ordinary mode of signature among the Anglo-Saxon Christians, who were, with regard to their inability to write, in the predicament of most of those Sabæans of old, whose signets, or instruments of signing, we are about to consider, and some of whom lived in all probability, before writing was invented.

It scarcely needs be added, that in both cases, as in the modern mode of signing by subscription of the name of the party, the signature was the sensible and permanent mark of invisible sentiment. Some confusion, however, must be allowed to have arisen between the meaning of the words signing, and sealing, which in legal deeds are now of consecutive execution; and it has arisen in the following manner.

In the dark ages which succeeded the overthrow of the Roman power, not only few men could write, but there were no artists capable of cutting seals; signature with the cross was therefore among the Christians, in a great degree a thing of necessity; though they sometimes made use of other ceremonies as signs, or tokens. But when art began to re-appear, and engraved stones to be raked up from the ruins of past ages, sealing was added; and as writing gradually became more known and practised, subscription of names came also into vogue, introduced at first, perhaps, by learned clerks, and by way of noting whose signature had ratified the deed that might be in question; for even Charlemagne was not penman enough to subscribe his own name, but was accustomed to sign with an antique gem, which had been set for that purpose in the pommel of his sword, saying as he impressed it, "What I sign with the hilt, I will defend at the point, of my sword."

Moreover, as the meanings of many words have been transitive, we cannot wonder that the superior pledge of faith, by the same degrees, came to be termed signing when applied to charters, treaties, or other bonds of written compact; especially as so it is, both virtually and in fact. The reader who is conversant in holy writ, will recollect many passages, of which it may be sufficient for me to advert to two or three, where the words signet, seal, and sign, occur; always expressing the meaning which I have here annexed to them-sealing being then understood as signing.

When the prophet Haggai writes in the name of the Most High, "I will shake the heavens and the earth! and I will overthrow the throne of kingdoms, and I will destroy the strength of the heathen!—In that day will I take thee, O Zerubbabel, my servant, son of Shealtiel, and will make thee as a signet! for I have chosen thee,-saith the Lord of Hosts." I say, when the heaven-commissioned prophet writes thus, he does not mean, as by ordinary figurative interpretation is generally understood, that God will take Zerubbabel, and make him as a seal; but more emphatically, that he will make him instrumental in conveying divine intelligence: a sacred denoter of mysterious and invisible things. All of which prophetic language, (according to some commentators,) relates to the important advent of the appearance of the Messiah.

For this reason too, when, as above cited, the gates of the temple of Baal were closed, and the king's signet was affixed, the impression stood there as the visible mark of " the divinity that doth hedge a king;" as a sacred sign it stood, rendering virtually present to the spectator's mind, that royal will and authority, which else were absent and invisible.

Nor was it thus in Babylon alone, but in all the great oriental nations: perhaps because they were all of Sabæan origin. The instrument which transferred the exercise of the royal power and authority from the king of Egypt to the young Hebrew interpreter from the prison-house, was the signet, (as mentioned in my first letter,) and in the Book of Esther we read, that it was not less the visible mark of the royal will, throughout the vast empire of Persia.

To the proclamation from Susa for the destruction of the Jews, the sign manual of the sovereign was affixed in no other way than by application of the signet, which the king took from his own hand, and intrusted to Haman for the purpose: and when this proclamation was reversed, the king again took off his ring which he had taken from Haman, and gave it unto Mordecai.

* This particular signet of the Persian monarch was clearly a seal ring, and might, or might not have been of the cylindrical form. There is a small Sabæan signet of hæmatite thus mounted, at the British Museum, of which I shall discourse in a future page.

That Eschylus knew or believed that the signet was habitually used in Greece for the same sacred purposes, and was the customary appendage to written deeds, from the period of the heroic ages, (probably from the era of the invention or introduction of letters,) may be seen from his Tragedy of the Suppliants: where Pelasgus declares to the herald,—

"This resolve be sure

Is strongly fixed, and never can be shaken :

Though not engraved on tablets, nor enrolled
In seal-stamped volumes."*

But other instances, attested by those classic writers who treat of the heroic ages, may be recollected of the existence of signets among the more ancient Greeks. We have already heard the poet of the Orphic hymn to Apollo, complimenting that deity on his possession of "the marking seal of the whole world;" a poetical figure, certainly, but arguing the fact, that signets, apparently revolving signets, were well known in the age and country of the author. And there is a story in Pausanias† of Theseus, in questioning the parentage of the second Minos, occasioning him to throw his signet into the sea; which not only shews the existence of Cretan signets at the time, but that important appeals were made to them respecting nativities; a circumstance which will be found to be no slight corroboration of those future speculations on antique signets, which I propose to myself the honour of submitting to your notice. 1 This event is stated to have happened about half a century before the Trojan war, and according to Pausanias, a picture of the subject by Mycon, once adorned the beautiful little temple of Theseus at Athens.

And with regard to the ancient,—the very ancient-custom of the Arabian Peninsula, two remarkable facts are observable: the first, that the further we are able to retrospect toward the remoter periods, the more we discover relative to the Sabæan signets: the second, that the oldest book extant, (which I believe to be that of Job,) should contain the most frequent allusions to them. In Genesis, the mention of Judah's signet is

quite incidental, almost accidental, (one might say,) and perhaps an inadvertency. Indeed the whole of chapter xxxviii. appears a parenthetical interpolation; or has the air at least, of having been subsequently introduced, by some writer far more solicitous of genealogical accuracy, and the naked truths on which it depends, than of moral decency or the decorum of patriarchal example. But in Job, the references to the signet and its uses, are frequent, and in general not to be mistaken: nor does the circumstance of its being a Sabæan custom, appear to have interfered with the pure Deism of the patriarch. Graven images, it will be recollected, had not then been forbidden.

In some of these passages, however, the allusion to signets is more obvious than in others: of these, two are already adverted to in my first essay. Among those where the allusion is at first sight less evident, may be mentioned some verses in chapter xxxi.; where Job disputing in the forensic style with his compurgators, says,

"Who will consent to summon me?

There is my pledge-let the Almighty take notice of me,
And let mine adversary write down the charge.

Surely I would wear it on my shoulder;

I would wind it round me as a turban ;

I would disclose to him the whole of my steps;

I would meet him altogether as a witness."

This part of the poem, at least, is evidently of a dramatic cast, and I am decidedly of opinion, that when this great-minded challenge was uttered by the suffering patriarch, he threw down, or exhibited, his signet. The sense appears incomplete without such an act; and to what else can it allude?

Dr. Good pertinently remarks on this passage, that "the real meaning of the Hebrew term on which it hinges, () is a mark, gage, pledge, or a seal. A legal security given to fulfil a contract;" which is precisely in point. Whence Schultens renders the words, "En signaturam meam!" and Parkhurst, "Behold my gage critical!" In short, without palpable twisting of words, the passage can only be understood in one way,namely, as the words, accompanying the act, of a man conscious of in

nocence, and strong in virtue, who gives a signed carte blanche, and says, "write down what accusation you may think proper, and I will easily defend myself, even though it were before the tribunal of the Almighty!" Taking this fervency, or energy of manner, into the account, the phrase gage critical" has too much of critical refinement about it, and is at the same time too vague, for the time and occasion. It were far more natural for Job, in his excited state of mind, to have exclaimed, Behold my signet: but he did not so exclaim-probably because the flat-faced instruments of signature which belonged to the inferior* classes of society, were also called signets; he therefore habitually employed the term which was at once suited to his high rank in life, and specifically expressive of the kind of signet which he wore, and said, "Behold my revolver:" for it is here worthy of our best attention, that the literal " meaning of the Hebrew term on which it hinges," (to use the words of Dr. Good) is not merely a "mark, gage, pledge, or seal:" but, there is an implied circularity of some sort, in this term—either in the form, or mode of employing the signet, or both. The word is brief-suited to the expression of rapid thought: as it is written, it consists only of an Hebrew Tau and a Resh, () which the learned Julius Bate interprets as follows; "To turn, or go about in such a circle, as a person who turns and looks about him." It is in fact, the radix of our English word turn, and as it is very expressive of the revolving of a cylindrical signet, it is not unlikely to have been the pronoun used to denote such a signet, in the age and country of Job: indeed, if we carry our minds back to those primitive ages and countries where abstract scientific terms were not yet known, or were not cultivated, it is not easy to fancy as a familiar phrase, a word more appropriate, or characterising better a cylindrical signet, than would be a Revolver, or Turn-round, either of which is precisely tantamount to Bate's definition.

The Hebrew word which is here in question, (, Turt) sounds like

* Of these flat-faced signets, the reader will find some represented further on in the present volume. + Hebraia Critica, p. 720. This word n, presents itself in other parts of the sacred scriptures-for example, in the second chapter of the book of Esther, it is repeated twice-and in those places it means turn, and is literally so rendered in the Vulgate.

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