pre-eminence. It consists of not less than fifty letters, of which sixteen are vowels and thirty-four consonants, all arranged in the order of the alphabet, with a systematic precision that is to be found nowhere else. The vowels take the lead, beginning with those most easily uttered, and terminating with those which approach the consonant sound. The consonants then follow in five regular series of gutturals, compounds, palatines, dentals, and labials: the whole closing with letters expressive of sounds that do not exactly enter into any of the preceeding series, and which may be regarded as forming a general appendix. This alphabet is asserted by many learned Bramins to be of a higher antiquity than any other; and there can be no doubt that it has a just claim to a very remote date. But its very perfection is a sufficient confutation of its having been invented first of all: something far more rude and incondite must have preceded and paved the way for it; and in the complex characters of which it consists, we seem to have the relics of that emblematic or picture-language which I have thus endeavoured to prove has laid a foundation for alphabetie writing in every part of the world. With a few trifling variations, this correct and elegant alphabet extends from the Persian Gulf to China; but it has no pretensions to rival the antiquity of the Phoenician, It is unborrowed, but of later origin.

Such is a brief history of the noblest art that has ever been invented by the unassisted efforts of human understanding; an art that gives stability to thought, forms a cabinet for our ideas, and presents, in imperishable colours, a speaking portraiture, of the soul. Without this, hard indeed would be the separation of friends; and the traveller would become an exile from his native home,-vainly languishing for the consolatory information that his wife, his children, his kinsmen, his country, were in a state of health and prosperity, and himself still embalmed in their affections. Without this, what to us would be the wisdom of past ages, or the history of former states? The chain of nature would be broken through all its links, and every generation become an insolated and individual world, equally cut off, as by an irremeable abyss, from its ancestors and from posterity. While the language of the lips is fleeting as the breath itself, and confined to a single spot, as well as to a single moment, the language of the pen enjoys, in many instances, an adamantine existence, and will only perish amid the ruins of the globe. Before its mighty touch, time and space become annihilated; it joins epoch to epoch, and pole to pole; it gives unity to the works of creation and Providence, and enables us to trace from the beginning of things to the end. It is the great sun of the moral world, that warms, and stimulates, and vivifies, and irradiates, and developes, and matures the best virtues of the heart, and the best faculties of the intellect. But for this, every thing would be doubt, and darkness, and death-shade; all knowledge would be traditionary, and all experience local; civilized life would relapse into barbarism, and man would have to run through his little and comparatively insignificant round of existence, the perpetual sport of ignorance and error, uninstructed by science, unregulated by laws, and unconsoled by Revelation. Have I not, then, justly characterized it as the noblest art that has ever been invented by the unassisted efforts of human understanding?