consult the authorities themselves, whence the substance of this volume has been derived. Facts, anecdotes, personal traits of character, and well-grounded arguments and opinions, are the staple of the work; and special care being taken to give each statement its mint-mark of its authority. In virtue of the Scriptural character of the subjects, the rewards will be a special blessing on those who read and understand them; the interpretations and inferences, in many instances, being the deductions of men venerated for their piety and learning in ministering the most precious of all knowledge-the inestimable comfort of the Hope that is in us.

The writer has employed the word MYSTERY in its ordinary acceptation-a thing unintelligible or concealed, -as well as in the Scriptural meaning-something that had been unknown, but in due time was revealed by the inspiration of God. Thus it is applied to the principles of the Gospel, and to the circumstances of the General Resurrection; as well as to denote an emblem of revealed truth.*

Surrounded as we are by Mysteries, (says a contemporary,) and helpless as we find ourselves amid them, we are irresistibly prompted to seek an explanation of them. The applications of natural science for this purpose are too striking a characteristic of this age of inquiry to have been neglected throughout the following pages; the writer having endeavoured to profit by the sound opinions of Dr. Whewell, who has set the service of science, in this case, in the proper light: "Science," he tells us, "teaches us our ignorance, as well as the elevation of our nature. Those misrepresent it much who describe it in other terms; for the lessons of science implant reverence and

* See A Scripture and Prayer-book Glossary. By the Rev. John Booker, M. A.

gratitude for the past, hope for the future, and humility in our own estimation."

As the aim of the writer is to render his book acceptable to a wide number of readers, he has endeavoured to make it attractive by the notes and comments of expositors of our own time, as well as from those sacred treasures of learning, and those studies of Scripture, which strongly reveal to us the relation of God to man. The most reverential regard for things sacred has been fostered throughout the work; and although the stores of classic thought and fancy have been occasionally resorted to for embellishment and illustration, these have been employed as subsidiary to the Spirit and the Truth.

In conclusion, it may be remarked that although the reader may receive from these pages many impressions of the transitory nature of man's life, it is hoped that they will lead him to thoughts of "the Great Mystery of Godliness," and fill his heart with "a gracious composition of love, and joy, and wonder;" thus to induce him to the meditation of the infinitely glorious work of our Redemption—and so make him both the happier and the better man.*

H. W.

* Addison says: "Will any man be so impertinently officious as to tell me all prospect of a future state is only fancy and delusion? Is there any merit in being the messenger of ill news? If it is a dream, let me enjoy it, since it makes me both the happier and the better man."

viii

EXISTENCE OF MAN UPON THE EARTH.

(See page 10.)

The following note will be read with interest in connexion with "the discovery of flint implements" mentioned at page 10, in the article on the Mosaic and Geologic Creation. It appears that weapons of flint have since been found near Abbeville in beds of gravel lying in chalk, and mingled with the remains of elephants. This, if the age of the gravel and chalk be accepted as incontrovertible facts, gives a remote antiquity to the race whose implements they have entombed. The following decision has been given by Sir Charles Lyell, and is considered to be an authoritative conclusion:

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Although the accompanying shells are of living species, I believe the antiquity of the Abbeville and Amiens flint instruments to be great indeed, if compared to the times of history or tradition. I consider the gravel to be of fluviatile origin, but I could detect nothing in the structure of its several parts indicating cataclysmal action, nothing that might not be due to such river-floods as we have witnessed in Scotland during the last half-century. It must have required a long period for the wearing down of the chalk which supplied the broken flints for the formation of so much gravel at various heights, sometimes 100 feet above the present level of the Somme, for the deposition of fine sediment including entire shells, both terrestrial and aquatic, and also for the denudation which the entire mass of stratified drift has undergone, portions having been swept away, so that what remains of it often terminates abruptly in old river-cliffs, besides being covered by a newer unstratified drift. To explain these changes I should infer considerable oscillations in the level of the land in that part of Franceslow movements of upheaval and subsidence, deranging but not wholly displacing the course of the ancient rivers. Lastly, the disappearance of the elephant, rhinoceros, and other genera of quadrupeds now foreign to Europe implies, in like manner, a vast lapse of ages, separating the era in which the fossil implements were framed and that of the invasion of Gaul by the Romans.

CHAIN OF BEING.

(See page 21.)

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See an interesting paper on The Golden Chain of Homer— The Hermetic or Mercurial Chain," in Curiosities of Science, Second Series, (Things not generally Known) pp. 32-38. The idea of the Chain of Being" extends beyond the views held as to the Typical Forms in the Animal Kingdom, which show that while no single plan of combination is applicable to all animals, there is, nevertheless, a certain uniformity of organization observable in each primary division.

ix

THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN.

(See the Frontispiece.)

Before we describe this quaint Illustration of the progress of the Life of Man, it may be as well to say a few words of the Division of Man's Life into Stages, which appears to have been treated by various authors through a period of two thousand years.

The subject has long occupied the thoughts of the physician, the moralist, the speculative philosopher, and the poet. Instances may be found in the literature and art of all countries, and from the earliest periods. In Rovellini's Monumenti dell' Egitto e della Nubia, a very curious instance occurs of a date far anterior to any previously mentioned.

The earliest instance which Mr. John Winter Jones could find of the division of human life into stages occurs in the Greek verses attributed to Solon, who flourished about six hundred years before Christ, and which are introduced by Philo-Judæus into his Liber de mundi opificio; wherein also occurs, "Ilippocrates says that there are seven ages ;" and we find this division in the Midrach or Ecclesiastes, written about the ninth century, where, in six stages, man is compared to some animal.

In a beautiful Hebrew poem of the twelfth century, we find man's life divided into ten stages. Mr. Winter Jones describes two curious illustrations in ten stages, from Germany and Holland.

Sir Thomas More, when a boy, designed for his father's house in London, a hanging of painted cloths, with Man's Life in nine pageants, and verses over.

The division into seven years is suspected to have been derived from the speculations of cabalistic philosophers upon the secret powers of numbers, and upon the climacterical year.

Lady Calcott described in the cathedral of Sienna, in one of the side chapels, seven figures, each in a compartment, inlaid in the pavement, representing the Seven Ages of Man, supposed to have been executed by Antonio Frederighi, in 1176.

Shakspeare's charming illustration of Man's Seven Ages in the mouth of the melancholy Jaques, in As you like it, have become familiar as "household words."

We now come to the original of our Frontispiece-a coarse but spirited woodcut, of about the middle of the fifteenth century, and roughly coloured: it was found pasted inside what had been the covers of an old edition or manuscript of the Moralia super Bibliam, of N. de Lyra; and was purchased for the library of the British Museum by M. Panizzi.

The centre is occupied by a large wheel, on the inner circle of which are the words (in Latin), "The wheel of life, which is called fortune." Between this and the outer circle is the form of a naked man; the arms extended, and grasping two of the upper spokes, and the legs apart against two corresponding spokes below. (The several inscriptions are in Latin: we give only the English translation.) On the outer circle of the wheel are the words: "Thus adorned, they are born in this mortal life. Life decaying, they glide away like water."

Around the wheel are the figures of a man in his seven stages. Commencing on the left side, and proceeding upward, there is a label with the word "Generation" upon it.

Immediately above this is a cradle, in or rather upon which lies an infant in swaddling clothes; and at the foot of the cradle stands a little naked boy clapping his hands.

Next in order is a naked child, holding a toy-windmill, such as amuses children to the present day: a rudely drawn dog, (more like a pig) stands on its hind feet, and rests against the child's leg. Underneath is a scroll, inscribed "An infant to seven years."

Immediately above is a label inscribed "Childhood to Fifteen years," illustrated by a youth holding a falcon on his right fist, and what appears to be a bag of money in his left hand-emblems of the love of pleasure and enjoyment natural to this stage of man's life. Above the head of this youth, and perhaps with reference to the same figure, there is another label, with the words, "Adolescence to twenty-five years."

This brings us to the top of the print, at the left-hand side. In the upper centre, and sitting astride upon the wheel, there is