istence?" He answers the question by saying that they did notice them, without understanding their own language, "inadvertently." Luckily Mr. O'Brien is, as usual, better informed. As these ancient writers did not understand themselves; the moderns, more ignorant still, had no information but what they drew from the predatory Arabs, who being more ignorant than themselves, taught them nothing; and the Greeks, who had nothing to teach but their own inventions. Mr. O'Brien, more expert than the predatory Arabs, and the lying Greeks, has contrived to supply the want of all authority upon the subject, by an easy application of that word, which is to him a language and a history-" Budh"-the familiar spirit of his dream, which can take every form and every sound, "dilated or condensed;" which is fidh, and fudh, and fo, and lingam, and fiddledumdee, if it would serve his purpose. Faithful to the spell, this obscene familiar immediately appears in the form required, and we are told that " Tuath" is a modification of "Budh." But enough-we fear too much, of this.

To our

We have to apologise to Mr. O'Brien for passing unnoticed so much interesting and curious matter as we are obliged to omit. His theory is singularly compendious, and we cannot afford to write an essay on every paragraph of his magnum opus. readers we should plead for pardon on the opposite score. We are obliged to be select; and we can assure all parties who may have taken any interest in so trivial a matter, that our selection has not been made from a desire to be severe. We should be happy to find some green spot to rest on; some excuse to show our candour; but we are compelled to say that the search is vain. We could have excused the disordered self-esteem which compromised Mr. O'Brien with the Royal Academy, and omitted all notice of his work, but for the malignant and calumnious tone which pervades every chapter and paragraph. His enmity never seems to sleep; and every mistake, which he fancies to be a discovery, seems made but to gratify revenge. He shakes his blunders in the teeth of his imaginary rivals and enemies, until it becomes impossible to be lenient without injustice.

It would be a wrong to the individual whom he has favoured with his most especial hostility, to pass in silence one disingenuous effort to falsify his writings. In an article which he attributes (with much probability) to Mr. Petrie, it is affirmed, on the authority of Cambrensis, that Mac Murrough's son is put to death by Roderick O'Connor, in whose hands he had been placed as a hostage for his father's fidelity. On this subject, says Mr. O'Brien, (p. 333,) Cambrensis is "silent and mute as the grave."

Will Mr. O'Brien take the trouble to look into Cambrensis, ed. fol. 1603?

"Cum autem Dermitius, ad hæc superbe respondisset, adjiciens quoq, se a proposito non destiturum, donec sibi Connactium auito iure competenté, cum totius Hibernice Monarchia, subjugasset: Indignans Rothericus, filium ejus, quem ei (Supr. 10,) obsidem dederat, capitali sententia condemnavit."-Cambrensis, cap. xvii. p. 770.

By some unfortunate accident of nature or education, there must be an unusual deficiency in that man's perceptions of the solemn and the ludicrous who could conceive the outrageous notion of extending this laughable theory to the interpretation of the Book of Genesis. We do not fear that such an attempt will obtain many converts.

His scriptural theory is this, that under the unmeaning fiction of an apple is couched the natural object of the Bhuddish worship, and that the prohibition to eat was in reality a much severer prohibition. On the faith of his theory, he attributes to God the enactment of a penal law, in the most direct opposition to one of his own most declared purposes; a law, the violation of which was wonderfully provided for by a whole system of moral and physical organization, which could have no other design; replete, too, with exquisitely contrived cruelty, beyond the reach of Phaleris to invent.. If such were unequivocally the language of the sacred record, we should have reverentially submitted to what we could not presume to understand, The ways of God are unsearchable ; but we cannot allow the mysteries of Mr. O'Brien's theory to supersede a plain narration, of facts consistent with our purest, most consolatory, and best

evidenced notions of our heavenly parent and ruler. The actual facts are indeed most beautifully accordant with mercy, justice, and all that is revealed of the great design. The trial allotted to our first parents was nicely adjusted to their nature, neither too little nor too much. It carried no irresistible appeal to those disordering passions, which, while they act, impair the principle of resistance; but was a fairly moral trial, and a trial also of faith the established principle of human obedience. On the other hand, it was not so trivial as to make the violation of the law morally impossible; though seemingly light, it was trial still, and adapted to the exercise of those virtues which cannot be supposed to exist without some such possibility. In that simple stage of his existence, man had not the means of perpetual sin which civilization affords. He could not yet forget the very existence of his Maker, nor incur the manifold penalties which belong to the multiplied inventions, possessions, and relations of this crowded and variously modified world. Offences, essentially such from their pernicious consequences, could not be devised without some fatal addition to the sum of those evils which were thereafter to arise from sin. In the state actually represented in Genesis; there still was that possibility of deviation in which alone responsibility is involved, and therefore, however remote, a probability of disobedience. The inclination of curiosity would naturally arise in a being like man, and have to be frequently combated by reflection, gratitude, reverence, and faith. It is also but too conceivable how the frequent entertainment of forbidden desire, and the frequent recurrence to reflective restraints, tends to increase the former and subdue the latter. To this add the influences of suggestion, and the increasing desire of appetite, which gathers force from the imagination; and without noticing the numerous other slight but influential causes which cannot fail to suggest themselves, a case is made out which needs no aid from Mr. O'Brien's philosophy. With this the subsequent parts of the same chain of interpreta tions fall harmless to the ground.

If Eve was not the first worshipper, neither was Cain the first high priest. Mr. O'Brien need not look back six thousand years for the sources of religious error; his own researches will furnish him abundantly with instances of the means by which the dreams of superstition, and the refinements of metaphysics, are used to systematize and, in a distorted shape, restore imperfect rites, doctrines, and tradi tions; he might trace them in the formation of the theory he has inventedthe worship of Bhudha-of which he may fairly dispute with Cain the honour of the priesthood. The hierophant of Bhudda may look down with legitimate scorn on the high priest to the Royal Irish Academy.*

Immediately connected with this, Mr. O'Brien has made some other profound discoveries, which we do not mean to analyse; they are, indeed, refutations in themselves, and need only be mentioned. As Cain was a a high priest, (an office which he loves to bestow,) it was necessary to find him a congregation. For this purpose, Mr. O'Brien waves his cabalistic wand, and calls up a world full of men and women, who are in no way related to Adam. We need not labour to demolish this visionary world.

Shall we be excused if we advert to another slight oversight. Mr. O'Brien, forgetful of the paschal lamb, thinks it necessary to explain why our Redeemer is called the Lamb. This he effects by means of that new element of logic which is peculiarly his own; overlooking the trifling facts that English is not Irish or Greek; he finds a word in the Irish, having two letters the same as two of the English, and thus proves that the word lamb is used as a modification of the Irish lamh, and is by no means a translation of that unmeaning Greek word auvos, which has the misfortune not to resemble either. Such is a plain instance of the legitimate application of the etymological fudge by help of which Mr. O'Brien discovers what he pleases.

Notwithstanding innumerable absurdities of this kind, we are far from affirming that Mr. O'Brien's book is uniformly devoid of that misty probability which belongs even to the

I am now on my way to Madrid, after having for several months past, and in every possible direction, traversed the province of Andalusia, the classic soil of brigands, without having ever met a single one. I had laid myself out for an attack of robbers, not with the intention of defending myself against them, but for the purpose of conversing with them, and questioning them most politely upon their way of life. As I look at my coat, worn out at the elbows, and my very slender equipments, I am quite chagrined at having missed these gentlemen. The pleasure of a rencontre with them would not have been too dearly purchased by the loss of a light portmanteau.

However, if I have seen no robbers, to compensate me, I have scarcely heard of anything else.

At every stop you make to change mules, the postillions, the innkeepers, every body tells you the most melancholy stories of travellers assassinated, and women carried off. The occur rence that they relate is invariably one that happened just the evening before, and in the very part of the road you are about to pass along. The traveller who as yet knows nothing of Spain, and who has not had time to acquire the sublime coolness of a Castilian, (la flema Castellana,) however incredulous in habit he may generally be, yet cannot fail to be in some degree impressed with these relations. The day closes in much more rapidly than in our northern latitudes; here the twilight lasts but for a moment; there comes then, especially in the vicinity of the mountains, a wind which doubt less in Paris would be accounted warm, but which here, from the comparison one makes of it with the scorching heat of the day, appears chill and uncomfortable. While you wrap yourself closely up in your cloak, and draw down your travelling cap over your eyes, you observe that the men who VOL. III.

compose your escort (escopeteros) throw the priming out of their muskets, without replacing it anew. In surprise at this extraordinary procedure, you ask them the meaning of it, and the stout fellows, who accompany you to protect you, answer from the top of the imperial where they are perched, that truly they have all the courage in the world, but that they could not think of opposing themselves unaided against a whole band of robbers. "If they should attack us, we could hope for quarter only by being able to prove to them that we never had any intention of resisting."

Then what is the object, you will ask, of embarrassing one's self with these fellows and their muskets, of which they are determined to make no use? Oh! they are a capital defence against the straggling rateros, that is, the amateur brigands, who rifle travellers only when a favourable opportunity presents itself; one meets them but in parties of two or three at the most.

The traveller now begins to repent himself of having brought so much money with him. He looks what o'clock it is by his breguet, which he has some misgivings he may now be consulting for the last time. He would be but too happy if he knew that it was hanging peaceably over his chimney piece in Paris. He asks the mayoral if the robbers ever strip travellers of their clothes?

Last

"Oh! ay-sometimes, Sir. month the public coach from Seville was stopped near La Carlota, and all the travellers were sent into Ecija just like the little angels."

"Like little angels! What do you mean?"

"I mean that the brigands had taken all their clothes, and had not left them even their shirts."

“The devil!" exclaims the traveller, buttoning up his coat; but presently

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