entered on the subject, translating, “shabua" as a week of years; and I do not meet with a trace of any author translating it as a week of days, and then converting days into years. I find Chrysostom thus expressing himself, in his tract against the Jews, vol. i. p. 644, (Ben. ed.) Evravoa μοι μετα ακρίβειας προσέχετε, το γαρ παντος ζήτημα ενταυθα εστιν : εβδομα δες επτα, και εβδομαδες εξέκοντα δυο, 483 έτη, εβδομαδας γαρ ενταύθα ουκ ημερων φησιν, ουδε μηνων, αλλ' εβδομαδας ενιαυτων,—which I would thus translate, "Here attend to me accurately, for it is the hinge of the whole question. The 7 weeks and the 62 weeks make up 483 years, for he does not here speak of weeks of days, or of months, but WEEKS OF YEARS." I looked into Augustine, and find him treating on the subject of Daniel's weeks, in his epistle to Hesychius, vol. ii. p. 748. He there says, "Anni enim quadraginginti nonaginta sunt, in hebdomatibus septuaginta,' "For there are 490 years in 70 weeks." In these early authors there is not to be found a trace of translating the word by a week of days, and then interpreting the days by years. This is an ingenious solution, reserved for later times of the church, and which sprang up after the hypothesis of the 1260 years. So that, in fact, that mode of solving the question of the 70 weeks is the child of that hypothesis; and yet that hypothesis takes for a foundation to rest upon, that solution of which it is itself the parent. Nothing can be more explicit than the language of Jerome, in his comment upon the place of Daniel, vol. iii. p. 1110. "Dicit autem ipse angelus septuaginta annorum hebdomadas, id est, annos quadringentos nonaginta." "The angel himself says 70 weeks of years, that is 490 years." R. D. MISCELLANEOUS COMMUNICATIONS. THREE WEEKS IN SCOTLAND. TO THE EDITOR OF THE CHRISTIAN EXAMINER. SIR-I never desired that you should оссиру the pages of the Examiner with my trivial sketches, except on occasions when your own deficiency of supply in other and more important matter warranted you in resorting to such bagatelles as I can give. I believe periodicals in general find their summer supplies somewhat like the streams that feed our rivers-scanty, slow, and shallow; and the editorial pilot finds that sometimes he can scarcely, as in duty bound, float his monthly vessel out of dock. So I beseech you, take in light and pleasant mood this continuation of my three weeks' rambling and idling in Scotland, written perhaps in as idling and as rambling a style as I travelled; though, notwithstanding you are pleased to flatter, I am sadly afraid I cannot administer to the entertainment even of all your readers, inasmuch as certain acute buckram critics have grievously lowered my previous sketches in-their own estimation. If, however, I succeed in amusing the fair and junior portion of an Irish parson's family, I shall have my reward; for they at least may rest contented with being amused, and will not unreasonably expect any thing more than the surface information which a three weeks' survey can afford, and may justify the prudence that refuses to imitate those Scotch and English travellers who coach it across our green isle-listen to the conversation of VOL. XI. 4 Q the Popish and the Orange parties-like sages "learned in the law" compare their notes-and then pronounce, ex cathedra, on the state of parties and of party politics-and propound their quackeries for the cure of our diseases, with as much confidence as if, to use George Faulkner's phrase, they had entered into the very "blood and bowels of poor old Ireland." I confess, Sir, I would trepidate lest the trivialities of an Irish Beotian should meet a Scottish eye, were I not comforted by the consolation that not a single copy of the Christian Examiner is imported by the booksellers of MODERN ATHENS: and so, secured in my own insignificance, my “nuga" shall pass unheeded, and our island of saints still remain in Caledonian estimation an island of undiscerning dunces. I left Glasgow as I entered it-in a drizzle of rain. The inside of the coach, in which I took my seat for Edinburgh, was occupied by a female, who (though the fact may appear strange) kept a modest and continuous silence, and two persons who turned out to be farmers. Every man of sense knows what a foolish thing it is to keep the lips hermetically sealed during any excursion in which Providence places him in contact with strangers, though it were only for an hour or two. I sincerely trust that my most censorious friends have no reason to accuse me of excessive garrulity, yet I think I can both give and receive something in the strangest company I may be placed in. So I made use of my talisman-touched the Caledonian feeling, and warmed the Caledonian blood, and was soon over head and ears in conversation. This mighty magic consists in speaking favourably of Scotch manners, customs, institutions, scenery, &c. as indeed in general you have every reason to do: though, by the way, the same talisman might be of some use to a Scotchman in Ireland. The appearance of some poor Irish labourers trudging along the miry road, turned the conversation upon the good or evil accruing to Scotland from the inroads of the lower orders of the Irish; and one of the farmers, who, if I might judge from the tone of his remarks, seemed a more religious man than the other, inveighed bitterly against the immigration of the Connaught men. "It was a sair day for Scotland that opened a door for the wild papist creatures to pour in upon us, and pollute the hale country! I mind vera weel what kind o' a toun Glasgow was, before steam boats and steam looms brought them upon us like locusts. But noo!-gang to the Gorbals on a Sabbath day, or to the Calton, or Brigton, or ony place whare a wheen o' the swearing, drinking, fighting crew meet together, and ye wud think that they were deevils incarnate. I wadna gie a stroke o' wark to ane o' them!" "Hoot toot, neighbour, ye are unco stiff and prejudeezed! I bae employed them mony a time, and I'll gie them wark again, whenever they come in my way." "Ah! John, John, ye were ay mair for gear than for godliness. Ye wadna care though the country were turned into a den o' thieves, so be ye got the ither bawbee to put into your pouch." "Wheesht, Rab, ye like the sillar yoursel, and I never saw the man or woman yet that wad fling it ow're their shouther. I hae a heavy rent and a sma' family, and I dinna see what should hinder me frae gieing wark to the Irish bodies that come sae far to seek it, and can do it as weel and far cheaper than our ain folk." And so, John, it wad be naething to you if a' Scotland were turned papists, and the image o' Baal set up in the house o' God, and our Sabbath-days turned into fairs and fighting days, so be ye could pay your Och! och!" rent. "Ye needna och, och, at me, for I gang to the kirk as weel as yoursel, though to be sure I'm no an elder. But if the Irishmen answer my purpose, and finish their wark, and then gang and spend their bits o' bawbees on a dram, what's that to me? Its nae business o' mine." "Why," said I, "if Scotchmen would endeavour to speak to the poor Irish on religious subjects, at the same time that they give them employment, much good might be done. They are a susceptible race-are away from the priests, and their "voteen" spies-emphatically, no man may be said to care for their souls-and on a Sabbath-day the farmer who occasionally employs a few of my countrymen might produce lasting effects by assembling them together, and reading a portion of the word of God." "That's vera gude, Sir, and I daresay ye wadna speak that way if ye were a papist, and didna ken the value o' the blessed Buke. But ye ken its easier to keep a plague out o' a country, than to cure it after it gets in. If I was to hire a wheen labourers at the Cross o' Glasgow, and on the Sabbath-day to bring them in amang the rest o' my family, when we are at the reading, and hearkening the questions, maybe ane wad be impressed, but the rest wad laugh in their sleeves, for they are unco cunning, and perhaps wad crack the crown o' the puir fallow that showed ony signs o' grace. Na, na, I wad pack the hale set out o' the country, bag and baggage, and send wives, brats, and a' to their ain darling island that they mak sic a brag about." "Why, my good friend, I admire your prudence, and respect the feeling which makes you so sensitive about preserving the morals of the land of cakes.' But if you will not allow poor Paddy to follow his beef, his pork, and his butter, a retaliatory measure might be resorted to, and I assure you the ears of every one of your countrymen would tingle at the bare mention of turning off, bag and baggage, all the Scotch who have feathered, or are feathering, their nests in poverty-struck Ireland. Many of them would positively shudder at the thought of being sent home to bake their cakes, instead of making their bread in Ireland.' Though this argumentum ad hominem at first struck rather deep, subsequent conversation smoothed it over, and I daresay we all three parted tolerable good friends, and perhaps better informed on the subject of Irish and Scotch emigration. The country, after you leave the Valley of the Clyde, is by no means interesting. I believe nothing very pleasurable is to be seen between the Caledonian Corinth and Athens. The beauties of Scotland lie along its glens and rivers, and crossing over its lofty ridges (out of the Highlands) which divide the fall of the waters flowing to the eastern or western seas. The muirs are dreary and barren, and though you may see and admire Scottish industry and capital expended largely and to great effect in bringing these nonnatural places into cultivation, yet to a traveller the general aspect is ugly; and in passing through one or two towns seemingly destitute of the accompaniments of cleanliness, comfort, and industrious occupation which mark places of the same size in England, I thought I could still recognize some of the features of Sir Walter Scott's description of a Scottish borough town, as it appeared eighty years ago. On a wet and dusky evening I arrived in Edinburgh. Its towering castle rose loomingly through the mist, and as we dashed down Prince's street, I could see, in spite of rain and fog, that I had arrived in as picturesque a city as Europe can boast. Every body knows something of what this far-famed place is like, and so nobody will feel surprised that the next morning's smiling sun found me making my way for that finest of hill fortresses, which fills the eye wheresoever you look, and which has exhausted every figure that my ambitous imagination can form. Last night I might have compared it to a giant resting on its throne of clouds-but that's stolen from Campbell, and he perhaps stole it from some other body. This morning it was grand and gay, and its towers, curtained battlements, and bastions, surmounting the lichen-stained and ivy-clothed masses of the living rock, expressed how the might of man had brought under subjection the magnificence of nature; but my spurred-on imagination refused to supply any new comparison, even though I reached at the sublime, by thinking of it as a relic of the olden time, a fragment of a world as completely revolutionized as any one emboweled in the earth, and buried in the recesses of the ocean, until, in a happier moment of inspiration, I conceived that it was the generalissimo of Brobdignag riding in state on a mastodon. I passed over a bridge without water, but not without wind, for a northeaster was blowing there nearly strong enough to lift aloft the most tenacious adherent of terra firma, and nearly keen enough to wither the deli cate frame of a Southron to mummy-I looked behind me, as well as the blustry wind would permit, and saw the new city stretching away round the foot of the hill, and adorned with all the graces and the glories of modern architecture, broad and beautiful streets, handsome squares, fine public buildings, built not of plastered brick but of solid stone-and before me the old town piled up and huddled together, under the protection of the rock-built castle, and which plainly told that the inhabitants in the "iron age" were unable or afraid to come down from their hill, and extend their houses over level surface, and so they reared one "flat" on the top of another, till the habitations rose reeking to the skies, like the fabled mountain work of Titans, and as if "Auld Reekie" was not disposed to stop until she made a land of the sky and an Attic story of the heavenswhile under the bridge, rolled a tide not of waters but of men, and where, if fish did not swim they were sold, the city markets occupying the space below. Passing up the High street, as singular a street certainly as ever struck my eye, being I suppose a mile long, at one end a royal palace, at the other the castle, and along the street its gigantic grotesque buildings, with their curious wooden balconies, and gables, and uncouth ornaments— here John Knox holding forth from his mimic pulpit, there a text of holy writ--yonder a bas relief, representing a Roman emperor and empress, but mistaken by many worthy Scots for Adam and Eve-and interspersed up and down, nearly defaced armorial bearings, proclaiming where the haughty barons once dwelt-I at length arrived at the esplanade in front of the magnificent fortress. I paused to look down the inclined plane which I had just ascended, and smiled at the likeness which some have fancied to a turtle the Castle being the head, the High street the ridge of the back, the wynds, and closses, and abrupt precipitous descents, the shelving sides, and Holyrood the tail. The satirical Englishman who wrote in 1745, describes it more apprehensively, when he says the town is like a double comb, (an engine, he sneeringly says, not very commonly known amongst them,) one great street, and each side stocked with narrow alleys, which I mistook for common-shores!" (The new town was not in existence in this impudent fellow's time.) The English travellers, a century ago, to make themselves very merry at the odoriferousness of Edinburgh, and Dr. Johnson, arriving at night, on being asked if he saw the city, growled out that he smelt it in the dark but though it was early when I ascended, the scavengers had been abroad, and without annoyance to any sense, d reached the aforesaid esplanade, and feasted my eyes as the morning sun played its beams upon the weather-beaten towers, and lightened up. whole scene as with "a flood of glory." used the ATHENS of the north! Thou hast been the seat of feudal royalty and barbaric strife-thou hast been the seat of stern zeal and fanatic furythou hast been the seat of intellect devoted to the uprooting of a system which shall flourish when Arthur's Seat and Salisbury Craigs are strewed on the surrounding plains-thou hast been, and thou art still, the seat of human science and philosophy-thou hast been, and thou art still, Imagination's airy seat, where she has waved her magic wand, and uttered her enchanting sounds-thou art still the seat of powerful intellect, much of it not devoted to the God who gave it, but still having no mean share dedicated to the highest and noblest purposes-and the influence thou hast exercised on MAN shall be felt, and thy name shall live, though the sea were to burst upon thy rocks, and the caverns of earth to swallow up the monuments of ancient and of modern time! Advancing to the railing which prevents the heedless from topling projectively into the hollow below, I gazed on the scene. The dry valley which lies at the foot of the hill, and which was once the North Loch, is cultivated like a garden, and the new town seemed at my very feet, and looked like a confederation of palaces-Calton Hill, to the north east, with the columns of its unfinished temple glistening in the sun-more to the south, Salisbury Craigs and Arthur's Seat casting their long shadows westward on the city-farther eastward, the Forth stretching its broad bosom to receive the shipping, gathered under the shelter of Inchkeiththe shores of Fife beyond-and the blue line of the Grampians, seen in the indistinctness which the eastern wind always gives to the horizon-it was enchanting! Naturally anxious to acquire information respecting the localities, I addressed a big burly personage, dressed in a short brown coat, buttoned up to the neck, breeches and gaiters of a lighter shade, tightly buttoned to the knee, who, with whip in hand, was pacing up and down. Pointing to one of the spires in the new town, I begged to know what place of worship it indicated. Whenever I addressed myself to Scotch courtesy, I have never been disappointed in getting a civil answer. "Indeed, Sir, I canna just say-I'm a perfect stranger here, like yoursel, for I only cam last night frae the wast country wi' some bits o' fat beasts to sell, and I'm no vera weel acquaint yet." "That new town down there is really a beautiful place, and I suppose is far superior to any other of your Scotch towns ?" "Superior! Its to compare an Ayrshire heifer to a Highland stot! Eh, mon, but its a bonnie place!" Ye'll be an Englisher, nae doubt ?” "No, I am an Irisher, a son of old Erin." "There's some fine beasts come frae your country. But I think there's room for improvement-ye dinna care much for the fattening o' some o' them." "Why, what kind of beasts do ye mean? Human or brute ?" A broad leering laugh convinced me that my new companion was an indefatigable humourist, one whose obstreporous mirth will be heard at every fair and market rising above the chaos of sounds that fill the atmosphere, but whose bargain-making eye is never shut, and whose profit and loss recollections never fail him in the hour of cause. "My certy," be at length exclaimed, some o' your twa legged beasts are queer customers! Jock M'Clintock, a Glasgow flesher, and I, tried to play a trick on a great gaping fallow, sax feet high-but he was up, and before I could get out o' his road, he floored me wi' a wee thick shillelagh he had. Look, there's the mark on my crown yet!" "Now, my good fellow, do you not think it would doing my simple, |