"Quis tu, læte puer? GENIUS.-Cur dextera aristam, leve uvas, vertex quidve papaver habet? Hæc tria dona Deum CERERIS, BACCHI, et SOPORIS. Namque his mortales vivitis, et Genio."-p. 200.

Who art thou, O cheerful boy? GENIUS.-Why hast thou in thy right hand corn, in thy left grapes, and on thy head the poppy? These three are gifts of the divinities, CERES, BACCHUS, and SLEEP; for by these, and by GENIUS, ye mortals live.

"In melius servat."-p. 234.

It keeps better within.

"Non nisi grandia canto."-p. 355.

I sing only lofty themes.

"Brevi complector* singula cantu.”—p. 361.

I comprehend every thing in a brief song.

"Pastorum carmina ludo."-p. 368.

I play the songs of shepherds.

"Irridens cuspide figo."-p. 372.

Laughing, I pierce with my weapon's point.

"Pro aris et focis."―p. 406.

For our altars and our hearths.

By a mistake, this word is printed in the text, cum plector." The pupil will therefore remember to read "complector."

ICONOLOGICAL ESSAYS.

INTRODUCTION.

1. Few things are better calculated to engage the attention of Youth, and to afford them solid instruction under the guise of amusement, than the PERSONIFICATION of the Passions, Arts, Sciences, Virtues, Vices, &c. with their proper attributes and symbols, correctly represented, accompanied by a clear explanation, with pertinent reflections superadded.

2. To blend amusement with instruction in the cultivation of young minds; to render the paths of education as smooth and agreeable as possible; to implant important truths without the appearance of dictation, and to render the acquirement of knowledge an object of desire, rather than aversion, has been, and still is, the aim of most writers on these interesting subjects: to the attainment of this desideratum, ICONOLOGY,* or Allegorical instruction, is likely to be one important step.

3. Children, from their earliest years, are delighted with pictures, and insensibly imbibe ideas from them. If, therefore, care be not taken to place before them such as will convey to their minds some valuable precept, some useful information, they will probably supply themselves with such as tend to cherish some absurd superstition, some romantic fallacy; or, perhaps, some demoralizing propensity which exists within them.

4. The attributes and symbols which ICONOLOGY, or the art of speaking by pictures, gives the virtues and vices,

From two Greek words, Eikon, an image, and Logos, a discourse.

B

tend greatly to incite a love for the former, and a detestation of the latter, in the youthful breast. What child will not feel himself excited to a greater reverence for his parents, when he sees parental affection represented by the PELICAN feeding her young with her own blood?* and to abhor the base passion of ENVY, when it is set before his eyes under the form of a lean and wrinkled HAG, with serpents instead of hair, and gnawing a human heart?

We

5. Nor are its advantages confined to the influence which it exercises on our minds in a moral point of view. are enabled, by familiarity with this branch of study, to understand the meaning of many Allegorical representations on ancient coins, medals, bas-reliefs,+ &c., and to retain in our memory the peculiar qualities and circumstances attached to certain natural productions, countries, rivers, seasons, animals, &c. 6. Thus, a child learns that the LION is a generous beast, from seeing it depicted as the emblem of generosity; that the TIGER is treacherous and cruel, from its being used to represent the vices of treachery and cruelty, &c.; and that the DoG is faithful and sagacious, from its being the attribute of faithfulness and sagacity.

7. But we must be careful to counteract, by explanation, vulgar errors, which some attributes and symbols would, otherwise, countenance and confirm. Thus, in the iconical representation of AIR, the CHAMELEON is employed as an attribute, from the vulgar but erroneous opinion, that it lives wholly on that element. 8. The SALAMANDER is likewise an attribute in the personification of FIRE, because it is falsely supposed to be able to en

* This idea, however, is a mere fiction of the ancients, and is only retained as the customary symbol of parental affection.

+ Sculpture, the figures of which do not stand out from their ground in their full proportion.

dure its scorching heat without injury. But a few blemishes of this kind may be rendered advantageous, rather than otherwise, by affording an opportunity of showing their fallacy, and of explaining the true state of the case to the young aspirant after knowledge.

9. ICONOLOGY has likewise, pre-eminently, the merit of concentration; for a depicted symbol, however small in itself, may represent a vast assemblage of attributes; and as it forcibly appeals to the EYE, the most sensitive and the most comprehensive of our external organs, and at the same time the most auxiliary to the memory, it is especially calculated to imprint its subject on the mind.

10. Thus, by contemplating any symbolic representation, and immediately perusing the description which pertains to it, the former is far more strongly impressed on the memory and imagination than the latter; while, at the same time, the two are so connected, that a future remembrance of the symbol will, almost inevitably, induce the recollection, in a general degree, of the subject which it is intended to represent.

11. It must, therefore, be obvious, that iconical representation is a most desirable mode of instruction for youth; since, by ocular impression, it firmly imprints. ideas on the memory, and strongly calls those ideas into action by the mere sight or recollection of the symbol.

12. Such being a few of the advantages likely to result from putting into the hands of young persons a collection of iconological figures, accompanied by clear explanations and valuable inferences and observations, the writer may be allowed to express a hope, that this little work will occupy a distinguished place among the many valuable productions, for the promotion of education and the dissemination of useful knowledge, that have appeared in

the present age; works which enable children of tender years to acquire information on subjects of which ancient sages were ignorant, and make them better geographers, astronomers, and natural philosophers, than were Strabo, Ptolemy, or Aristotle.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES.

STRABO was a celebrated Greek philosopher, historian, and geographer. He flourished under Augustus, and died in the reign of Tiberius, about A. D. 25, at a very advanced age. All his works are lost, except his Geography, in seventeen books; a work which is justly esteemed as a very precious remain of antiquity. In this book, after showing that the study of Geography is not only worthy of, but even necessary to, a philosopher, he describes Spain, Gaul, the Britannic Isles; Italy and the adjacent Isles; Germany, the Countries of the Getæ and Illyrii, Taurica, Chersonesus, Epirus, Greece and the Isles; Asia, India, Persia, Syria, Arabia; Egypt, Ethiopia, and Carthage, and other places of Africa.

CLAUDIUS PTOLEMY, a celebrated mathematician and astrologer, was born at Pelusium,† and surnamed by the Greeks most divine and most wise. He flourished at Alexandria, the capital of Egypt, about the 138th year before the Christian era. Several learned works of his, on Astronomy, and one on Geography, are extant. His system of the world was, for many years, adopted by philosophers and astronomers; but the learned have now rejected it for the more reasonable one of Copernicus.

ARISTOTLE, one of the most celebrated philosophers of ancient Greece, and the founder of the Peripatetic (or walking) sect, was born at Stagyra, a small city in Macedon, about 384 years B.C. From the place of his birth he is called the Stagyrite. He went to Athens, and became a disciple of Plato, at seventeen years of age; under whom he studied till he was 37. Upon the death of PLATO, ARISTOTLE left Athens and retired to Atarnya, a little city of Mysia, where he married Pythias, sister of his friend Hermius, the reigning prince. Subsequently he went to Mytelene, the capital of the island of Leslos; and here he remained until PHILIP, king of Macedon, who had heard of his great reputation

* See Pinnock's Grammar of Ancient (or Classical) Geography. + A strong and noble city of Egypt.

See note to the Essay on IMAGINATION.