merous and large; yet, though they form at best but a frail dwelling, many of them are "very low and small." Near to the ruins of Petra, Burckhardt passed an encampment of Bedouin tents, most of which were the smallest he had ever seen, about four feet high, and ten in length ;" and towards the southwest border of Edom, he met with a few wanderers who had no tents with them, and whose only shelter from the burning rays of the sun, and the heavy dews of night, was the scanty branches of the Talhtrees. The subsistence of the Bedouins is often as precarious as their habitations are mean; the flocks they tend, or which they pillage from more fertile regions, are their only possessions; and in that land where commerce long concentrated its wealth, and through which the treasures of Ophir passed, the picking of gum arabic from thorny branches is now the poor occupation, the only semblance of industry, practised by the wild and wandering tenants of a desert. Edom is small among the nations; and how greatly is it despised, when the public authorities at Constantinople deny any knowledge of it, or of the ruins of its capital, which once defied the power of Rome, when the city of Petra is thus forgotten and unknown among the representatives of the villagers of Byzantium !

Concerning Edom, thus saith the Lord, Is wisdom no more in Teman? is understanding perished from the prudent? Shall I not destroy the wise men out of Edom, and understanding out of the mount of Esau? Fallen and despised as it now is, Edom, did not the description of many ages abrogate its right, might lay claim to the title of having been the first seat of learning, as well as the centre of commerce. Sir Isaac Newton, who was no mean master in chronology, and no incompetent judge to give a decision in regard to the rise and first progress of literature, considers Edom as the nursery of the arts and sciences,, and adduces

evidence to that effect from profane as well as from sacred history. "The Egyptians," he remarks, "having learned the skill of the Edomites, began now to observe the position of the stars, and the length of the solar year, for enabling them to know the position of the stars at any time, and to sail by them at all times without sight of the shore; and this gave a beginning to astronomy and navigation."s "It seems that letters, and astronomy, and the trade of carpenters, were invented by the merchants of the Red Sea, and that they were propagated from Arabia Petræa, into Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Asia Minor, and Europe." While the philosopher may thus think of Edom with respect, neither the admirer of genius, the man of feeling, nor the child of devotion will, even to this day, seek from any land a richer treasure of plaintive poetry, of impassioned eloquence, and of fervid piety, than Edom has bequeathed to the world in the book of Job. It exhibits to us, in language the most pathetic and sublime, all that a man could feel, in the outward pangs of his body and the inner writhings of his mind, of the frailties of his frame, and of the dissolution of his earthly comforts and endearments; all that mortal can discern, by meditating on the ways, and contemplating the works of God, of the omniscience and omnipotence of the Most High, and of the inscrutable dispensations of his providence; all that knowledge which could first tell, in written word, of Arcturus, and Orion, and Pleiades; and all that devotedness of soul, and immortality of hope, whichwith patience that faltered not even when the heart was bruised, and almost broken, and the body covered over with distress-could say, " Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.”

But if the question now be asked, is understanding perished out of Edom ? the answer, like every Sir Isaac Newton's Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms, h Ibid. p. 212.

p. 208.

66

response of the prophetic word, may be briefly given : it is. The minds of the Bedouins are as uncultivated as the deserts they traverse. Practical wisdom is, in general, the first that man learns and the last that he retains. And the simple but significant fact, already alluded to, that the clearing away of a little rubbish, merely to allow the water to flow" into an ancient cistern, in order to render it useful to themselves," is an undertaking far beyond the views of the wandering Arabs," shews that understanding is indeed perished from among them. They view the indestructible works of former ages not only with wonder, but with superstitious regard, and consider them as the work of genii They look upon a European as a magician, and believe that, having seen any spot where they imagine that treasures are deposited, he can "afterwards command the guardian of the treasure to set the whole before him." In Teman, which yet maintains a precarious existence, the inhabitants possess the desire without the means of knowledge. The Koran is their only study, and contains the sum of their wisdom.— And although he was but a "miserable comforter," and was overmastered in argument by a kinsman stricken with affliction, yet no Temanite can now discourse with either the wisdom or the pathos of Eliphaz of old. Wisdom is no more in Teman, and understanding has perished out of the mount of Esau.

While there is thus subsisting evidence and proof that the ancient inhabitants of Edom were renowned for wisdom, as well as for power, and while desolation has spread so widely over it, that it can scarcely be said to be inhabited by man; there still are tenants who hold possession of it, to whom it is abandoned by man, and to whom it was decreed by a voice more than mortal. And insignificant and minute as it may possibly appear to those who reject the light of

i Burckhardt's Travels, p. 429.

revelation, or to the unreflecting mind, that will use no measuring line of truth which stretches beyond that which inches out its own shallow thoughts, and wherewith, rejecting all other aid, it tries, by the superficial touch of ridicule alone, to sound the unfathomable depths of infinite wisdom; yet the following scripture, mingled with other words already verified as the voice of inspiration, and voluntarily involving its title to credibility in the appended appeal to fact and challenge to investigation, may, in conjunction with kindred proofs, yet tell to man-if hearing he will hear, and shew him, if seeing he will see-the verity of the divine word, and the infallibility of the divine judgments; and not without the aid of the rightful and unbiassed exercise of reason, may give understanding to the sceptic, that he may be converted, and that he may be healed by him whose word is ever truth.

"But the cormorant and the bittern shall possess it (Idumea); the owl also, and the raven, shall dwell in it. It shall be a habitation for dragons and a court for owls. The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the wild beasts of the island, and the satyr (the hairy or rough creature) shall cry to his fellow; the screech-owl also shall rest there, and find for herself a place of rest. There shall the great owl make her nest, and lay, and hatch, and gather under her shadow; there shall the vultures also be gathered, every one with her mate. Seek ye out of the book of the Lord, and read; no one of these shall fail, none shall want her mate; for my mouth it hath commanded, and his spirit it hath gathered them. And he hath cast the lot for them, and his hand hath divided it unto them by line: they shall possess it for ever; from generation to generation shall they dwell therein."k "I laid the mountains of Esau and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness."

* Isa. xxxiv. 11, 13-17.

1 Mal. i. 3.

Such is the precision of the prophecies, so remote are they from all ambiguity of meaning, and so distinct are the events which they detail, that it is almost unnecessary to remark, that the different animals here enumerated were not all in the same manner, or in the same degree, to be possessors of Edom. Some of them were to rest, to meet, to be gathered there ; the owl and the raven were to dwell in it, and it was to be a habitation for dragons; while of the cormorant and bittern, it is emphatically said, that they were to possess it. And is it not somewhat beyond a mere fortuitous coincidence, imperfect as the information is respecting Edom, that, in "seeking out" proof concerning these animals, and whether none of them do fail, the most decisive evidence should, in the first instance, be unconsciously communicated from the boundaries of Edom, of the one which is first noted in the prediction, and which was to possess the land? It will at once be conceded, that in whatever country any particular animal is unknown, no proper translation of its name can there be given; and that for the purpose of designating or identifying it, reference must be had to the original name, and to the natural history of the country in which it is known. And, without any ambiguity or perplexity arising from the translation of the word, or any need of tracing it through any other languages to ascertain its import, the identical word of the original, with scarcely the slightest variation, (and that only the want of the final vowel in the Hebrew word, vowels in that language being often supplied in the enunciation or by points,) is, from the affinity of the Hebrew and Arabic, used on the very spot by the Arabs, to denote the very bird which may literally be said to possess the land. While in the last inhabited village of Moab, and close upon the borders of Edom, Burckhardt noted the animals which frequented the neighbouring territory,. in which he distinctly specifies Shera, the land of the