the fact, as at first it was a sure token to the inmates of the ark that they should soon tread on the renovated earth. How, but as coming from the only surviving family of man, could the tradition have been preserved simple and uncorrupted, in the midst of the remotest regions so long undiscovered. One half of the world was unknown unto the other, but the twig that a bird did bear was remembered by both; nor was the leaf forgotten. It survived like the ark in a deluged world; and it alone may show that faith may bud again where afore it was blasted. While the prophetic fate of the sons of Noah is visible to this hour, the very names of several of the earliest nations-such as the Canaanites, Assyrians, Elymœites, Lydians, Medes, and Hebrews*-corroborate to the letter the historical facts recorded by Moses, that Canaan, Ashur, Elam, Lud, Madai, and Eber were justly numbered among the descendants of Noah, by whom the nations were divided in the earth after the flood. "The period of seven days, by far the most permanent division of time, and the most ancient monument of astronomical knowledge, was used by the Brahmins in India with the same denominations employed by us, and was alike found in the calendars of the Jews, Egyptians, Arabs, and Assyrians. It has survived the fall of empires, and has existed among all successive generations, a proof of their common origin." While the destruction of Sodom, synchronical with the call of Abraham, did not pass unnoticed by ancient writers, the Dead Sea, a bituminous lake, unlike to any other, is a striking corroboration of the recorded judgment on the cities of the plain, which its waters have since filled and the recent and remarkable discovery, that the Jordan, before its course was stayed, passed through the plain and flowed into the Red Sea, is strikingly illustrative of the scriptural narrative, as Colonel Leake, the learned editor of Burckhardt's work, has observed; and that fact has since been amply elucidated by the scientific Leon Laborde, and the evidence is set before us by a chart of the channel, or of the valley through which the Jordan flowed, and which still retains its name, El Ghor, where the Jordan once flowed as where it still flows on.

And while the alleged want of a contemporary history is thus newly supplied, a still more recent discovery presents a contemporary picture, coeval with the birth of Moses, and copied by Rosselini and Wilkinson, which may be said to be a commentary on the first chapter of Exodus, and to set the Israelites before our eyes actually engaged in the hard bondage in mortar and brick as Moses described them. The Egyptian taskmaster is set over them with a rod in his hand;

* Bochart, &c.

+ Mrs. Somerville on the Physical Sciences, p. 104.