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Let the modern school of Cæsarean amateurs of insulted Prydain, Llydaw, or Armorica, learn wisdom from their proofs, and then confess (No, no: we want it not) that Cimmerian_civilization flourished at an epoch when a golden mintage was a myth at Rome.

SYMBOL X.

But who can sketch

The Heavens of yore? Can yon Greece? can Rome?
Amid their triumphs, vaunted through the world,

Assert the fact?

THE astronomical figure (No. 10 in the plate) now demands a few words of comment in addition to those already given in page 47, &c., to which I beg to refer the inquirer after hidden symbolical truths.

Assuming that the philological doctrines therein contained have been thoroughly understood, I now proceed to incorporate the views of Eastern antiquity as represented by a distinguished annotator on Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos, in reference to the study of certain zodiacal spheres inculcated by Cimmerian and Egyptian Saronides and natural philosophers. For the truth or falsehood of the Tetrabiblos I contend not.

The description herein annexed appears to co-incide with Saronidesian views respecting the revolutions of the inferior planets, Mercher and Gwên, within the earth's orbit, and to prove that these bodies circulate in narrower orbits than our own globe. This truth has been "recognized as incontrovertible from the most remote antiquity." Other latent truths may be detected here and there: The six or seven circles, as seen in the engraving, seemed to indicate the revolutions of the Earth, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the Sun.

Space, however, will not allow me to enter upon a re-discussion of druidical troiau and saronau, as embodying another code of facts, but I will hasten onwards to illustrate the Cimmerian Cut, as stamped on Hellenic coins and Cimbric rocks, by reference to authorities other than those of Greece and Rome, and thereby to prove a prehistoric, an uncollusive, co-incidence of teaching, or a scientific analogy, between the astronomers of the Hyperborean West and those of the On-ic Nile, in reference to the revolutions of the heavenly bodies, and other cognate ideas elicited therefrom. The following annotation from an old geographical work, by Apianus, framed on the laws of Ptolemy, will, I apprehend, tend to explain from another point of view, but in a somewhat mystic

form, the solar system of African antiquity, as developed by the partial uniformity of astronomical and astrological principles in the distant observatories of the far-East:

"The world," says the author," is divided into two parts-the elemental region and the ethereal. The elemental region is constantly subject to alteration, and comprises the four elements— earth, water, air, and fire.

"The ethereal region, which philosophers call the fifth essence, encompasses, by its concavity, the elemental; its substance remains always unvaried, and consists of ten spheres, of which the greater one always spherically environs the next smaller, and so on in consecutive order. First, therefore, around the sphere of fire, God, the Creator of the world, placed the sphere of the Moon, then that of Mercury, then that of Venus, then that of the Sun, and afterwards those of Mars, of Jupiter, and of Saturn. Each of these spheres, however, contains but one star, and these stars, in passing through the zodiac, always struggle against the primum mobile, or the motion of the tenth sphere; they are, also, entirely luminous. In the next place follows the firmament, which is the eighth or starry sphere, and which trembles or vibrates (trepidat) in two small circles at the beginning of Aries and Libra (as placed in the ninth sphere): this motion is called by astronomers, 'the motion of the access and recess of the fixed stars,' (probably, in order to account for the procession of the equinoxes). This is surrounded by the ninth sphere, called chrystalline or watery heaven, because no star is discovered in it. Lastly, the primum mobile, styled also the tenth sphere, encompasses all the before-mentioned ethereal spheres, and is continually turned upon the poles of the world, by one revolution in twenty-four hours, from the east through the Meridian to west, again coming round with it by its own force; and there is no star in it. Against the primum mobile the motion of the other spheres, running from the west through the Meridian to the east, contends. Whatever is beyond this is fixed and immovable, and the possessors of our orthodox faith affirm it to be the empyrean heaven which God inhabits with the elect."

182

LECTURE V.

CIMMERICA COMMERCIA ANTIQUITATIS.

"Her commerce spread to many a distant land
"And brought the gathered riches of the world,
"In one vast concourse, to the coast of Tyre."

THE Commerce of Ynys Prydain, or Albion (as the island is described by Aristotle, in his De Mundo'), must now attract our attention.

“ Εν τω ωκεανω γη μεν νησοι μεγισται τε τυγχανουσι, ουσαι δυο, Βρετανικαι λεγομεναι Αλβιον και Ιερνη ”: In oceano insulæ duæ sitæ sunt, quam maxime, quas BRITANNICAS appellant, Albion et Jerva.

These Hyperborean islands of the west commanded notice at so early a period in the prehistoric annals of the world, that no precise era can be assigned, either to the original settlers or even to the later arrival of the Phoenician navigators of Tyre and Sidon, who are reputed, as the first representatives of the East, to have traded on its coasts for tin, lead, copper, (coal?) hides, oysters, fish, and so forth.

The following remarks may, perhaps, in some measure, tend, if not to solve the problem, at least to throw some additional light on the mysteries of the past, and evoke our national existence.

Under the different nomenclatures originally given to the 'Insulæ Britannica' or islands peculiarly dedicated to the name and colonizing attributes of Prydain and his race, may be classed, inter alias, the Mosaic Isles of the West,' a title first embodied and confirmed in Holy Writ about 2348 B. C., as→→→

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'By these [i. e., the descendants of Japhet, our progenitor] were the Isles of the West' divided in their lands, every one after his tongue, after their families in the nations."

His offspring is further mentioned by king David, in 1015 B. c., as producers and distributors of 'presents.' What were these presents?

These unique tokens of a country's weal will manifest themselves, I trust, in almost every quarter-of the world, as the germ of early Gomeric enterprise and skill.

"The kings of Tarshish [i. e., Tartessus] and [the kings] of the Isles shall bring presents."

Here I perceive the first glimpse of native insular or Cimmerian industry, the first allusion to the unbenaeth or sovereignty of the isles as kings of the ISLES, as contradistinguished from those of Tarshish, their neighbors.

Tarshish was also Tartessus, Gadir, and Gades, consecutively.

"Gadir prima fretum solida super eminet Arce
Atollitque caput geminis inserta columnis,

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"Hæc Cotinussa prius fuerat sub nomine prisco
Tartessumque dehinc Tyrii dixêre coloni

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"Barbara quinetiam Gades hanc lingua frequentat
"Pænus quippe locum Gadir vocat undique Septum
Aggere præducto Tyrii per inhospita latè,

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'Equora provecti tenuere.'

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Tartess-us may be derived from twr, a tower, a citadel, and twys, a top, a summit. Gadir, Punicè, may be derived from gha-dira, standing water,'' marshy ground,'' a watery tract of land;' or, Cimmericè, from gad, the leaving, the quitting, the refuse, and dur, water, that is, 'the drained district of stagnant water;' and corresponds therein to Gades or Gadwys, from gad, and wys, water.

Isaiah, B. c. 712, alluding to the overthrow of Tyre, thus writes, "The burden of Tyre, howl ye ships of Tarshish, be still ye inhabitants of the isle, thou whom the merchants of Zidon that pass over the sea have replenished."

Again, the prophet Jeremiah, in the year 606 B. C. (about the era of Abaris, the Celtic druid), is somewhat more explicit with reference to the geographical position of these isles, from information, possibly, imparted either by Cimmerian navigators or mercenaries in the service of rival nations, or by Phoenician traders-(the former having on several occasions repeated the attempt of re-occupying their former Asiatic and Crimean possessions). Whatever might have been the mundane source of information, the prophet states, on inspiration from on high,—

"And all the kings of Tyrus, and all the kings of Zidon, and the kings of the Isles which are beyond the sea.'

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What sea? The Mediterranean, no doubt, is meant; but the isles must have been in some other sea or ocean beyond. Consequently, their position must have been geographically placed in the Atlantic ocean; for, elsewhere, the Mediterranean is styled 'the sea which is at thy gates,' as Tyre was situated at the extreme east or Tyrian entry of the sea.

The prophet Ezekiel, writing in 588 B. C., still enlarges the sphere of our knowledge by a categorical description of certain articles imported from "the many isles. Let us ascertain whether Britannia or Albion, Ierne or Thule, may have been referred to and embodied with their insular dependencies.

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To a group of islands on the south-western extremity of Albion or Isle of the West' was given the name of Cassite Nides, from some indigenous exclusively inherent produce of the isles in question-namely, kaoσTε Poç, or tin. The imputed tin of Banca and the peninsula of Malacca has only been known in comparatively modern times. No proof whatever of its existence can be classically traced, except in the cloistered romances of modern theorists. This unique and otherwise rare and unknown article of foreign and domestic traffic was prehistorically dug, worked and smelted into blocks, and primarily exported to the extremities of the then known world, for barter and exchange among the industrial nations of east and west, by the original Cimmerian discoverers of the mines. "The prophet," according to the author of The Evidence of Profane History,' 966 represents the commerce of the antique world as carried on by barter, and speaks of an exchange of merchandize, the different nations bringing the productions of their own and other countries to the Tyrians, who generally imported raw materials and exported their wares, the produce of their industry and skill." Does the importation and exportation of cotton, coal, pig-iron, and other raw materials, now-a-days, preclude or exclude the native transformation of such articles into objects of utility or gaseous light, in the countries in which they may be pre-eminently grown, worked, or exhumed ?

"The first who are spoken of by the prophet as bringing the multitude of all kinds of riches' to the fairs of Tyre are the merchants of Tarshish. The expression Ships of Tarshish' appears to be sometimes used in the Holy Scriptures to denote trading vessels in general; and how far this may be the case in the present instance we cannot take upon us to determine; but it is generally supposed that the Tarshish here mentioned means Spain, on account of the metals-silver, iron, tin, and lead, with which the merchants [of the West] traded, and because the Phonicians are known to have made early settlements in that country, and to have worked [?] the mines of precious metals with which Spain formerly abounded."

"Tarshish was thy merchant by reason of the multitude of all kinds of riches; with silver, iron, TIN, and lead, they traded in thy fairs."

And again, "Tyrus, thou that art situated at the entry of the sea [Here the Mediterranean is distinctly pointed out and contrasted with the Atlantic, or sea beyond] which art a merchant of the people for many Isles.''

Let us now revert to other sources of information, namely, the earlier cyclic or Homeric period, corresponding partly with the age of kings David and Solomon, and what do we find? A certain article of commerce that was never found on the earth's surface, or, more correctly speaking, dug or extracted from any soil,

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