of St. Lawrence in ivory, Roman amphora, coins of the Roman emperors, etc.

Mr. Southall exposes some astounding specimens of blundering in certain archæologists, who seem to pardon any extravagance if it only tends toward a prodigious antiquity. As intimated above, M. Boucher de Perthes selected some Roman dishes within ten or fifteen inches of the surface as his data for calculation. He reckoned them to be about fourteen hundred years old, and consequently the peat had in his estimation accreted over them at the rate of about an inch (three centimeters) in a century, and from this datum he calculates the age of the entire bed. Now, Boucher de Perthes himself states that this same bed of peat in which he found his dishes dips under the city of Abbeville, where it is overlaid with sundry other strata twenty feet thick or more, so that not only half the peat bed, but all the twenty feet of other deposits, must come into his fourteen hundred years. Yet, below this lowest peat bed was a post-Roman, wheel-turned vase, which he thinks "sunk" to its present position. It suffices to say that vases will not sink twenty-three feet through surface soil, calcareous tufa, sand, peat, and again sand, as would be necessary to suppose in this case.

Boucher de Perthes figures a section of the deposits at Abbeville, and the relics found in them, as follows:

First Bed or Modern Soil: Arts of civilization, scoriæ, glazed pottery, etc. Second Bed: Transition from modern times to the Middle Ages-Iron, some copper, French, Flemish, Spanish coins, Venetian glass, etc. Third Bed: Middle Ages-Coins of the first races, and of the Lower Empire, in bronze, zinc, and gold; but little silver; less of iron than copper, etc. Fourth Bed: Gallo-Roman Epoch Marbles, statues, fragments of columns, stone tombs, coins of the Consular Age; iron more rare, copper keys; bronze figures, etc. Fifth Bed: Gaulish Period-Iron more and more rare; swords and lances are of copper; Gaulic coin of gold, but not of silver; some Greek pieces, etc. Sixth Bed: First Celtic PeriodBroken bones, ashes, cinders, rude vases; no iron, a few relics of copper, stone hatchets, (polished,) with their sheaths, etc. Seventh Bed: Second Celtic Period--Vases, ashes, charcoal, broken and calcined bones, flint implements, etc. Eighth Bed: Diluvium, or drift; (no relics ;) broken and rolled flints, sand. We find it here admitted that metallic implements are found generally in the sixth bed, that is, at the depth of thirty-five feet.

It also appears that Roman relics are found to the very bottom of the peat, and Mr. Southall's opinion is that all the peat there accumulated within some twenty-five hundred years, the floods of the river, or other natural causes, being probably unfavorable to its growth before that time.

THE PLUVIAL PERIOD.

Dr. Dawson, Dr. Andrews, and Mr. Alfred Tylor, F. G. S., were all struck with the evidences in the valley of the Somme, and elsewhere, that there had been a great water disturbance, which sent floods down the river valleys with enormous force, and at one time laid the Terre a Brique even beyond the valley limits. Mr. Tylor calls this the "Pluvial Period," and attributes it to the great rains, etc., connected with the melting away of the ices of the Glacial Period. Boucher de Perthes had previously the same evidences of overflow, and referred it to the "traditional deluge," which, however, he was disposed to push far back into antiquity.

M. Dupont, excavating under the auspices of the Belgian Government, came upon the same period, and ascertained that it did not follow, as Tyler supposes, close on the Glacial Period, but was preceded by a low-water age-the age of the palæolithic men. This deluge in Belgium and northern France did not merely fill the river valleys. It entered the caverns, and submerged the whole country, hill and valley alike. Dupont also suggests its identity with the traditional deluge.

Professor Dawson, of Montreal, the distinguished Canadian geologist, as also Boucher de Perthes, Dupont, and others, advance the same idea. This almost irresistible suggestion of the identity of the one great deluge of archæology with the one great deluge of Scripture and tradition, was received with contemptuous silence by the advocates of great antiquity. Though in itself an idea of the very highest interest, the admission of it did not harmonize with the objects they had in view. However, the fact of great deluges either in, or at the close of, the Paleolithic Period, became too clear to be denied, and the theory of accounting for all the phenomena without them, as propounded by Lyell and Lubbock, may be considered as overthrown. Numerous eminent men now concede the facts. M. Figuier, in his popular work on "Primitive Man," expresses

the present opinions of many when he says: "A great catastrophe, the tradition of which is preserved in the memory of all nations, marked in Europe the end of the Quaternary Period."

Dupont says that in Belgium this flood reached the height of four hundred and fifty feet. In the United States it submerged, according to Hilgard, nearly all the Gulf States, while it covered large portions of the country around the great lakes, and in the vicinity of the Mississippi. Its effects are also reported in South America; and there is every reason to think, though the proof is not yet complete, that the vast deposits of frozen mud, inclosing the unrotted carcases of the mammoth and rhinoceros in Siberia, are of the same age. The effects of the catastrophe will doubtless yet be heard from in various other parts of the globe when investigations are more fully made. These inundations did not cover all the land, but in many regions they far exceeded the requirements of the Scripture accounts, namely, that it extended "under the whole (visible) heavens." That is, as far as the eye could reach. It was a most prodigious disturbance, and it is interesting to trace the apparent parallelism of the Scripture and the geological history in connection with it. Here are the two records :

Hasty attempts to connect geological and scriptural history are apt to result in false inferences and deserved ridicule. It is well to allow the geological part of the history, which is still very imperfect, to develop itself more thoroughly, before indulging in positive conclusions; but in the mean time it is impossible to avoid being struck with the apparent identity of these two independent accounts.

ART. II. SYMBOLISM OF THE PRE-CHRISTIAN CROSS. THE universality of the cross as a religious symbol in all ages and among all peoples is a surprising fact. That it should have prevailed as an arbitrary and convenient sign for any well-known fact, or represented a sound in language, is no more than what might have been expected as a product of the first attempts toward civilization. However, antiquity did not thus limit its significance, but by a strange coincidence, as yet in a measure beyond the explanation of the most thoughtful, attached to it a religious meaning-made it to represent some fundamental idea in connection with divinity in the mythologies of both the Old and New Worlds.

Now that the cross of Christ is taking the world-is supplanting faiths whose beginnings are so remote that chronology fails to reveal them-it would prove an interesting coincidence to the Christian antiquarian to observe the use of this same symbol in connection with the religion of only one of the nations of antiquity. But to observe that it has ever been in universal use, and is destined to retain its connection with the religious idea in man, is enough to excite a feeling of mingled surprise and interest. The early writers on the cross, headed by that eminent authority, Lipsins,* at once settled upon the conclusion that these multifarious decussated figures, which they found graven on the monuments and relics of antiquity, were of a typical character, and expressive of a sentiment implanted in the human heart, which looked forward to the true cross of Christ. And as remain after remain of ancient peoples was discovered, revealing the knowledge and use of this symbol, some new champion of the theory established by Lipsius sprang up to discourse upon the typical notion of the cross innate in the human mind. Only two notable authors, to our knowl. edge, in as many centuries, failed to indorse this view. One of them, Sir Thomas Brown, † only ventured to make inquiries for others to answer; while the other, Edward Gibbon, flew to the extreme of ridiculing, with unsparing pen, the resemblances to

* Lipsius: De Cruce. 12mo. Antwerp. 1595. Especially see lib. i, cap. ix. "The Garden of Cyrus; or, the Quincuncial Lozenge, or Net-work Plantations of the Ancients," etc., (orig. ed., 1658.) New ed., Bohn, 1852, vol. ii, p. 56 et seq.

the figure of the cross that other writers had attempted to establish as existing in nature and art.* Some allowance is due for the ardor with which the prevalent view was adopted by ecclesiastical writers. Besides the testimony of obelisk and temple, tomb and vase, in the Old World, the missionaries to the New World brought back the singular news, that across the deep, among a people whom they could scarce suspect of having a common origin with themselves, the cross was common as a symbol of their pagan worship.†

While these early authors were excusable for their many fanciful conjectures with reference to the origin of the cross as a religious sign among a barbarous people, modern authors, in the absence of any real authority, are scarcely justified in the sweeping conclusion which makes the form and idea of the cross an object of divine revelation, as does Mr. Haslam in his treatise on the subject. It would be an agreeable solution of this problem if authority warranted it; but, unfortunately for our own wishes and Mr. Haslam's theory, it does not warrant any thing of the sort. To state, as does the author, that the cross was known to Noah, and even to Adam in the garden, by divine revelation, while Old Testament Scripture is destitute of any allusion to it, savors too much of emotional rhetoric to serve as the foundation for a rational theory. It is evident that while the cross was in general use among different peoples, its immediate and apparent signification was quite varied. But it is a question worth asking, and even more, worth a careful examination, whether underlying these several significations there was not one truth common to all-a thought to which all pointed, and of such a character that we may attribute its origin to the promptings of the immortal spirit which dwells within us. In all we read the struggle of the soul in its

"Decline and Fall," chap. xx.

Herrera: Hist. General, de las Indias, dec. 2, lib. iv, cap. vi; and many other places, for which see index, ed. of Barcia, Madrid, 1730, fol. Also Bernal Diaz: Hist. de la Conquista, cap. xxv et seq. Madrid, fol., 1632, and Mexico, 1854. Also Gomera: Cronica, cap. x et seq., fol. ed., 1554. Also Peter Martyr: De Insulis nuper inventis. Mr. Prescott cites an additional source to which we have not had access, namely, "Manuscript of Las Casas."

William Haslam: "The Cross and Serpent; being a brief History of the Triumph of the Cross through a long Series of Ages in Prophecy, Types, and Fulfillment." Oxford, 1849.

FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XXVIII.—39