of Scotland," published in 1803.

From this sketch it must appear, that the erection of proper Lunatic Asylums at Dumfries, Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen, for the southern, eastern, western, and northern districts of the kingdom, is not a local but a national object, and an abject of the utmost importance, at least for the cause of humanity. It is, therefore, earnestly to be wished, that the patriotic and humane in every part of the kingdom of Scotland would at present unite their endeavours for the accomplishment of this object, and that some benevolent and active individuals in every county, in every burgh, and in every parish, would exert themselves in promoting subscriptions for the Lunatic Asylum of that district in which they are situated.

In the Asylum at Edinburgh in particular, the building of which is already begun, no peculiar advantage will be possessed by the inhabitants of the city; but, like the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, the doors of the Asylum, under the same fixed regulations for all, will be equally open for the cure of the unfortunate maniac from every corner of the British Empire.

Subscriptions for the Edinburgh Lunatic Asylum are received by ALEXANDER BONAR, Esq. treasurer to the Institution, at the Banking-house of Messrs RAMSAYS, BoNARS, and Co. Royal Exchange, where may be seen a complete list of all the subscriptions which have already been received for erecting this most necessary building.

DEAR SIR,

Coltness, 20th Jan. 1780.

DULY received your last obliging letter, and am not surprised that you should have found many ingenious etymologies in Mr Bryant's Mythology. My genius has always led me to the study of facts, and of reasoning, or a mixture of both; in which last light, I consider the ancient history of Greece preceding the invasion of Xerxes.

Mr Bryant's new system falls without my limits. I have read it, not as I should do a book of instruction, but as one of curiosity. The first volume, and part of the second, he has composed in the stile of adversaria, or detached detached pieces, in the course of his reading over every Greek author who has dipped, at all, into the Greek mythology, or the history of the heroic times. His antecedent hypothesis gave him an opportunity of applying every word, or every sentence, to the support of it.

As he annihilates at one blow all the heroes of Greece, this puts an end to either the history or chronology of this people. No wonder, then, if he conclude that there was never either an Argonautic expedition or a Trojan war. The great men engaged in these exploits are by him converted into scripture patriarchs, and ancient nationsJason is Noah, Orpheus is the people called Orpheans, or, according to Vossius, Cadmians, and according to him Cuthites, (Vol. 2. p. 126. et seq.) Cadmus, Hermion, Hercules, and many other personages are con verted into Egyptian deities, for this reason, because it is impossible that all the actions and circumstances related: of them can correspond June 1810.

with single men-Ergo-no such persons ever existed.

Noah, his sons and grandsons, are admitted to be real personages, on the authority of Scripture; yet Osiris (according to him) was Noah, so was Bacchus, so was Sesostris, Jason, and many others who conquered the whole world, and performed exploits incompatible with single men, or even armies of men. Why are not these also annihilated. according to the general rule? This converting of gods and heroes into scripture patriarchs is pure imagination, and requires more docility than I am master of, to make the smallest impression on my belief or assent.

The Greeks (says he) appropriated all the ancient fables to them-" selves. Let me admit this to be true; Will it follow that 4 Greek' hero could not be converted into a Greek god, with an Egyptian name? Might not Minos, king of Crete, be converted into Jupiter, as well as Noah be converted into Osiris? And, because every thing said of Jupiter can not apply to Minos, will it follow, that the whole genealogy of this king, in ascent and descent, as well as his own existence, is to be called a falsehood?

These are liberties which an imagination, which levels all difficulties, may take. I only demand, whether that it be worth while to annihilate all the beautiful history and fables of the heroic times of Greece, so charmingly described and adorned by their poets?-a history, which is tied together by the genealogies of several contemporary families, transmitted in the writings of the first prose authors among them, in order to fill up a blank in history with the patriarchs, under the fictitious names of all the Gods of Egypt. If wẻ turn Hercules (the Theban), Cadmus, Inachus, Persius, Phoroneus, Deucalion, Danaus, with all their progenitors and descendants, into

emblems

emblems of Noah, his sons, his ark, and his dove, we must of consequence (as I have said) destroy the Argonautic expedition, the wars of Thebes and of Troy, together with the princes, heroes, and philosophers, of all the Greek kingdoms and republics; among the rest, Lycurgus, Pythagoras, Thales, Draco, Solon, with all those who lived before the passage of Xerxes. In a word we inust consider Homer, Hesiod, and all the ancient poets, as much greater romancers than Milton, Tasso, and Ariosto, who have embellished with fable many real personages; at least, we must consider, also, Cadınus, Milesius, Pherecides Atheniensis, and all the prose writers among the Greeks, who, upon the authority of the poets, wrote upon genealogies, to have been a set of blockheads, to have laboured about the genealogies of families who were not believed ever to have existed.

I was not a little surprised, I confess, to find Bryant in his 3d vol. who had cut off the whole history and chronology of the heroic times of Greece, labouring to explain and adjust the dynasties of the Egyptian kings, whose reigns are said to have filled the space of 36,525 years. This is the only place in his work which has a reference either to chronology or history; and it is precisely this period of Egyptian history, where all sensible men have acknowledged, that, until Psamittacus, there is neither history nor chronology.

In this part, however, (p. 340.) I find the most ingenious thought in his work,-provided it be his own. The Egyptians (says he) reckoned by an year of 365 days. Let this be granted, though it be not true, their year was only 365 days. Now (says he) the 36,525 years of the reigns of their kings, must be understood to mean 36,525 days

contained in a cycle of 100 years, each year consisting of 365 days.

It is from the lucky coincidence between the years of the reigns and the days of the cycle, that I find ingenuity in the thought. He quotes no authority for this opinion.

As to the reigns of the demi-gods of Egypt, (he says,) These we know were mortal men, and reigned in Egypt. I demand from what authority he knows this, when he denies it to Minos, to Hercules, and to many others? I answer, from his own new invented system, and nothing else.

No answer can be made to a book in which no regular plan of mythology is laid down; no chain, no principle, but imagination and vague etymologies from unknown langu ages. The Greeks themselves, he acknowleges, did not understand the Egyptian language, much less could they understand that of the Cuthites and the first Autideluvian dialects. Again, how came the pos terity of Noah (which Noah lived several hundred years after the deluge) to degenerate so quickly into idolatry, as to worship their own father as the Sun, Osiris, Dyonisius, &c.' Tradition, under particular longevity, would, it should seem, préserve the memory of the religion of Noah for more ages than would intervene between his death and the descent into Egypt, when all was become idolatry,

The only proper answer to Bryant's new system, is to point out, what literature can gain, and what it must lose by it. What it can gain, I have already shown; what it must lose by it may be seen by a history of the Greek heroick times, if not chronological, at least genealogical; where, from the wars, expeditions, the building of cities and temples, the establishment of kingdoms, and the intermarriage of the descendants