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would be obliged to me for my company. present," continued he, "you will excuse me, Sir, as business engages me till we dine; but my daughter will chat the hours away with you, and show you the curiosities of her library and grot. HARRIOT will supply my place."

This was a delightful invitation indeed, and after returning my hearty thanks to the old gentleman for the favour he did me, I addressed myself to Miss NOEL, when her father was gone, and we were walking back to the library in the garden, and told her ingenuously, that though I could not be positive as to the situation of my soul, whether I was in love with her or not, as I never had experienced the passion before, nor knew what it was to admire a woman, having lived till that morning in a state of indifference to her sex, yet I found very strange emotions within me, and I was sure I could not leave her without the most lively and afflicting inquietude." You will pardon, I hope, madam, this effusion of my heart, and suffer me to demonstrate by a thousand and a thousand actions, that I honour you in a manner unutterable, and, from this time, can imagine no happiness but with you."

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"Sir," this inimitable maid replied, you are an entire stranger to me, and to declare a passion on a few hours' acquaintance, must be either to try my weakness, or because you think a young woman

is incapable of relishing any thing but such stuff, when alone in conversation with a gentleman. I beg then I may hear no more of this; and as I am sure you can talk upon many more rational subjects, request your favour to give me your opinion on some articles in this Hebrew Bible you see lying open on the table in this room. My father, sir, among other things, has taken great pains to instruct me, for several years that I have lived with him in a kind of solitary state, since the death of my mother, whom I lost when I was very young, and has taught me to read and understand this inspired Hebrew book; and says we must ascribe primævity and sacred prerogatives to this language. For my part, I have some doubts as to this matter, which I dare not mention to my father. Tell me, if you please, what you think of the thing?"

"Miss NOEL," I answered, "since it is your command that I should be silent as to that flame your glorious eyes and understanding have lighted up in my soul, like some superior nature, before whom I am nothing, silent I will be, and tell you what I fancy on a subject I am certain you understand much better than I do. My knowledge of the Hebrew is but small, though I have learned to read and understand the Old Testament in the ante-Babel language.

"My opinion on your question is, that the Bib

lical Hebrew was the language of Paradise, and continued to be spoken by all men down to, and at the time of Moses writing the Pentateuch, and long after. Abraham, though bred in Chaldea, could converse freely with the Egyptians, the Sodomites, and the King of Gerar; nor do we find that any variety of speech interrupted the commerce of his son Isaac with the several nations around, or that it ever stopped Jacob in his travels. Nay, the Israelites, in their journey through the desarts of Arabia, after they had been some hundred years in Egypt, though joined by a mixed multitude, and meeting with divers kinds of people, had not corrupted their language, and were easily understood, because it was then the universal one. The simplicity and distinctness of the Hebrew tongue preserved its purity so long and so universally. It could not well be degenerate till the knowledge of nature was lost, as its words consist but of two or three letters, and are perfectly well suited to convey sensible and strong ideas. It was at the captivity,* in the space

* The captivity here spoken of began at Nebuzaradan's taking and burning the city and temple of Jerusalem, and sending Zedekiah, the last king, in chains, to Nebuchadnezzar, who ordered his children to be butchered before his face, his eyes to be put out, and then thrown into a dungeon, where he died. This happened

of seventy years, that the Jews by temporising with the ignorant victors, so far neglected the usage of their own tongue, that none but the scribes or learned men could understand Moses's books."

"This, I confess," said Miss NOEL," is a plausible account of the primævity and pre-eminence of the sacred Hebrew, but I think it is not necessary the account should be allowed as fact. As to its being the language in Paradise, this is not very probable, as a compass of eighteen hundred years must have changed the first language very greatly by an increase of words, and new inflections, applications, and constructions of them. The first few inhabitants of the earth were occupied in few things, and wanted not a variety of words; but when their descendants invented arts and improved sciences, they were obliged to coin new words and technical terms, and by extending and transferring their words to new subjects, and using them figuratively, were forced to multiply the senses of those already in use. The language was thus gradually cultivated, and every age improved it. All living languages are liable to such change. I therefore conclude, that the language which served the first pair would not do for succeeding generations. It became

before our Lord, 588 years; after the flood, 1766; of the world, 3416.

vastly more copious and extensive, when the numbers of mankind were great, and their language must serve conversation and the ends of life, and answer all the purposes of intelligence and correspondence. New words and new terms of speech, from time to time, were necessary, to give true ideas of the things, actions, offices, places, and times peculiar to the Hebrews. Even Hutchinson allows there was some coinage, some new words framed. We find in the latter prophets words not to be met with in the Pentateuch: and from thence we may suppose, that Moses used words unknown to Nimrod and Heber and that the men at Shinaar* had words which the people before the flood were strangers to. Even in the seventeenth century, there must have been a great alteration in the language of Adam; and when the venerable Patriarch and his family came into a new world, that was

* Shinaar comprehends the plains of Chaldea or Babylonia in Asia; and the ' men of Shinaar' were the first colony that Noah sent out from Ararat, the mountains of Armenia, where the Ark rested after the flood, to settle in the grand plains of Babylonia, twelve-hundred miles from Ararat. This was in the days of Peleg, two hundred and forty years after the flood, when the eight had encreased to sixty thousand; which made a remove of part of them necessary.

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