Atlantis was not a fable; that there was an island in the Atlantic opposite the mouth of the Mediterranean Sea, the true cradle of the Aryan race and civilization, from which emigration flowed both eastward and westward, and which was at length swallowed up in some great convulsion of nature. He also published Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel (1882); The Great Cryptogram (1888); Cæsar's Column (1891) The Golden Bottle (1892).

The Great Cryptogram attracted wide-spread attention on account of its apparent proof that Bacon produced the Shakespearian plays. It is interesting to read Donnelly's description of the great task he had to perform.

DIFFICULTIES IN THE WAY.

It seems to me that the labors of Champollion le Jeune and Thomas Young, in working out the Egyptian hieroglyphics from the tri-lingual inscription on the Rosetta stone, were simple compared with the task I had undertaken. They had before them a stone with an inscription in three alphabets - the hieroglyphic, the demotic, and the Greek; and the Greek version stated that the three inscriptions signified the same thing. The problem was to translate the unknown by the known. It was observed that a certain oval ring, inclosing a group of hieroglyphic phonetic signs, stood in a corresponding place with the name of Ptolemy in the Greek; and the same group was found, often repeated, over sitting figures of the temple of Karnak. The conclusion was inevitable, therefore, that that group signified Ptolemy. Furthermore, the word king occurred twenty-nine times in the Greek version of the Rosetta inscription, and a group holding corresponding positions was repeated twenty-nine times in the demotic. Another stone gave the phonetic elements which constituted the word Cleopatra. Champollion and Young thus had acquired the knowledge of

numerous alphabetical signs, with the sounds belonging to them, and the rest of the work of translation was easy, for the Egyptian language still survived in a modified form in the mouths of the Coptic peasants.

But in my case I knew neither the rule nor the story. I tried to obtain a clew by putting together the words which constituted the name of the old play, The Contention Between York and Lancaster, as found in the end of 1st Henry IV. and the beginning of 2d Henry IV.; but, unfortunately, Contention occurs twice (73d word, second column, page 74 2d Henry IV., act i, scene 2, and the 496th word, second column, page 75), while York and Lancaster are repeated many times.

Even when I had progressed so far, by countless experimentations, as to guess at something of the story. that was being told, I could not be certain that I had the real sense of it. For instance, let the reader write out a sentence like this:

And then the infuriated man struck wildly at the dog, and the mad animal sprang upon him and seized him by the throat.

Then let him cut the paper to pieces, so that each slip contains a word, and ask a friend, who has never seen the original sentence, to reconstruct it. He can clearly perceive that it is a description of a contest between a man and a dog, but beyond this he can be sure of nothing. Was the dog mad or the man? Which was infuriated? Did the dog spring on the man, or the man on the dog? Which was seized by the throat? Did the man strike wildly at the dog, or the dog spring wildly at the man?

Every word in the sentence is a new element of perplexity. In fact, if you had handed your friend three slips of paper, containing the three words, struck, Tom, John, it would have been impossible for him to decide,, without some rule of arrangement, whether Tom struck John or John struck Tom; and the great question would remain forever unsettled.

My problem was to find out, by means of a cipher rule of which I knew little, a cipher story of which I knew less. A more brain-racking problem was never submitted to the intellect of man. It was translating into the vernacular an inscription written in an unknown language, with a unknown alphabet, without a single clew, however slight, to the meaning of either. I do not wonder that Bacon said that there are some ciphers which exclude the decipherer. He certainly thought he had constructed one in these plays. The Great Cryptogram.

THE IRISH RACE, DESCENDANTS OF THE ATLANTEANS.

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According to the ancient books of Ireland the race known as Partholan's people," the Neuredians, the FirBolgs, the Tua-tha-de. Danauns, and the Milesians, were all descended from two brothers, sons of Magog, son of Japheth, son of Noah, who escaped from the catastrophe which destroyed his country. Thus all these races were Atlantean. They were connected with the African colonies of Atlantis, the Berbers, and with the Egyptians. The Milesians lived in Egypt: they were expelled thence; they stopped a while in Crete, then in Scythia, then they settled in Africa at the place called Gaethulight or Getulia, and lived there during eight generations, say two hundred and fifty years; then they entered Spain, where they built Brigantia, or Briganza, named after their King Breogan: they dwelt in Spain a considerable time. Milesius, a descendant of Breogan, went on an expedition to Egypt, took part in a war against the Ethiopians, married the King's daughter, Scota: he died in Spain, but his people soon afterward conquered Ireland. On landing on the coast they offered sacrifices to Neptune or Poseidon"- the god of Atlantis.

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The Book of Genesis gives us the descendants of Noah's three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. We are told that the sons of Japheth were Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras. We are then given the names of the descendants of Gomer and Javan, but not of Magog. Josephus says the sons of Magog were Scythians. The Irish annals take up the

genealogy of Magog's family where the Bible leaves it. The "Book of Invasions," the Cin of Drom-Snechta, claims that these Scythians were the Phoenicians; and we are told that a branch of this family were driven out of Egypt in the time of Moses. . . From all these facts it appears that the population of Ireland came from the West, and not from Asia - that it was one of the many waves of population flowing out from the Island of Atlantis and herein we find the explanation of that problem which has puzzled the Aryan scholars. As Ireland is farther from the Punjab than Persia, Greece, Rome, or Scandinavia, it would follow that the Celtic wave of migration must have been the earliest sent out from the Sanskrit centre; but it is now asserted by Professor Schleicher and others that the Celtic tongue shows that it separated from the Sanskrit original tongue later than the others, and that it is more closely allied to the Latin than any other Aryan tongue. This is entirely inexplicable upon any theory of an Eastern origin of the IndoEuropean races, but very easily understood if we recognize the Aryan and Celtic migrations as going out about the same time from the Atlantean fountain head.

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There are many evidences that the Old World recognized Ireland as possessing a very ancient civilization. In the Sanskrit books it is referred to as Hiranya, the "Island of the Sun," to wit, of sun-worship: in other words, as pre-eminently the centre of that religion which was shared by all the ancient races of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. It is believed that Ireland was the Garden of Phoebus" of the Western mythologists. The Greeks called Ireland the "Sacred Isle," and 'Ogygia." "Nor can any one," says Camden, "conceive why they should call it Ogygia, unless, perhaps, from its antiquity; for the Greeks called nothing Ogygia unless what was extremely ancient." We have seen that Ogyges was connected by the Greek legends with a first deluge, and that Ogyges was a quite mythical personage, lost in the nights of ages." It appears, as another confirmation of the theory of the Atlantis origin of these colonies, that their original religion was sun-worship; this, as was the case in other countries, became subsequently overlaid

with idol worship. In the reign of King Tighernmas the worship of idols was introduced. The priests constituted the Order of Druids. Naturally many analogies have been found to exist between the beliefs and customs of the Druids and the other religions which were drawn from Atlantis. We have seen in the chapter on sun-worship how extensive this form of religion was in the Atlantean days, both in Europe and America.- Atlantis.

ORAN, JOHN, a British essayist and critic; born at London, March 11, 1807; died there January 25, 1878. He was tutor to several young members of the English nobility, and as such made many observations on the habits and characteristics, as well as the foibles, of aristocracy, which he afterward incorporated in his writings. He resided for many years in France and Germany, receiving the degree of Ph.D. from the University of Marburg. Going to London, he engaged in literary work, and was editorially connected with the Athenæum, Notes and Queries, and other periodicals. His principal works are, Table Traits, etc. (1854); Habits and Men, and Lives of the Queens of the House of Hanover (1855); Knights and Their Days (1856); Monarchs Retired from Business (1857); Court Fools (1858); New Pictures and Old Panels (1859); Lives of the Princess of Wales (1860); The Bentley Ballads (1861); Their Majestics' Servants; that is, Play-actors (1863); Saints and Sinners (1868); A Lady of the Last Century (1873).