YPSILANTI-YUDHISHT'HIRA. schools, &, The chief modern manufactures are thread, lace, linens, woollens, cottons, silk, ribbons, leather, oil, soap, tobacco. There are many tanneries, oil-mills, salt-works, dye-works, breweries. The town is connected with the Yser by canal, and is a station on the West Flanders Railway. Pop. (1862) 17,390. Y. is a very old town, its origin dating from the 9th and 10th centuries. In 1688, it was strongly fortified by Louis XIV., and in the great European wars was frequently subject to sieges. YPSILANTI, a Fanariot family, which falsely pretends to be descended from the imperial stock of the Comneni, has furnished various champions of the Christian population under Turkish rule. The first of these, PRINCE CONSTANTINE Y., was born in 1760 at Constantinople, and for his translation of the works of Vauban, was raised to high official rank by Sultan Selim III., and was subsequently appointed hospodar of Moldavia in 1799, and of Walachia in 1802. His administration of the government of these provinces was marked by wisdom and energy; but his ill-concealed sympathies with Russia led (1806) to his dismissal and flight to Transylvania. Re-established in the government of Walachia by the Russians, he shewed his hatred for the Porte by inciting (1807) the Servians to insurrection; but finding soon after that his allies, the Russians, had views and aims quite inconsistent with his, and unable to strive with both Russians and Turks, he took the oath of allegiance to the czar, and retired to Kiev, where he died 28th July 1816. He has left numerous works, composed in Italian, French, and Turkish. His three sons, Alexander, Demetrius, and Nicolas, followed up the same course of policy. The eldest, ALEXANDER, born in 1783, served for some time in the Russian army, and was chosen by the 'Hetairists' as their chief in 1820. In promotion of the cause of Rouman independence, he collected a large sum by subscription in Russia, and afterwards invading Moldavia, succeeded in raising an insurrection in both principalities. But, little suited by natural gifts to guide the movement he had originated, he was attacked by the Turks near Galatz, totally defeated, and forced to take refuge in Austria, where he was arrested and imprisoned. Released after a time, but broken in spirit by chagrin and privations, he retired to Vienna, where he died 31st January 1828.-His younger brother, DEMETRIUS, who was born 25th December 1793, also commenced his career in the Russian army, and joined his brother in his schemes for emancipating from servitude the Christian population of Turkey. Sent to Greece, armed with powers from his brother, he took a glorious part in the capture of Tripolitza (October 1820), but was less successful in the following year in his attack on Euboea. His gallant defence of Argos against the Turks, stopped the victorious march of the latter, and gained (1823) for him the honorary titles of President of Argos, Prince of the Peloponnesus, President of the Legislative Council, and Senator. His stubborn resistance (1825) to the victorious Ibrahim at Napoli was another valuable service to Greece. In 1827, the grateful Hellenes made him commander-in-chief of their forces; but some difference arising between him and the President, Capo d'Istria, he resigned his post in January 1830. He died at Napoli di Romania, 16th August 1832. Y. was insignificant in appearance, but had the soul of a hero; and was as deaf to the allurements of pleasure as to the promptings of ambition. Y'SSEL or IJSSEL, a river of the Netherlands, formed by the junction at Doesburg, in Gueldres, of the Oude (Old) Yssel from Westphalia and the New Yssel, an offset of the Rhine, cut by Drusus. After this it flows north and latterly north-west past Zutphen and Deventer, forming part of the boundary between Gueldres and Oberyssel, and, passing Kampen, falls into the Zuider Zee, after a course of about 80 miles, forming at its mouth a delta, which is gradually increasing. The principal affluents are the Borket, the Schipbeek, and the Grift.-There is another river of the same name, a branch of the Rhine, in the province of Utrecht. Y'STAD, a seaport town in the extreme south of Sweden, on the Baltic, in the laen of Malmöhus, and about 30 miles south-east of Malmö. The town is well built, and has a handsome market-place, two churches, a town-house, barracks, &c. There is a good harbour, and a brisk and improving trade is carried on, steamers plying to Stockholm, Lübeck, Kalmar, Stettin, Stralsund, and Copenhagen putting in here. It has manufactures of tobacco and snuff, chicory, soap, woollen cloths, and leather; there is also some shipbuilding. Pop. about 6000. YTTRIUM is a very rare metal, whose oxide is the earth Yttria, which is found in the Scandinavian mineral Gadenolite (a silicate of yttria, glucina, and an oxide of cerium and iron), in Yttrotantalite, and in one or two other very scarce minerals Neither the metal, the oxide, nor the salts of the oxide are of any practical importance. According to Mosander, three bases have been confounded under the single name of yttria; to the most abundant of these he gives the name yttria, while he distinguishes the others as erbia and terbia. YUCATA'N. See MEXICO. YU'CCA, a genus of plants of the natural order Liliaceae, natives of North and South America, and some of which are often cultivated in gardens on account of the singularity and splendour of their appearance. Y. gloriosa is a native of Virginia and of more southern parts of North America, but quite hardy in England. It has a stem about two or three feet high, the upper part of which produces a great tuft or crown of large swordshaped evergreen leaves, each terminating in a sharp black spine. From the centre of this crown of leaves arises the flower-stalk, of three feet or upwards in height, branching out on every side so as to form a great panicle. The flowers are bellshaped and drooping, white with a purple stripe on the outside of each segment of the perianth. The fibres of the leaves are used by the American In Yucca gloriosa. dians to make a sort of cloth and cordage. The other species have a general resemblance to this in habit and appearance. The fibre of the Yuccas is similar to that of the Agaves and Bromelias, and probably is often included under the name Pa Flax or Pita Fibre. YUDHISHTHIRA. See PAN'D'AVAS. YUGA (from the Sanscrit yuj, join; kindred to the Lat. jung, the Gr. zeug-, Gothic, juk; hence, literally, junction) denotes, in Hindu mythology and astronomy, a long mundane period of years, which is preceded by a period called Sandhya, 'twilight, and followed by a similar period called Sandhyam'sa, portion of twilight.' Manu, the Mahabharata, and the Purân'as name four such periods, three of which have already elapsed-viz., the Krita-, Treta-, and Dwapara- Yuga; while the fourth, or Kali Yuga, is that in which we live. The Krita-Yuga, according to these works, consists of 4000 divine years, its Sandhy'a of 400, and its Sandhyam's'a likewise of 400 divine years. The Treta-Yuga consists of 3000, and its Sandhya and Sandhyam s'a of 300 divine years each; the DwaparaYuga of 2000 divine years, with 200 such years to ita Sandhya, and 200 to its Sandhyam's'a; and the Kali-Yuga of 1000 divine years, with 100 such years to its Sandhya, and 100 to its Sandhyâm's'a. And since a divine year comprises 360 solar years of mortals, a year of men being a day of the gods, these Yugas, with their Sandhyas and Sandhyâm s'as, would severally represent 1,728,000, 1,296,000, 864,000, and 432,000, or in the aggregate, 4,320,000 sular years of mortals-a period called Mahayuga, or a great Yuga;' 4,320,000,000 years being a day and night of Brahmâ. See KALPA. The notion on which the theory of these Yugas and their Sandhyas and Sandhyâm's'as is based, as may be easily inferred from the foregoing statement, is that of a descending progression, 4, 3, 2, 1, each of these units multiplied by 1000, and in the case of the periods preceding and following the Yuga, by 100 years. The deteriorating process thus indicated in the succession of these Yugas, is also supposed to characterise the relative physical and moral worth of these mundane ages. In the Kr'ita-Yuga,' Mann says, men are free from disease, attain all the objects of their desires, and live 400 years; but in the Treta and the succeeding Yugas, their life is lessened gradually by one quarter.'. In the Krita-Yuga, devotion is declared to be the highest object of men; in the Treta, spiritual knowledge; in the Dwápara, sacrifice; in the Kali, liberality alone.' See also for other passages the article KALIYUGA. The present or Kaliyuga of the world commenced in the year 3101 B. C., when in the year 1867, therefore, 4968 years of the Kaliyuga would have expired.-The term Yuga is sometimes also applied to other divisions of time. The Vishn'uPuran'a, for instance, mentions, besides the Yugas above named, a Yuga which consists of a cycle of five years, called Sam vatsara, Parivatsara, Idrat ara, Anuratsara, and Vatsara (see Wilson's translation of this Puran'a, 2d ed., by Fitzedward Hall, vol 1 p. 49, ff.; vol. ii. p. 254, ff.); and a Yuga, or eycle of five years, is, as Colebrooke states (Misollaneous Essays, vol. i. p. 106, ff.), likewise the eycle described in the astronomical treatises conDected with the Vedas. The use of the term Yuga, however, in such a special sense is not frequent, whereas its application to the four mundane ages is that which generally prevails in the classical And medieval Sanscrit literature. For other works, besides those already referred to, which afford information on these and other divisions of Hindu time, see Kala Sankalita, a Collection of Memoirs on the various Modes according to which the Nations of the Southern Parts of India divide Time, &c., by John Warren (Madras, 1825); and Carnatic Chronology, the Hindu and Mohammedan Methods of reckoning Time explained, &c., by Charles Philip Brown (Lond. 1863). YULE, the old name (still in provincial popular use) for Christmas. It points to heathen times, and to the annual festival held by the northern nations at the winter solstice as a part of their system of sun or nature worship. In the Edda, the sun is styled fagrahvel (fair or shining wheel); and a remnant of his worship, under the image of a firewheel, survived in Europe as late at least as 1823. The inhabitants of the village of Konz, on the Moselle, were in the habit, on St John's Eve, of taking a great wheel wrapped in straw to the top of a neighbouring eminence, and making it roll down the hill, flaming all the way: if it reached the Moselle before being extinct, a good vintage was anticipated. A similar usage existed at Trier (see Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, p. 586). The old Norse hvel, A.-S. hveol, Eng. wheel; but from the same root would seem to have developed into Icel. hiol, Swed. and Dan. hjul, have sprung old Norse jol, Swed. and Dan. jul, A.-S. geol, Eng. Yule, applied as the name of the winter solstice, either in reference to the conception of the wheeling or turning back at that time in his path in sun himself as a wheel, or, more probably, to his the heavens. Goth. hveila, Eng. while, denote time as wheeling or revolving. The general nature of the festival, and the way in which the observances were overlaid, or transformed and masked by the Christian institution, are noticed under the head of CHRISTMAS. In the greenery with which we still deck our houses and temples of worship, and in the Christmas trees laden with gifts, we perhaps see a relic of the symbols by which our heathen forefathers signified their faith in the power of the returning sun to clothe the earth again with green, still or lately eaten on Christmas eve or morning in and hang new fruit on the trees; and the furmety many parts of England (in Scotland, the preparation of oatmeal called sowans, is used), seems to be a lingering memory of the offerings paid to Hulda or Berchta (q. v.), the divine mother, the northern Ceres, or personification of fruitfulness, to whom they looked for new stores of grain. The burning of the Yule-log (or Yule-clog) testifies to the use of fire in the worship of the sun (see BELTEIN). YVETOT, an old town of France, in the dep. of Seine-Inférieure, is situated on an elevated and fertile plain, 32 miles north-east from Havre, and 23 northwest from Rouen by railway. The houses are mostly of wood, roofed with slates, the principal street being upwards of two miles long; there is a well-planted promenade, but the town contains few objects of interest. There are manufactures of linen, cotton, calico, and velvet, and a considerable trade in cattle and agricultural produce. (1866) 8092. The Lord of Y. is styled Roi d'Yvetot' in old chronicles, and antiquaries have been much puzzled to account for the origin of the title. There is a tradition that Clotaire, son of Clovis, having slain one Gaulthier, Lord of Y., before the high altar of Soissons, endeavoured to make atonement for the sacrilegious deed by conferring the title of king on the heirs of Gaulthier. Pop. Ꮓ = = THE last letter of the English and other West European alphabets, had no place in the original Latin alphabet, but was adopted in the time of Cicero from the Greek along with y (v), and thus stood last. In Greek, it had the sixth place, and had the power of a double consonant, being equivalent to ds or sd; in Latin, its use was confined to words of Greek origin. In HighGer., in which it is pronounced like ts, it corresponds to t in the Low-Germanic and the Scandinavian tongues, e. g., zeit Eng. tide (time). In Ital., z or zz mostly takes the place of the Lat. ti, as in negozio negotium, palazzo palatium, and is pronounced ts, or, preceded by n, ds. In Eng. and in Fr., it represents the flat sibilant sound of which s is the sharp. But in Eng., as in the vast majority of cases has always been employed to represent the flat sibilant sound as well as the sharp (e. g., in almost all plurals, as bones, cards, in words like revise, &c.), there is a tendency to drop the use of z, except in a few individual words, such as size, prize. Many maintain the use of z in words derived from the Greek, especially from verbs in izō, as baptize, and also in words formed on the analogy of these, as legalize; but even the advocates of this rule do not act on it consistently, and the mere English scholar is fairly puzzled. This is one of the points of English orthography most urgently calling for reform. ZAANDA'M, or SAARDAM, an important town in North Holland, is situated on both banks of the river Zaan, at its entrance into the Y, a deep and narrow bay of the Zuider Zee, 5 miles north-west of Amsterdam on the other side of the bay. In former times, ship-building was carried on very extensively at Z., but has now nearly ceased. The whale-fishing, which, in 1701, employed 35 ships, has been altogether abandoned. There is still a considerable shipping-trade. The principal industries are sawing wood, preparing vegetable oil chiefly from colza-manufacturing paper, grinding grain, mustard, dye-stuffs, snuff, &c., making starch, rope-spinning, and iron-founding. At a distance, the town looks like a forest of windmills. Z. is a pleasant place, and many of the inhabitants are reputed to be wealthy. In 1697, Peter the Great worked in one of the ship-building yards as a carpenter, and the house in which he lived is carefully preserved. It was visited in 1814 by the Emperor Alexander of Russia, and is now surrounded with another building, to prevent exposure to the weather. There are two Dutch Reformed churches, one Lutheran, two Baptist, and two Roman Catholic churches, a Jewish synagogue, and several institutions for orphans and old people. Two public schools, a school of design, and two poor schools are maintained by the town. Pop. (1866) 12,320. ZABERN (the Roman taberna, tavern) is the name of three towns on the west side of the Upper Rhine, two of them German, and the other French. The first two are in the Palatinate (Rhenish Bavaria) viz., Berg-Zabern, a town of about 3000 inha bitants, on the Erlenbach, occupied chiefly with agriculture and some small manufactures; and Rhein-Zabern, about four miles further east, on the same stream, with little more than 2000 inhabitants, noted for the two battles fought there and at the village of Jokgrin, about two miles further south, between the Austrians and the French, 29th June and 20th August 1793. The other, which, to distinguish it from these, is called Alsace-Zabern, once likewise a German town, now belongs to France. In French, it is called SAVERNE, and is the chief town of an arrondissement in the dep. of Bas-Rhin. It is situated on the Zorn, which flows into the Rhine, and on the Paris and Strasbourg Railway and highway, and also on the Marne and Rhine Canal, and possesses a palace and college and 5100 inhabitants, who are employed in making cloth, pottery, leather, and hardware, and in the transport of wood from the Vosges Mountains. It belonged in the 12th c. to the bishops of Metz, and afterwards to those of Strasbourg. There are still some Roman antiquities in the college. In 1696, the fortifications were razed. The stately palace was rebuilt by Cardinal Louis de Rohan, famous in the story of the Diamond Necklace (q. v.); it served in 1817 and 1818 as barracks for the Austrian army of occupation; of late, it has been converted into an institution for the widows and daughters of the members of the Legion of Honour. The surrounding scenery is rich in ruins and picturesque about nine miles long, leads, with many windings A spiral walk, called the Zabern Path, and 17 covered bridges, to the top of the Vosges, from which the spectator looks down on Alsace as a garden. The Pass of Zabern, or Saverne, which divides the Upper and Lower Vosges, is only 1325 feet high. The railway, the canal, the Zorn, and highway, all run side by side along the charming valley; and there is a constant succession of bridges, the 45 minutes' journey from Z. to Saarbourg. embankments, viaducts, and tunnels throughout effects. ZA'BISM. In the article on SABEANS (q. v.), we spoke chiefly of certain inhabitants of Arabia Felix, the 'Sabaioi' of the Greeks, or 'Sabai' of the Romans. It appears that this name was, in the 4th c. A. D., superseded by that of Himyarites, and belonged to many tribes, that derived their descent from one Saba ('a descendant of Eber, or descendant of Noah'), who also was called Abd ShemeshServant of the Sun. These Sabeans, who considered themselves pure autochthons, in contradistinction to the immigrated tribes, have often been confounded with a number of other peoples of antiquity, and with professors of many forms of religious belief and speculation; in fact, the confusion that has sprung out of the unwieldy mass of information found respecting these many varieties, and which has been hopelessly mixed up by many generations of orientalists and theologians, is almost without parallel. We shall not here survey the manifold systems and theories that have been evolved from ZABISM. derived from ssaba, 'to turn, to move,' because they turned to the paths of untruth, instead of that or the true religion-i. e., Islam; or, as the Zabians themselves sometimes explain it, because they have turned to the proper faith.' Another Arabic derivation makes them take their name, still more absurdly, from a root ssabaa to fall away from the proper religion, or to turn one's head heavenwards-i. e., for the purpose of worshipping the angels and the stars, &c. European scholars have for the most part followed either Brooke or Scaliger, who variously hold the name to have sprung either from an Arabic root, which would point to their having come from the east,' or, again, from the Hebrew word for 'Host,' viz., of heaven, which they were supposed to worship. The real state of the case, however, is that, whatever the derivation of the name, it did not originally belong to the Harranians, as we have stated already, but was assumed by them, for the purpose of evading the Mohammedan persecutions, from the people mentioned in the Koran. time to time, and handed down carefully, but we shall rather in the main following Dr Chwolson -enumerate the principal stages of Z. as it appears, considered as a religious phase of mankind. We must premise that we exclude at once those imaginary Zabians who were taken by the medieval Arabic, Jewish, and Persian writers to be identical with heathen or star worshippers, as well as those who, like the ancient Chaldæans, the ante-Zoroastrian Persians, the Buddhists, &c., were vaguely called by that name by Mohammedan and other writers of the 12th c. These writers all start from the notion that idolatry, star-worship, and Sabæism were identical, and they called nearly all those who were neither Jews or Christians, nor Mohammedans or Magians, heathens or Sabæans. Z. had then become, like Hellenism, from being a nomen gentile, an appellative. Confining ourselves to historical Z., we have to distinguish (1) the Chaldæan Zabians of the Koran. These are the 'Parsified' Chaldee heathens or non-Christian Gnostics-the ancestors of the present Mendaïtes, or so-called Joannes Christians, who live not far from the Persian But it is by no means easy to say who these soGulf, and speak a corrupt kind of Chaldee- disguised Harranians really were, and what, since Aramaic; and (2) the Pseudo-Zabians, or Syrian it was neither Judaism, nor Christianity, nor Zabians (in Harran, Edessa, Rakkah, Bagdad), Mohammedanism, nor Magism, their religion really or, since 830-831 A. D., remnants of the ancient Syrian but Hellenised heathens. These disappear (as Zabians) since the 12th e., but perhaps still exist, under some other name, in Mesopotamia. It is those Pseudo-Zabians who spoke the most refined Syro-Aramaan dialect. They form the chief representatives of Z. emphatically deserving of the name. The first named, or Chaldæan (Babylonian) Zabians, who transferred that name to the Harranic Zabians, and were of great influence upon the development of these latter's peculiar speculations, are the people meant under that designation by the Koran, and by the Mohammedans of this day. They are, as we said, also known as Christians of St John, or Mendaites. Among the Nabathean heathens of the north-east of Arabia and the extreme south of Mesopotamia, near Wasith and Bassra, there arose, in the last decennium of the 1st c. A. D. a man named Elxai (Elchasai Scythianus), born in the north-east of Parthia (probably an adherent of Zoroastrianism, perhaps also acquainted with Buddhism), and spread among them Parsee ideas and Parsee religious rites and customs. They called themselves MendaïtesLe, Gnostics. Many of their religious legends and tales they adopted at a later period from their Jewish and Mohammedan neighbours-chiefly, it is presumed, with a view of making themselves less hated by the ruling Mohammedan powers. They received the name of Ssabiin from their constant washings, and purifications and baptisms. Their Arabic neighbours occasionally translated this word into the Arabic Al-Mogtasilah, 'those who wash themselves.' About a hundred years after the foundation of this sect by Elchasai, Manes was born of Mendaïte parents, and was brought up among the Mendaïtes. He remained faithful to this creed up to his 24th year, at which period he founded the new sect of Manichæans (q. v.), which did not at first depart so considerably from Mendaïsm as it did at a later period (see MANICHEANS). To these aboriginal Zabians there succeeded, in 830 A.D., a totally different kind of sect under the same name -viz, the Harranian Syrians. They themselves derived their denomination from one Zabi, who is variously called a son of Seth, son of Adam, or a son of Enoch or Idris, or a son of Methuselah, or of some fictitious Badi or Mari, a supposed companion of Abraham; while the Mohammedan writers, who, like the Greeks, endeavour to derive everything from their native tongue, either declare it to be consisted of. Former investigators mostly took them to have been a distinct race and people, and their religion to have been composed of Chaldaism, Parsism, Judaism, Christianity, Neo-Platonism, Gnosticism, and Cabbalistic speculations. This, however, is far from being the fact. Broadly speaking, they might perhaps best be described as Syrians, who, partly descended from Greek colonists, had been subject so long to Syrian influences that they became in a manner Syrianised. Their religion was heathenism, the old heathenism of their Syrian fathers, which had, with incredible obstinacy, resisted not only Christianity, but rendered even Mohammedan ill-will harmless by stratagem. There can, however, be no doubt about certain foreign non-pagan elements having crept into it during the early Christian centuries. Eclecticism prevailed at that period, and it was not only Greeks and Romans that found the influence of foreign, chiefly eastern, metaphysical speculation irresist ible. But apart from that peculiar syncretism, we find many other new additions to Harran idolatry in the shape of Zabism. There are, first of all, a certain number of legends about biblical personages from whom they pretend to be descendants-legends which, it may be presumed, they only, for the nonce, permitted to belong to their sacred traditions. There are further a number of laws of purity and impurity, and of sacrifices, which strongly remind of Judaism. Again, names of Greek and Roman gods, such as Helios, Ares, and Kronos, occur, a circumstance that perhaps may be explained from the prevailing tendency of the period of exchanging the names of native divinities for Greek and Roman names. Besides these foreign elements, there are certain metaphysical and physical views incorporated in their creed which are distinctly traceable to Aristotle, and finally, the theurgico-Neo-Platonic religious philosophy of heathenism, such as it is found in Porphyry, Proclus, Iamblichus, and the rest. All these apparently incongruous elements, however, infused into it by the circumstances of the period, do not prevent Z. from being in reality heatlienism. Were further proof needed, we should find it in the words of a celebrated Zabian, Thabit ben Korra, quoted by Barbebræus, in the shape of a panegyric on the town of Harran and its heathenism, uttered, as Barhebræus says, in his purblind obstinacy.' After speaking of Christianity-not to its advan tage-for some time, Thabit rejoices over the ZABISM. blessings that still belong to his native place, Harran, through its having kept itself utterly unsullied by that faith. We,' he continues (the Zabians or Harranians), are the heirs and progenitors of he thenism, which has once been gloriously spread over this globe. Blessed is he who bears his burden for heathenism's sake, with firm hopes. Who has civilised the world and built its cities, but the nobles and the kings of heathenism? Who has constructed the harbours and has made the rivers navigable? Who has taught the hidden science? To whom else has the deity revealed itself, given oracles, and told the things of the future, but to the most celebrated men among the heathen?.... Heathens have done all these things. They have brought to light the healing of souls; they have taught their salvation; they have also made manifest the art of healing the body; they have filled the world with institutions of government and with wisdom, which is the highest good. Without heathenism, the world would be empty and poverty-stricken, and swallowed np by great misery.' drop of it, has a presiding numen. These spirits also mould and shape everything bodily from one form into the other, and gradually bring all created things to the state of their highest possible perfection, and communicate their powers to all substances, beings, and things. By the movement and guidance of these spiritual beings, the different elements and natural compositions are influenced in such a way that the tenderest plant may pierce the hardest cliff. He who guides this world is called the first spirit. These gods know our most secret thoughts, and all our future is open to them. The female deities seem to have been conceived as the feeling or passive principle. These gods or intelligences emanate directly from God without his will, as rays do from the sun. They are, further, of abstract forms, free of all matter, and neither made of any substance nor material. They consist chiefly of a light in which there is no darkness, which the senses cannot conceive, by reason of its immense clearness, which the understanding cannot compre hend, by reason of its extreme delicacy, and which Without entering into a detailed account of the fancy and imagination cannot fathom. Their nature many sources whence our information is derived is free from all animal desires, and they themselves with regard to the creed itself, we shall briefly indi- are created for love and harmony, and for friendcate that they are written in Arabic, in Hebrew, ship and unity. They are not subject to local or and in Greek. The former are the most copious; temporal changes, and they rule the heavenly those in Hebrew are chiefly represented by Maimo- bodies, without finding the motion of the most nides; and the Greek are ascribed to various heavy too heavy, or that of the lightest too light. pseudonymous writers, among whom figure Aris- Their existence is full of the highest bliss, through totle and Hermes Trismegistus. From their their being near to the Most High, whom day various, and, to a great extent, contradictory state- and night they praise, without ever feeling fatigue ments, we owe the following indications regarding or lassitude, to whom they are never disobedient, the principal points of this creed. The Creator, it but whose will they always fulfil with supreme teaches, is in his essence, primitivity, originality, delight. They have a free choice, and always eternity, One; but in his many manifestations in incline to the good. 'These spiritual beings, our bodily figures, manifold. He is chiefly personified by lords and gods, are our intermediators and advothe seven leading planets, and by the good, knowing, cates with the Lord of lords and God of gods' excellent, earthly bodies. But his unity is not All substances and types of the bodily world emanthereby disturbed. It is, the Zabians say, 'as if the ate from the spiritual world, which is the one from seven planets were his seven limbs, and as if our which everything flows, and to which everything seven limbs were his seven spheres, in which he returns, and which is full of light, sublime and manifests himself, so that he speaks with our pure. These two worlds correspond to each other, tongue, sees with our eyes, hears with our ears, and are to each other like light and shadow. The touches with our hands, comes and goes with our way to approach these gods, and, through them, the feet, and acts through our members.' Nothing, we highest essence, is by purifying our souls from all are told, is more foreign to Z. than-what holds passions, by keeping a strict guard over our words good of the creed of the Sabæans only-rude star- and deeds, by fasting, heartfelt prayer, invocations, worship. Z., according to the authority of Sharas- sacrifices, fumigations, and incantations. By stead tani, expresses the idea that God is too great and fastly persevering in these and similar acts of devotoo sublime to occupy himself directly with the tion, man may reach so high a step of perfection that affairs of this world; that he therefore has handed he may communicate even directly with the Supreme over the ruling of it to the gods, and that he him- Power. The planets, as the principal representaself only takes the most important things under his tive and intermediate gods, are to be carefully special care; that, further, man is too weak to observed, especially as regards-1, the houses and address himself directly to the Highest, that he stations of the planets; 2, their rising and setting; therefore is obliged to direct prayers and sacritices 3, their respective conjunctions and oppositions; 4, to the intermediate deities to whom the rule of the knowledge of the special times and seasons, the this world is intrusted. Thus the veneration shewn hours and days of the ruling of special planets; 5, to planets, and even the worshipping of idols, is the division of the different figures, forms, climates, nothing but a symbolical act, the consequence of and countries, according to their dominant stars— that original idea. There are many gods and god- the prevailing notion of the Zabians being, like that desses in Z. of this intermediate stamp. It is not of the Chaldees and the sect of the so-called Mathethe planets themselves, but the spirits that direct maticians (according to Sextus Empiricus), as well and guide them and deliver them which are taken as of the Neo-Platonists in general, that everything as deities of this kind-deities that stand to the below heaven was subject, in a manner, to the spheres in the relation of soul to body. Apart from influence of stars, or the spirits that inhabit and these, there are those gods who cause or represent rule them. Every substance and every action, every action in this world. Every universal natural every country and every hour, has its special planedeed or effect emanates from a universal deity, tary deity. It is therefore well to study carefully every partial one from a partial deity that presides the special conjunctions and figures, as well as the over part of nature. Everything that appears in special mixtures of incense, which might cause the the air, which is formed near the sky or arises from individual numen to be propitious. Thus, e. g., the earth, always is the product of certain gods, that according to the Zabian belief, the first hour of preside over these manifestations, in such a manner Saturday stands under Saturnus, and it is therefore that the rain in general, as well as every special|right and advisable to select at that time such |