him, and a hymn, called the Theology of Idols, recounting the genealogy and functions of each, was fung: afterwards, the whole fabulous detail was folemnly recanted by the mystagogue; a divine hymn in honour of ETERNAL AND IMMUTABLE TRUTH was chanted, and the profounder myfteries commenced. "And now, arrived on the verge of death and initiation, every thing wears a dreadful afpect; it is all horror, trembling, and astonishment." An icy chilliness feizes his limbs; a copious dew, like the damp of real death, bathes his temples; he staggers, and his faculties begin to fail; when the scene is of a fudden changed, and the doors of the interior and fplendidlyillumined temple are thrown wide open. A "miraculous and divine light discloses itself : and fhining plains and flowery meadows open on all hands before him." Acceffi confinium mortis, fays Apuleius,* et calcato Proferpinæ limine, per omnia vectus elementa remeavi; nocte medio vidi sOLEM candido corufcantem lumine: Arrived at the bourn of mortality, after having trod the gloomy threshold of Proferpine, I paffed rapidly through all the furrounding elements; and, at deep midnight,

• Apuleii Metamorphofis, lib. ii, v. i. p. 273. Edit. Bi pont. 1788.

night, beheld the fun fhining in meridian fplendour. The clouds of mental error and the shades of real darkness being now alike diffipated, both the foul and body of the initiated experienced a delightful viciffitude; and while the latter, purified with luftrations, bounded in a blaze of glory, the former diffolved in a tide of overwhelming transport. Those few authors of the ancient world, who have written on this fubject, and who have dared to unfold to pofterity the awful and deep fecrets into which they were initiated, speak of them exactly as the brahmins do of the divine raptures of abforption in the Deity, or the modern fect of Swedenborgh of those of their imagined Elyfium. At that period of virtuous and triumphant exultation, according to the divine Plato, (the VYASA of Greece,) they saw celestial beauty in all the dazzling radiance of its perfection, when, joining with the glorified chorus, they were admitted to the μακαρίαν ὄψιν, or beatific vifion, and were initiated into the most bleffed of all myfteries."

ce

The preceding relation principally concerns THE GREATER MYSTERIES. The firft and most important ceremony in the LESSER MYSTERIES of Eleufis was the purification of the body

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body by water, intended to inculcate the neceffity of a fimilar purification of the foul from the impure adhesion of vicious paffions and propenfities; and, it is remarkable, that the officer affifting upon that folemn occafion was called rogavos, from idag, water. After ablution, the afpirant was clothed in a linen vestment, the emblem of purity, and we are informed, in the Ayeen Akbery, that the brahmincandidate, in the first stage of probation, was arrayed" in a linen garment without future." But the mystic temple itself, as described by Apuleius, was ades ampliffima; according to Vitruvius, it was immani magnitudine; and, according to Strabo, it was capable of holding as large a number as a theatre. If these feveral authors had intended to describe the pagodas of Salfette and of Elephanta, could they have done it with more characteristic accuracy? temples, of which the former, according to M. Niebuhr, is a fquare of 120 feet, and in the latter of which, if we are rightly informed in the seventh volume of the Archæologia, the grand altar alone is elevated to the astonishing height of twenty-seven feet. The gloomy avenues furrounding them have been also particularifed, in which an overwhelming dread and horror feized the benighted

nighted wanderer: and, with respect to the gaudy shows and fplendid fcenery occafionally difplayed to the view of the initiated in their receffes; who, that beholds the superb decorations, the richly-painted walls, and carved imagery, in the modern pagodas; who, that confiders the beauty of the colours, and the ingenuity of the devices, confpicuous in many of the manufactures of India, whether in gold and filver enamel, in boxes curiously inlaid with ivory, in carpets of filk richly flowered, and linens ftained with variegated dies. can poffibly entertain a doubt of the ability of the ancient Indians ftrikingly to portray, on canvass or otherwife, the allegorical vifions, in which the genius of the nation takes fo much delight; the amaranthine bowers, in which beatified fpirits are fuppofed to refide, and the Elyfian plains of EENDRA's volup tuous paradife?

The initiated, in the Grecian temples, were alfo crowned with myrtle, and the priests of Mithra were invariably decked with a rich tiara, wound about with the fame foliage. Finally, the Hierophant, that is, the revealer of facred things, in the Eleufinian mysteries, was arrayed in the habit and adorned with the fymbols of the great Creator of the world, of whom

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whom in those myfteries he was supposed to be the substitute, and revered as the emblem. He was attended in his facred office by three afsistant ministers, of whom the first was called Aadaxos, or the torch-bearer; he was intended to represent the SUN. The second was denominated Kneuž, or the herald; he was confidered as the type of the planet MERCURY. The third was called Ὁ ἐπι Βωμω, or the mi nister of the altar, and he was venerated as the symbol of the MOON. The same characteristic distinctions doubtless prevailed in thofe of India, where the Sun, Moon, and Mercury, under the name of Budha, for ever occur in the varied page of their mythology. There perhaps, as in the rites of Mithra in Perfia, the chief gods attended in the affumed characters of the various conftellations. Their physical theology, which led them, in various instances, to confider the Deity as an incarnate agent upon earth, would naturally lead them in these mysterious institutions to shadow out, under the person of the high prefiding brahmin, the supreme Creator of all things, and to decorate that facred perfonage (the symbolical representation of Deity) after the manner of the Perfian Mithra, with a loosely-floating tunic of a bright cerulean tincture, and fpangled