existing errors. Consult Biblical Theology of Storr. Works of Josephus and Philo. Works of Drusius and Scaliger. Tittman on

the Gnostics.

8. Grammar. It is absolutely essential that the interpreter of the scriptures should be a good grammarian. He must be acquainted with the various forms of words, aud their respective significations; he must understand the laws by which they are governed and connected in sentences, and must also be familiar with grammatical figures. It is in regard to these matters especially that a classical education is of so much value, since it gives enlarged views of these subjects and renders them familiar. It is astonishing, indeed, how often, in the scriptures, doctrinal arguments are drawn from established rules of grammatical expression. Take, for instance, our Saviour's overwhelming argument against the Sadducees, "That the dead are raised, even Moses showed at the bush when he called the Lord, the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." Here the force rests upon the use of the present tense in the Mosaic record: I am the God of Abraham, &c., not, I was the God of Abraham. Approved systems of English grammar may be consulted. Also, Winer's Grammar of the New Testament.

9. Rhetoric. A knowledge of rhetoric is of great value, particularly in supplying the rules to be applied in the interpretation of the parables and various rhetorical figures of the scriptures. It enables the student also to estimate properly the nature and arrangement of scripture arguments, and to judge correctly of the style of the different writers. See Kames' Elements of Criticism. Whateley's Rhetoric.

10. Logic. Correct views of this science are most useful. So large a portion of the scripture is argumentative, that Logic affords important aid in tracing the just connexion between its propositions and proofs, and in enabling the student to appreciate the clearness of its deductions. When the mind is habituated to the accuracy of diction and the justness of discrimination, which this study so eminently cultivates, it is far better prepared to understand and analyze those complicated trains of reasoning through which the Apostles sometimes reach the most important conclusions. By the peculiar discipline of this science, the mind is enabled to define clearly its own ideas, to trace with accuracy distinctions of importance which would otherwise remain unnoticed, and to determine the points of agreement in things that differ. In short, in pursuing the recondite and mysterious investigations of Holy Writ, which demand for their mere apprehension the highest and most cultivated

powers of mind, there is no knowledge of language and expression; no just view of the operations of the mind itself; no facility of distinction and definition which will not prove eminently serviceable. Whateley's Logic may be profitably studied. Also, Paley's Evidences of Christianity; Beattie's Essay on Truth; Abercrombie on the Intellectual Powers, &c.

R. R.

HISTORY OF THE CHOLERA.

WE place upon our pages, as a matter of future reference, the following brief history of the Asiatic Cholera, from that ably conducted journal, the London Times. The mystery which has attended this extraordinary visitation, and the relations which it sustains to the Divine Providence and the moral government of the world, render it important to preserve an authentic record of its origin and progress. R. R.

THE CHOLERA.

Toward the end of the last century (1781,) a body of 5,000 troops, stationed at Ganjam, a coast town, 535 miles north west of Madras, were suddenly attacked with a new disease, of such incredible malignity that men in perfect health dropped down dead by dozens. Exclusively of those then smitten with instantaneous death, more than five hundred men sickened in one day, and for the most part sank beyond recovery within an hour. Next day, the distemper still raged with unabated fury, and on the third day more than half the army had either perished or were in the hospital. Next year (1782) the troops under Sir John Burgoyne, at Madras, suffered from a similar, though less severe disorder, which within a month had attacked one thousand men, of whom some died in the first hour, others expired after a day or two in horrible convulsions, and very few recovered.

The year afterward (1783) the same strange malady broke out among the pilgrims at Hurdward, and swept off no less than 20,000 of the worshippers at this celebrated shrine. At about the same time many of the inhabitants of India,--civil as well as military, were seized with this cruel distemper, which the Moslems called "mordechim," or bowel death. The term "mordechim" was corrupted, by persons more conversant with French than Persian, into mort de chien. The symptoms of mort de chien, as described by Mr. Cur tis, who witnessed many cases of it both in Madras and Ceylon at that period, are identical with those of our spasmodic cholera.

The origin of cholera cannot be distinctly traced to an earlier epoch. The Braminical records, indeed, vaguely notice a somewhat similar disease as having prevailed among the Hindoos, in remote antiquity; and Bontius, a practitioner in Batavia, about two centuries ago, describes, under the name of cholera, a bilious dis

temper then prevalent in the Dutch settlement at Java. Passages, too, in the works of Hippocrates, Aretæus, Josephus, and Zacutus de Lisbonne, have been advanced in proof of the antiquity of cholera; and some have supposed that it was this pestilence which, in the time of King Hezekiah, overtook the Assyrian army, and smote, in one night, a hundred and four score thousand men. But, whether these ancient plagues were really spasmodic cholera cannot now be determined. No definite traces of its existence can be found before the outbreak of the mort de chien; and this distemper, we know, never spread beyond the confines of India.

In 1817, however, the mort de chien burst forth in Bengal with extraordinary malignity, and was found to have changed its character. No longer localized in the tropics, it was observed to travel rapidly westward; and men began to forebode, from its rate and course, that it would soon invade the continent of Europe. The circumstances

of this disastrous outbreak-the origin of the mortality under which we are now suffering-deserves attentive consideration. The overflow of the river Ganges had swelled to a greater height than usual the annual inundation of the marshy plains adjacent. Cities and villages appeared like houses in the midst of a temporary ocean, covered with innumerable boats, and traversed even by vessels of 100 tons burden. The whole country round Jessore was one sheet of water, and those jungly marshes, known as the Sunderbunds, which are intersected by the numberless streams forming the delta of the Ganges, lay steaming in a moist, calm air, neither quite overflowed, nor yet quite dry, a hot bed of putrescent miasma.

It was under such circumstances, aggravated by the heats of August, that the first seizure occurred at Jessore. The mortality spread rapidly among the population, infecting chiefly the miserable Pariahs, who earn, by excessive toil under a vertical sun, only about 21d a day, and who live in squalid hovels, crowded and damp, in the filthiest quarters of the town. In a few weeks, 10,000 souls, a sixth of the population, had perished. The civil courts were closed, business was suspended, and the wealthier inhabitants fled in crowds to the country. Within a month the disease broke out in Calcutta, abont 100 miles to the south west, brought, as some say, by fugitives from Jessore; originating spontaneously, as others suppose, from the same cause in both places. Here, also, it committed fearful ravages, destroying daily two hundred persons. Its migratory character soon became terribly apparent, within a few weeks it had devastated every town and village within an area of several thousand square miles, from Sylhet in the east, to Cuttock in the west, and from the mouth of the Ganges upward to its confluence with the Jumana.

From this central district the pestilence travelled by three principal streams, one flowing south west along the Coromandel coast, to Madras; another south east, along the opposite coast of the Bay of Bengal to Arracan and the Malay peninsula; a third, westward, along the valley of the Ganges to Bundelcund, where the grand army, consisting of 10,000 fighting men and 80,000 camp followers, was assembled under the Marquis of Hastings.

The south-western stream took twelve months to reach Madras; SERIES III.-VOL.

56*

in six months more, it had crossed to the northern coast of Ceylon, which island it rapidly overran; and thence it was conveyed by the Topaz frigate to Mauritius, where it appeared in November, 1819.

The south-eastern stream travelled more slowly. It took twelve months to reach Arracan, and twelve more to descend along the coast to the Malay peninsula. At the British settlement of Penang (an island on that coast) it destroyed three-fourths of the population. Thence it made its way through Sumatra, Java, and the Spice Islands to Timor, its extreme south-eastern límit, spreading at the same time northward to the Phillippine Islands, where it decimated the barbarian tribes, who rose against the Chinese and Europeans, accused them of magic, and butchered thousands. At Pontianah, a Dutch settlement on the western coast of Borneo, it carried off the whole garrison except one man. Still running northward, (in 1820) it reached Canton, ravaged Pekin in 1821, and after devastating China for several years, passed the Great Wall in 1826, and spread through many parts of Mongolia. It is not true, therefore, though the assertion is common, and has been made the basis of a theory of Choleraic propagation, that this disease only travels westward.

The western stream, traversing about 400 miles in three months, against the pertodical monsoon, and infecting some but sparing others of the towns and villages in its track, reached, early in November, the British army encamped on low ground, on the banks of the Scinde. It turned the camp into an hospital. Nine thousand men, about a tenth of whom were English or Sepoy soldiers, the rest camp followers, perished in a week. The sentinel was often seized at his post-his successor would be smitten too-a third man, and a fourth would sometimes succumb before the two hours duty was performed. Many fell down in convulsions while carrying their comrades to the hospitals. The neighboring ravines were filled with the dead, for whose burial time and hands were wanting. For miles around, the fields and highways were strewn with the bodies of those who had vainly sought safety in flight. And when at length the commander-in-chief determined to move in search of a healthier position, the line of march presented the appearance of a battle field. Nor was it till the army reached a high position at Erich, 50 miles off, on the steep dry banks of the Betwah, that the disease amongst them began to subside.

Within twelve months, that is, by August 1818, the western stream of the epidemic, in pursuing its course along the Ganges and its tributary, the Jumna, had reached Delhi, spreading also to Saharamport, and Kota, towns situated just within the western limit of the basin drained by those rivers, Having ravaged these and many intervening towns, it stopped abruptly for nearly a year, arrested by the mountain range which bounds the basin in question on the west. By the time it reached Delhi, however, it had also spread northward to the high table land of Nepaul, on the southern slope of the Himalayah mountains, which checked for years its farther progress towards Central Asia. At the same time it made its way southward to Bombay, where also it had appeared in August 1818; add whence six months later it descended to Trivandrum, and to the coasts of Cape Comorin, the most southern part of India.

Briefly, within 18 months from its first outbreak, the epidemic had overrun the whole Indian peninsula, and had proceeded, in its course toward Europe, to the hills forming the western boundary of the basin of the rivers Ganges and Jumna. These hills, though their eastern slope was devastated by the epidemic for nearly twelve months, checked its career, to the great joy of the inhabitants of Chittore and other territories lying westward of the range, who thought themselves secure from the terrible enemy which had taken possession of the opposite plains. Their fancied immunity was soon, however, at an end. Suddenly, in July, 1819, the people of Chittore learned, to their consternation, that the cholera was at Oudepore, the metropolis of the principality; and that entering the royal palace, it had attacked the Prince himself, and had destroyed his Prime Minister in a few hours. In this city, as also at Ajmer and many towns adjacent, it committed dreadful havoc. Another pause -this time of two years-ensued. The mountain chain and burning deserts which lie westward of Hindostan seem for a while to have barred its passage.

In July, 1821, it broke out with tremendous violence at Muscat, Bushire, and Bussorah, the three principal ports of the Persian Gulf. In Muscat alone, 10,000 persons perished. At Bushire the houses were abandoned, the bazars closed, and the streets strewn with unburied corpses. At Bussorah 8,000 persons, nearly a third of the population, died in eleven days. While raging thus virulently round the shores of the Persian Gulf, the disease also spread rapidly from Bussorah, at the mouth of the Tigris, up to the great basin of that river and its confluent, the Euphrates. In one month it had reached Bagdad, then invested by the Persians, and destroyed thousands, as well of the besiegers as of the besieged.

During the winter of this year (1821) its violence in some degree subsided. Next summer, however, (1822) it resumed its march toward Europe, extending along the Tigris to Aleppo, and along the Euphrates to Ezeroum, in Armenia. It was raging in this town when the Persian army (who had the infection among them) advanced, between 30,000 and 40,000 strong, to fight an equal body of Turks, encamped on high table-land in the vicinity. The Turks were not only beaten, but they became infected during the battle; and, indeed, the victors as well as the vanquished fell by thousands beneath the strokes of an invisible enemy, more terrible than any human foes. Between 3,000 and 4,000 of the Persians perished: whole troops deserted, panic smitten; the rear of their line of march was strewn with dead bodies; and, by the time they reached Khooc, scarcely any army remained for the Prince of Persia, their leader, to dismiss. As for the fugitive Turks, they fled doubly routed, to Bakou, on the western shore of the Caspian, spreadiag the infection along the road they traversed.

During the next year (1823) the disease made little further progress. It spread westward from Aleppo to Antioch, and several other ports on the western coast of the Mediterranean, and from Bakou it extended northward, along the western shore of the Caspian, to Astrachan, a Russian port at the mouth of the Volga. Here,