after it had quitted Al-debarân and the Hyades, the Pleiades were for about seven or eight centuries, or perhaps longer, esteemed to be the leading stars of the Sabæan year. It is not meant that the vernal colure continued to pass exactly through this cluster of stars for the above space of time; but, that there were no other stars of the zodiac, between the Hyades and the first degrees of Aries, sufficiently near to supersede them by serving as an astronomical mark. On the Pleiades and their vernal ascension I have more particularly dwelt in my subsequent essays on the cylinders of Sir William Boughton and Mr. Rich; and through the period of their astronomical reign as leading stars, run the earlier astronomical notices of the Greeks and of our own scriptures. Hence the correct beauty and congeniality of Milton's feeling in describing the heliacal rising of these stars

"the grey dawn and the Pleiades Shedding sweet influence:

Hence too the great number of antique monuments of all the Sabæan nations, where the disc and crescent-the symbols of the sun and moon in conjunction-appear successively; first on the head; at subsequent periods on the neck or back, of the zodiacal Bull; and more recently on the forehead of the Ram. It was the hieroglyphical sign of the important transit of the vernal equinox, and of the rejoicing-festival which closed the annual rites of Osiris.

I feel here in fresh danger of running into digression, but since "the light that leads astray, seems light from heaven :" I hope, sir, you will pardon my obedience to the impulse, should this apprehension turn out to be well founded.

The diagrammatical character, or symbol, which is still in use to denote Taurus, 8, is in fact, this very crescent and disc; the horned moon, which in the ancient monuments is placed beneath, being now (with more analogical propriety) placed above, the disc of the sun-but, transmitted, no doubt, down to our times, from those far distant ages when this memorable conjunction in Taurus, by marking the commencement, at once of the Sabæan year and of the cycle of the Chaldean saros, so

pre-eminently distinguished the sign Taurus, as to become its characteristic symbol: for had the abstract shape of a horned bull's head, been the origin of this diagram, as some authors have surmised; the form beneath the crescent, would not have been a circle, but a triangle.

There was even an antique Taurus of bronze lately consigned to Mr. Christie from China! in which bronze, the symbolical crescent remains attached to the back of the bull by means of a quaint Chinese cloud, and where a curved groove is provided for the occasional introduction of the disc of the sun, when Mazzaroth was in its season-that is to say, when solar and lunar time were coincident and conjunctive at the commencement of the year and of the lunar cycle..

This bronze must have belonged-not to those very remote ages when

the year opened with the stars in the head of the bull, but-must have been in sacred use, when the colure of the vernal equinox, passed across the middle; or, across the later degrees, of the asterism Taurus, and the Pleiades were perhaps in China-as they were in Canaan-the leading stars of the year. Without any unprecedented stretch of fancy, we might have conjectured it to have originally belonged to that "temple or palace of the horned bull,” to which you have alluded in your learned 'Inquiry," and which I have before mentioned in one of my letters to Capt. Lockett: but, since this idea crossed my mind, I have met with another bull, exactly resembling that sent from China, but of somewhat larger dimensions, in the British Museum, which implies that such bulls -perhaps such temples-were not very uncommon.

Along with a representation of this curious Chinese monument, of which Mr. Christie has obligingly permitted my son to make a drawing, and which so unequivocally displays the taste and style of art of the country where it was produced-I have the pleasure to exhibit a Babylonian, a Phoenician, a Greek, and an Egyptian, Taurus.

The small bronze, which in the usual station of the Pleiades, has the hump which distinguishes the cattle of Hindostan, and which has also the lunette horns of the heifer Baâl, was brought from Babylon by my friend Capt. Lockett. Of those with the sun's disc between the horns, the smaller was purchased in Palestine by Sir William Rouse Boughton. It is represented as having been thrown down-merely for the sake of a little picturesque variety in the composition-yet so as to shew the crescent and disc, with its minute aspic fastening of Egyptian derivation. The little Grecian Taurus, is from a cast in Tassie's interesting collection, and was originally impressed from an engraved onyx in that of the Chevalier Wisden. Raspe mistakenly (as it appears to me) terms this a Dionysiac bull, and says it has the three Graces between the horns: whereas it is the Taurus of the zodiac, having the personified Hyades* ou the head of the bull and the seven stars of the Pleiades arranged along

* The Hyades, as is well known, were five in number. In the present instance the minute scale of the gem, and the laws of perspective, conspire to prevent more than three from being visible.

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his back. What confirms me in this opinion (Sir) is, that it represents the celestial bull as you have yourself spoken of him, "in the attitude of attack, and as if striking at something with his horns;" as he sometimes appears on the later monuments of Egypt, as well as on the earlier of those of Greece:-By the way-may it not be suspected, that whenever he is thus represented in the sculpture of the former country, such sculpture is not of earlier date than the Macedonian conquest?-The dissonance between this violent action, and the calm solemnity of that early Egyptian art which is certainly indigenous; and the exact correspondence of this butting Egyptian bull, with those on the gems and coinage of Greece, strongly incline me to this opinion.

The remaining bull of my group (of antique Tauri) I intended should have been copied from one of the Egyptian bronzes that repose in our national collection: but the room which contains them, is unluckily locked up, and likely to continue so for some months, on account of its containing also the antiquities sent home by Mr. Salt, which are not yet accessible to the public. I owe this apology to my readers, for shewing so little more of the bull of Egypt, than the head and horns-not copied (1 am obliged to confess), from any one specimen, but recollected from several: The figure, which should else have been more prominent, contains however the astronomical disc and crescent, marking the vernal equinox of the more remote period, and which I am very certain will be found on the heads of at least three of the bulls in the small Egyptian room at the British Museum.

For the information of some of my readers, I may here be permitted to mention that the disc above the forehead of Taurus in these antiques, was not always a fixture. Nor could we in ancient monuments of this nature, have possibly met with a plainer indication of a moveable festival dependent on the occasional conjunction of the two greater luminaries, than is presented to us in the circumstance of many of these antique bulls of bronze-those of Greece as well as those of Egypt-having holes remaining on their heads, evidently contrived, and with very remarkable correspondence with the groove of the Chinese bronze, for the periodical reception of the symbols of the sun and moon-either or both of them,'

as the state of the material heavens might demand-which were, in their respective seasons, attached by means of metal pegs fitted to the holes. Upon these sacred periodical occasions, Taurus was publicly produced with his proper astronomical decoration as, according to Herodotus, the mystic bull of Mycerinus was produced at Sais. Nor needs Mr. Payne Knight be reminded of two of these antique Tauri of fine Grecian workmanship (having such holes remaining) in his own unparalleled museum of bronzes.

But, forewarned by the fate of Europa, I must not allow this decorated bull of bulls to seduce me from the terra-firma of my original purpose. Returning therefore, from this collateral branch of our subject,—we might have supposed the present gem to have had reference to some such annual festival, and to have been used in the sacred ceremonies, had the place of the Sun, been here specified or indicated: Had the Sun been shewn in Aquarius, the allusion to the acronical setting of Boötes and the Bear, would have been sufficiently obvious and remarkable. Not being quite certain however, that this state of the heavens is not alluded to, I shall return to the problem, before I close the present speculation. Aquarius, who has sometimes been pronounced to be the pourer forth of the Deluge, is rising at the farther extremity of the engraving, and is pouring forth his flood of waters on a small orb which is nevertheless very distinctly made out. Has this any recondite allusion to the Chaldean deluge of Noah or Xixuthrus?

Each of my readers will decide this question for himself. I shall merely observe for the present, that in almost every nation of antiquity, there are either written records, or traditional accounts, supported by fossil vestiges, of a deluge; with evidences of its having been attended by disruption of the subterranean abyss. If before the invention of letters, any marvellous occurrence was hieroglyphically recorded among these sacred engravings, of which I conceive the earliest to have preceded all literature, surely an advent so important would not be passed over; and of all the nations of the East, we may reasonably expect the most authentic accounts of the Deluge, from the progenitors of the Abrahamic race. Indeed, I have already had occasion to shew, and shall have