of victory, who gives courage to warriors in the time of battle, and who points out those who are to be killed. The warriors, when they went to battle, made a vow to fend him a certain number of fouls, which they supposed to be his due, and which they confecrated to him; and, with this condition, they implored his fuccour in all their wars. This terrible god, whom Odin has defigned as the god of bloodfhed and horror, and whom he taught his people to adore in a manner that must fill every thinking perfon with the ideas of carnage and brutality, is reprefented in the beginning of the Edda, as the God who lived and governed before the creation of the world, who directs every thing above, and every thing below; who made the heavens and the earth, and every living thing; and who, before the creation of the heavens and the earth, lived among the giants.

It is certain, that the predominating paffion of the ancient Celts was always that of war; but Odin greatly increased their natural ferocity, by making those bloody dogmas a part of their religion, and promising a state of happiness in another world, to thofe only who died heroes. We are told, that all the Celts, and the Celtiberians, leaped for joy when they marched on to battle, from the agreeable hope which they had of going 'out of this world in a manner fo happy and fo agreeable; and, on the contrary, they were full of lamentations when they faw themselves attacked

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cient Brachmans, we fhall not only discover among them all the feeds of the Grecian ethics, and inftitutions, introduced by Pythagoras, fuch as the tranfmigration of fouls, the four cardinal virtues, the long filence enjoined his scholars, the propagation of their doctrines by tradition, rather than by letters, and the abstinence from all kinds of meat that had animal life; but the eternity of matter, with perpetual changes of form, the indolence of body, and the tranquillity of mind, introduced by Epicurus; and, among the institutions of Lycurgus, the care of the education of children, even from their birth, the auftere temperance of diet, the enduring pain and toil with patience and refignation, the neglect or contempt of life, the use of gold and filver only in their temples, the defence of commerce with ftrangers, and feveral other regulations established, by this great lawgiver, among the Spartans, seem to be all of Brachman original, and were different from any other religious or political institutions that ever appeared in Greece, either in that, or in any other age.

From all that we can difcover of thofe oriental fages, therefore, I think it will be allowed that, for many centuries, they took the greatest pains to carry human knowledge, by every prudent method, to the highest degree that it was capable of being carried ; and fuch an opinion had the greatest part of the inhabitants of the then known world of their wisdom, reason, piety, and univer

The three divinities, whom I have just now mentioned, formed the fupreme council of the gods, and were the principal objects of the worfhip and veneration of all the inhabitants of the north, after Frigge or Odin came among them. The number and employment of their divinities, of the fecond order, is not easy to determine. The Edda mentions twelve gods, and twelve goddeffes, to whom the people of the north were obliged to render divine honours; but although these gods and goddeffes had a certain power, they were obliged to obey Odin, the most ancient of the gods, and the great principle of all things; fuch was Niord, the Neptune of the people of the north; and the Edda exhorts these people to adore him very devoutly, fearing that he might otherwise do a great deal of mischief.-Balder was another son of Odin, who was wise, eloquent, and endued with great majefty: this was the Apollo of the Greeks. Tyr was the god of war, and the protector of the courageous and brave: the Mars of the Greeks. Brage was the god of eloquence and of poetry; and his wife, who was called Iduna, had the care of certain apples, of which the gods eat, when they felt themselves growing old, as they were endued with the power of making them young again. I shall omit the names of the other gods, which make up the number of twelve, they not being material to my purpose, and say a few words only of Loke, whom the people of the, north certainly regarded

regarded as the bad principle, although they placed him among the gods.

Loke, fays the Edda, was the calumniator of the gods, and the object of detestation of the gods and of men. He is wicked and inconftant; and no person regards him as an object of veneration: he is perfidious and deceitful: he has had several children by his wife Signi; and he is likewife the father of three monfters; of the wolf Fenris, of the ferpent Midgard, and of Hela, or Death. All these three are the enemies of the gods; who, after various efforts, have bound the wolf till the last day, when he fhall be fet at liberty, and devour the Sun: the ferpent will be caft into the fea, until he fhall be vanquished by the god Thor: and Hela, or Death, will be sent into the regions of darkness; where fhe has the government of nine worlds, which the divides among thofe who are sent to her. The Edda gives us feveral anecdotes of Loke, of his wars against the gods, and particularly against Thor; of his bad and deceitful conduct; and of the punishment which the gods inflicted upon him when he was taken; how they fhut him up in a great cave, formed of three fharp and pointed rocks, where his rage makes him tremble with fuch violence as to caufe earthquakes; and where, according to this mythology, he will rest a captive till the end of the world; but then he will be killed by Heimdall the porter of the gods.

As the goddeffes, according to the Edda, had only the care of inferior and domeftic affairs, I

government; framed from very wife laws and re gulations, and from the principles of morality.The founders of this empire, which, according to the history which they gave of themselves to the Spaniards, had been in a civilized state for eight hundred years, were Mango Copac, and his wife, who was likewife his fifter, Coya Mama; who appeared firft in that country near a great lake, which, for this reafon, is ftill held facred among them, Before this æra, the Peruvians are faid to have lived with the beafts, joint tenants in the fame caves and rocks, without any traces of orders, laws, or religion; without any other food than what they gathered from the trees or fhrubs, or what animals they could catch, and of this they had no further provision than for present hunger; and without clothing. They fecured themselves in holes of rocks or caves, from the fury of the wild beasts; and upon the tops. of hills, if they were in fear of any fierce neighbours. -When Mango Copac and his wife came among them, as they were perfons of great beauty, fo they were adorned with fuch clothing as was afterwards conftantly worn by the Ynca's; which name they gave themfelves. They told the people, who first flocked about them, that they were the fon and daughter of the Sun, and that their father, taking pity of the miferable condition that they lived in, had fent them down to reform them from the favage ftate they were then in, and to inftruct them how to live in fafety, and happily, by fol