According to this Father, an island, or rather a continent, which once existed in that part of the Atlantic Ocean which lies between Spain and the West Indies, and was called the Atlantic Island, larger than all Asia and Africa put together, sunk by an earthquake, and was swallowed up by the sea, and all the inhabitants perished in one day. And, if this pious Carthaginian's account be correct, such a tract of land must have nearly united the western continent, or new world of America, with the eastern one of Asia, Europe, and Africa, and would countenance a late disputed relation, that some parts of America have aboriginal inhabitants, who speak the antient British language, which, if true, proves that there must have been an emigration either from Wales to America, or from America to Wales to plant it, long before the time assigned by Europeans to its discovery; or before that vast gulph of ocean had disunited them, unless men are disposed to say, that languages came by inspiration, which, to be sure, is a summary way of closing all argument and sitting down in pristine ignorance!

But, indeed, the moderns, owing to the convulsions of nature as well as devastations of barbarians, know comparatively nothing of antient geography; beside, it is evident that such a broken and disunited world as now exists, could not have been originally created! and, although Dr. Burnett's account of the primitive earth may, in some instances, be deemed fanciful, yet it is no absurdity to suppose, from the equilibrium between centripetal and centrifugal forces, that, in the first formation, the whole exterior was an orbicular shell, which, breaking and falling in, produced what is called a deluge by Noah, Ogyges, and Deucalion. And, although the accounts are nearly lost now, except by some quotations, dark hints, and intimations, yet they once existed. But, before printing was invented, these writings seldom had duplicates to preserve them, in case of losing a copy, but were generally unique; yet, the writings of Plato, &c. as related by Marcellinus, Nauclerus, Trithemius, Langus, Surius, &c. &c. all prove that the former world was as different from the present, as its inhabitants; though these things are generally overlooked!

ABRACADABRA.

No. II. p. 51.

To the wonderful effects ascribed to this mystical farrago of perfect, as well as mutilated, nonsense, in the shape of an inverted pyramid, or cone, might be added a thousand others, equally efficacious, from a horse-shoe, nailed on the threshold of every house, to the more pompous emblem of the cross, surmounting their public buildings; for every thing was not only symbolical but mystical in those days. However, as it is not intended to teach these abstruse matters they are hardly worth enumerating, though magicians then held them in high repute, and infamously blended them with the religion of the times; therefore, even the accidental form of a word, or the arrangement of its letters, were matters of importance to fanciful men, thus MADAM HANAH DOD became talismanic and anodyne, and put in for its share of consequence as well as the best of them, because, like a witch's prayer, it read backwards and forwards alike; and those cloistered friars had nothing else to do but amuse themselves with such puerilities, and where the miraculous display did not naturally occur, (as the system was ad libitum, and common sense was out of the question,) words could be manufactured, which would inflect to their purposes. Thus the arbitrary term AREPOTENS, which is without meaning in itself, became talismanic in the highest degree, because when anagrammatized and garbled, it produced five other words, which they esteemed eminently significant, and formed a magic square of twentyfive letters, which could be read twenty ways, or each word four ways, that is from left to right and vice versa, beside upwards and downwards. But what rendered it of inestimable worth as an amulet was this, that the middle word tenet, formed a cross, running through the centre and could not be read amiss. This charm could not fail to accomplish wonders! and as there is some ingenuity in the thing it must not be omitted!

By these things "Men used to live," but since reason has taken the rein of government they can only be esteemed as useless curiosities, or admired for the correct reiteration of the same word by every mode of reading.

But as the dawn of reason approached they turned their minds towards more useful things, and some of them speculated in figures, and a species of pious legerdemain was set up in the numerical form, which had it been divested of that mockery of sanctity, which stuck too close to them ever to be entirely dispensed with, would have been more praise-worthy; for men should not, as Solomon says, "be righteous over much,” or make pretensions where there is no reality; and some of these were better informed than to do it, though they could not forget what was habitual, and whatever they did must have some leaven of mystery in it; for, when men are once bitten with a mania, there is no knowing where it will end! And the uses of these mathematical symbols became only secondary, instead of primary, considerations, when depraved fancy took the matter up. And of all numbers none had so much planetary influence as the number seven, which was called Venus; and a perfect number, not on account of its mathematical or semiscissible powers, or any other excellence or use, but because it was an emblematical number, indicative of the limits assigned by them to all things; thus there were seven heavens, seven

1

millennia, seven days in the week, seven wise men, seven wonders of the world, seven sciences, seven champions of Christendom, seventh sons, and (until the discoveries of modern astronomers, chemists, and mineralogists, extended the limits, there were) seven planets, seven metals, seven every things. Therefore a table, composed of the square of 7 or 49 must be perfect indeed; however, this square they accomplished by setting down the natural numbers, from 1 to 49, inclusive, and artificially arranged into as many cells, or square divisions; so that every column either vertically or horizontally read the same number, (175,) which is the sum produced by dividing 1225, or the total amount of the whole numbers added together, by 7. These fourteen columns, together with two diagonal readings, making sixteen ways, (still producing the same number 175,) was thought a miracle indeed!

But the present writer, not satisfied with their wonderful work being the ne plus ultra of perfection, has made another of exactly the same materials and form, which, by making all the acute angles, right angles, and obtuse angles read, as well as the different columns, counts fifty ways; but, so far from seeing any miracle in it, he has long since discovered, by calculating the permutations of forty-nine figures, that it was not even as perfect as it might have been, because these permutations amount to no less than sixty-three figures, or an entire sum of 608281864034267560872252163321295376887552831379210240000000000 and this sum, divided by the number of cells, would give an enormous quotient, not worth calculating; therefore his own

* The fanciful parallelism and connexion between celestial influences, planets, precious stones, colours, &c. are the bases of all herablic tints; the cause why their number has, till of late years, been confined to seven and at the same time accounts for all the colours having different terms applied to them, according to the rank or quality of those who bear them: thus murs, ruby, gules, iron, red, are all equivalent to red colour, and are all lined the same way in engraving, but read differently according to the rank of the bearer, and so of all the other six; but modern heralds have added two or three more. Beside, all these colours are made to be emblematic of some virtue as well. Although the system is very obscure, like every things else that these men did, yet there is something very ingenious and classical in the laws of it.

square is but a bagatelle toy at best and not worth inserting, beside these things have lost their consequence since the miruculous is taken off. However, that made by the rules of Emanuel Moschopulus, as laid down by Cornelius Agrippa, (who found out that it was under Venus,) is here inserted, though like many other cryptographical wonders, the moderns will see nothing in it beyond an artificial arrangement of the forty-nine natural numbers, any more than the writer does.

2

The construction of the Hebrew letters, words, and sensences, became another source of inexhaustible wonders. And

and the Targum, Dan; were ransacked to find out deep mysteries that never entered the thoughts of the profound legislators themselves, who wrote these egregious sublimities. But nevertheless fanciful nonentities were found by commentators, lurking under hieroglyphics that rationality would never have dreamt of, and even the form of every letter was deemed symbolical, and contained some deep mystery. *, aleph, they found out to signify the head of an ox; a, beth, a house, not

L