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which man in his madness had destroyed; and who, when the treasures of the Roman empire were made disposable at her will, (by the prodigality of the enamoured Antony) replied to his offers : - "the treasures I want are two hundred thousand volumes from Pergamus, for my library of Alexandria."

Cleopatra encouraged science, loved the arts, cultivated letters, and was irresistibly eloquent in seven different languages, all of which she spoke with the purity of her mother tongue; and, although Lacan, the most pompous poet of the declining literature of Rome, reviles the conqueress of the Cæsars, and reproaches her for the undue influence of charms which placed his imperial patrons at her feet, still the "feralis Erinnys," "the fury of Rome," was the protectress of Egypt, which continued to hold on high its lotuscrowned crest, so long as Cleopatra lived. Her kingdom sunk not to the degradation of a Roman province, until the voluntary and heroic death of its champion queen disappointed the ostentatious hopes of Augustus, and deprived the land of the wisest, of the most patriotic

desart," is particularly beautiful. - "Osman Effendi," (says Mr. St. John), "who translated for me these scraps of poetry, compared the above song to an old Scotch ballad that he heard when he was in England:- My heart is in the Highlands."

of her sovereigns, and the last of her great intellectual

illustrations.

Throughout the whole fragmentary history of the earliest peopled regions of the earth, this one great dogma is mystically attested, and made darkly visible, that at some period of the doubtful past the spiritual nature of woman struggled against the physical superiority of man! (an unequal contest, and always most unequal, where brute force was most powerful, and ignorance most dense); - that her penalties were grievous, and that her claims, or her disobedience, were fatal to her happiness, and ruinous to her liberty!

Such is the moral of the profane story of Oriental antiquity. But there is a history antecedent to all other written records of human actions extant, an authentic transcript of the human mind in the earliest stages of society, which authoritatively establishes the accredited dogma of the East, by a most important illustration. This record, in giving the history of a single family, (a history in its influence upon the opinions and interests of the species, the most marked and miraculous ever known), redeems the fault of the first created woman so awfully punished, by assigning to her sex that great spiritual mission, which made woman a sublime agent in the redemption of mankind. To this fact, scriptural story bears evidence from the first to the last of its inspired pages-and to these pages a reference, reverential but truth-seeking, may, it is hoped, be addressed, without incurring the imputation of presumption.

CHAPTER IV.

The Women of the Hebrews-under the Patriarchs.

THE Mosaic history of the creation assigns to the East the first scene of human existence, and places the first pair, created in perfect equality, in a Paradise, which

" of God the garden was,
"By him in the East of Eden planted."

"For God created man in his own image, male and female created he them," " to be a mate and a help to each other." - To the male, to Adam,* it appears, was assigned a first task of corporeal performance; for " he was put into the garden to dress and keep it." To the female, Eve, was permitted the first exercise of mind, in the call made on her intellect, by one who (whether considered as a "fallen spirit, second only to the first," or as a "creature more subtle than any beast of the field, which the Lord had made,")* sought to influence human action by intellectual means, though for evil purposes. The selection of the female for the experiment of a superhuman sophistry, indicated on her part a difficulty, rather than a facility to be won over; and the reward offered, for risking the awful penalty of death by disobedience," was no less than that "she should be as are the Gods, knowing good from evil!" The woman, ("seeing that the tree was to be desired, to make one wise,) took the fruit accordingly thereof and did eat."

* Adam, in the Hebrew - Red Earth, - Eve - Life. But the Reverend Dr. Conyers Middleton, in his allegorical explanations of the first chapters of Genesis, represents Adam to be the Mind, Eve the Senses, and the Serpent Pleasure or Passion.-See Dr. Middleton's Letters to Dr. Waterland, vol. 2. p. 149.

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The man only followed the example of the woman : and "the woman thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat," was the weak and reproachful answer of Adam to the interrogation of his

* The word "subtle," in Hebrew, is said to denote metaphorically quickness of mind, discriminative sagacity. (See Bochart de serpente tentatore, p. 841.) -Archbishop Tillotson "supposes that Satan, on this occasion, assumed the form of a bright, glorious, and winged serpent, of that kind which in Scripture is called Seraph." See also Bishop Horsley's Biblical Criticisms, vol. 1.

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