VII.

After this rapid general survey of the condition of mind of the more advanced women in Russia I come to the tragic story of Vjera Sassulitch. It is a story typical of the base cruelty of autocratic government; typical also of the results such a system must needs produce.

The victim and heroine of that ever-memorable tragedy was not, at first, a member of any secret organization. Far from it. At the age of seventeen, Vjera, then a mere school-girl, had made the acquaintance of another school-girl, whose brother was a student. In the course of this innocent girlish friendship she was induced to take care of a few letters destined for the student, Netchaieff, who afterwards played a part in the revolutionary movement. A "Nihilist" Miss Sassulitch, at that time, certainly was not. Her whole ambition centred in the wish of passing her examination to qualify herself for a governess, which she did "with distinction."

Netchaieff's democratic connections having been denounced by a traitor, whom he thereupon slew, the school-girl of seventeen, who had known his sister, and him through her, was thrown into prison as one "suspected" of conspiracy. There was not a shadow of proof against her. No accusation was even formulated against her. Nevertheless she was kept,for two long years, in the Czar's Bastille—an eternity of torture for a captive uncertain of her fate. These were the words which her counsel, Mr. Alexandroff, addressed to the jury, when, later on, she was tried for an attempt upon Trepoff, one of the most hated tools of despotic profligacy:—

"The time between the eighteenth and the twentieth year—these are the years of youth when childhood ceases; when impressions lasting for life are most powerful; when life itself appears yet spotless and pure. For the maiden it is the most beautiful time—the time of budding love—the time when the girl rises to the fuller consciousness of womanhood—the time of fanciful reverie andenthusiasm—the time to which, in later days, as a mother and a matron, her thoughts will yet fondly turn. Gentlemen of the jury! you know in the company of what friends Vjera Sassulitch had to pass her best years. The walls of a casemate were her companions. For two years she saw neither mother, nor relations, nor friends. Sometimes she heard that her mother had come and had given a message of greeting. That was all she was allowed to learn. Locked up without occupation within the walls of a prison!... Everything human concentrated in the single person of the turnkey who brings the food!... The monotonousness only broken, now and then, by the call of the sentinel, who, peering through the window bars, asks,—'Prisoner, have you not done any harm to yourself?' or by the rattling of the locks and door-bolts, the clack of guns shouldered or grounded, or the dreary striking of the hour in the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul.... Far, far away from everything human!... Nothing there to nourish the feelings of friendship and love; nothing but the sympathy created by the knowledge that, to the right and to the left, there are fellow-sufferers passing their wretched days in the same way.... Thus it was that, in the depth of her solitude, there arose, in Vjera Sassulitch, such warm-hearted sympathy for every State prisoner that every political convict sufferer became for her a spiritual comrade in her recollections, to whom she assigned a place in the experience and the impressions of her past life."

During the two years that Vjera was kept in dungeons under a mere suspicion, she was twice only subjected to a secret inquiry—"judicial," if that is a word applicable to these dread Inquisition procedures. At last she feared she was forgotten. Nothing whatever having come out against her, she was finally set free, and went back to her heart-broken mother, only to be suddenly re-arrested ten days afterwards! For a moment, in spite of a two years' bitter experience, she childishly thought there was some mistake. But the horrible truth of her situation soon broke upon her. One morning she was seized in prison, and, without being allowed to take even a change of dress, or a mantle, transported by gendarmes to a distant province by way of banishment. One of these gendarmes threw his own fur over her shivering shoulders, or else she might have perished on the road.

I will not go here through the whole "infernal circle" of her sufferings and involuntary migrations, which I have elsewhere described more fully. I will not relate how she was "moved on" from one place to the other; the only variety in her treatment consisting of an occasional return to prison. Eleven years had thus altogether elapsed when at last, in those vast dominions of the Czar, and amidst more thrilling events which began to crowd upon public attention, she seemed to be really forgotten. In this way she managed clandestinely to go back to the capital, whence again she started for Pensa. It was there that, by chance, she learnt from theNovoje Vremja("New Times,") the infamous treatment of Bogoljuboff, a political prisoner, by the chief of the police at St. Petersburg, the vile and universally despised Trepoff, the personal, intimate, and pampered darling of Alexander II.

The flogging practices of this tyrannic head of the "Third Section" are still in every one's recollection. In referring to the knouting applied to Bogoljuboff, Vjera Sassulitch's counsel gave the following description:—

"The sufferer whose human dignity is to be insulted, knows not why he is to be punished. He thinks indignation will lend him strength to resist those who throw themselves upon him. But he is grasped by the iron grip of jailers' hands; he is dragged down; and in the midst of the regular counting of the strokes by the leader of the execution, a deep groan is heard—a groan not arising from mere physical pain, but from the soul's grief of a down-trodden, outraged man. At last, silence reigned again. The sacred act was accomplished!"

It was the brooding over such disgrace and affront to which a political prisoner had been subjected in the very capital by an official whose department is under the Czar's direct control that pressed the weapon of revenge into the hands of a tender woman—not so much for her own past miseries as for those of a still suffering fellow-man.

Trepoff had been attacked by Vjera Sassulitch in his own Cabinet, in the very midst of his minions. The jury which tried her was composed almost exclusively of Aulic Councillors and such-like titled dignitaries. Prince Gortschakoff sat among the audience; so did the pick and flower of the upper classes of St. Petersburg. Who could doubt, in presence of the open avowal of the accused, that the verdict would be "Guilty?"

Strange to say, even among the officially faultless remarks of the Public Prosecutor there were some curious admissions. "I, for my part," Mr. Kessel said, "fully believe the statements made by Vjera Sassulitch. I believe that facts appeared to her in the light in which they have been placed here; andI am ready to accept the feelings of Vjera Sassulitch as facts. The Court, however, is bound to measure these feelings, as soon as they are converted into deeds, by the standard of the law." Through the summing up of the Judge there ran a strong vein of interpretations favourable to the accused. "An accused person," he remarked, "could certainly not be looked upon as an infallible commentator on the event with which he or she was connected. At the same time it had to be noted that criminals were to be divided into two groups: those who are led by selfish impulses, and who therefore, in the majority of cases, try to mask the truth by lying statements; and those who commit an act from no motive of personal profit, and who entertain no wish to hide anything of the deed they have done. You, gentlemen of the jury, are in a position to judge how far the statements of Vjera Sassulitch merit your confidence, and to which type of transgressors she most nearly comes up."

This was a clear hint to any intelligent jury; and the jury of Aulic Councillors were intelligent men. Going over all the details of the case, the Judge made a great many more remarks in the same spirit. The audience, who had frequently cheered the eloquence of counsel to such an extent that the President of the Tribunal had to warn them, were on the tip-toe of expectation. When the Foreman brought in the verdict: "No; she isnotguilty!" the Hall of Justice—for justice had for once been done—rang with enthusiastic applause. Vjera Sassulitch was borne away in triumph.

In the streets, however,—and here we come once more upon all the dark and terrible ways of Autocracy,—there ensued a fearful scene. An attack was made upon the coach in which Vjera Sassulitch was to be carried home—apparently with the object of getting her once more into police clutches. There was a clash of swords and a confused tumult. Gensdarmes and police broke in upon the mass of people, who wished to protect her. Shots were fired. A nobleman and relation of Vjera, Grigori Sidorazki, lay dead in the street. A lady also, Miss Anna Rafailnowna, a medical student, writhed on the ground, wounded. The victim of so much prolonged persecution had herself mysteriously disappeared. Afterwards, an order for her re-arrest, marked "No. 16," and dated from the Secret Department of the Town, came to light—evidently through information given by an affiliate of the Revolutionary Committee within the police administration itself. This occult connection of sundry officials with the leaders of the Democratic or Nihilist Conspiracy explains why Government should so often have been hampered in its efforts to suppress that organization.

The verdict of "not guilty," in the case of Vjera Sassulitch, has been followed by several similar ones—a strong proof of the sympathy felt among the town populations, at least, with the aims of the revolutionists. Franz von Holtzendorff, a well-known legal authority in Germany, wrote on the case above detailed:—"Far more significant than the verdict of the jury is the fact that that verdict, in spite of its contrast to the existing law, has received the approval, as it appears, of the whole Russian press, of the whole of the upper classes, and even of the circles of Russian legists. I have had personal occasion to convince myself that prominent officials of the Russian Empire gave their applause to that verdict." Again, Dr. Holtzendorff said:—

"In Russia, the feelings of right and justice, which are systematically and artificially kept down and repressed, and which have no outlet in public life, concentrate themselves with their full weight in the verdict of a jury. That which the press had no liberty of saying during long years, is given vent to in the debates of a Court of Justice. An accusation is raised on account of a deed which, though punishable as a crime in itself, has been produced and nurtured by a system of administrative arbitrariness and gross ill-treatment that stands morally deep below the deed in question—a system of corruption which cannot be attacked legally, nay, which enjoys all the honours the State can award. And who can help it if an injustice committed day after day, in the name of the State, without any expiation, weighs more heavily upon the public conscience than the act of a single person who, boldly risking his or her own life, rises with a feeling of the deepest indignation against so rotten a system of Government? It is but too natural, this wrathful utterance of the popular voice, when it declares that a high official, who, trusting in the practical approval of the Imperial favour, ordains corporal punishment according to his arbitrary caprice against defenceless prisoners, is guilty of a greater offence than he who feels driven, by a passionate notion of justice, to constitute himself, of his own free will, an avenger of the public conscience.... If, in a State afflicted with political sickness, the institution of the jury had fallen so deep as to work with the mechanical certainty of a military court, and to heed nothing but the points of view of jurisprudence, without being touched by the current of moral aspirations, thus merely registering, with Byzantine obedience, the paragraphs of a code of law: such a phenomenon—keeping, as it would, the Government in a dangerous error as regards public life—would be far more reprehensible than that verdict of 'not guilty' by which a whole system of Government was practically condemned."

The Russian Government system Herr von Holtzendorff, who personally belongs to a very moderate political party, brands as "a system of arbitrary police ordinances, and of the virtual sovereignty of the Adjutants-General of the Czar—a system of administrative deportations, of despotic arrestations, of press-gagging—a swashbuckler's government." Another German writer of some distinction, Dr. Henry Jaques, observes—

"Where an absolutist monarch rules in arbitrary manner, without any limits to his power, the jury becomes the only representative organ of a people utterly bereft of all political rights. In such a case, a jury is indeed entitled to speak, before all, the language of the people, the language of its aspirations towards freedom, which must be heard before everything else, if the nation is to acquire its true rights. Even as, in the Iliad, the orphaned Andromache says to the parting Hector: 'Thou art now father, brother, and dear mother to me!' so the Russian people may say to its jury: 'You are now legislators, judges, and the source of mercy at one and the same time to me! In you there reposes the One and All of my political hopes, of my political rights!"

Noble words, but vain hope! First of all, it is not correct to say that Vjera Sassulitch had been judged by a jury under a political charge. For political crimes, or accusations, no jury has ever existed under Alexander II. Vjera Sassulitch was charged with what Government chose to consider acommoncrime; hence only she was brought before a jury. For political offenders, or what Government chooses to regard as political offenders, packed tribunals have always been assigned. Happily, Government overreached itself in the case of Vjera Sassulitch, feeling too secure in the loyalty of its own Aulic Councillors.

Secondly, no sooner had the trial resulted in a verdict of "not guilty," than Count Pahlen, the Minister of Justice, who thought the jury were, of course, quite a safe one, was dismissed. Thirdly, an ukase went forth, withdrawing from the cognizance of juries even cases of "common crime," when such crime was directed against one of the Czar's officials. Fourthly, fresh regulations were framed for a change of the jury system, as well as for the discipline of lawyers acting for the defence. Fifthly, in the teeth of the verdict given in favour of Vjera Sassulitch, a fresh trial was ordered, to be held in a country town, at Novgorod, as soon as she could be recaptured. Finally, Alexander the Liberal, seeing that all ordinary procedures were of no avail, instituted a state of siege and drum-head law for political offenders over a large portion of his Empire.

These are the desperate doings of a despotism maddened by an ever-active host of enemies. It is usually the beginning of the end.

If any more proofs were wanted of the "benevolent" character of the Government of Alexander II., they might be found in the increase, year by year, of the deportations to Siberia. They are reckoned to be now four or five times more numerous than under the galling system of Nicholas. Political banishments have enormously augmented under his successor. So has the number of the prescribed loose and vagabond class of ordinary criminals, or suspects, who are frequently whisked off to Siberia—for the sake of clearing "Society," as it is called—when the criminals often become mixed up with the political exiles in an indistinguishable mass. This is the very refinement of torture, applied by the agents of a brutal despotism against men generously striving for a reform of the State and of society.

The arbitrary deportations are decreed by the "Third Section," or Secret Police, which is under the Emperor's personal direction. Formerly, this dreaded office had the power of administering corporal punishment, in secret, to persons of the upper classes, male or female. At the Sassulitch trial, the counsel for the defence made a dark allusion to this practice, which created a deep impression in Court. It was a reference to a whipping-machine once in use, and of which some of those present—ladies, as well as gentlemen—may have had personal experience. A correspondent has given the following description:—The suspected person, who could not be brought to trial, but whom it was intended to castigate, would be invited to call at the Office of the Secret Police. After a few moments' conversation with the dread functionary, the floor would suddenly sink beneath the visitor's feet, and he would find himself suspended by the waist, all that part of the body below it being under the floor, and concealed from view. Then invisible hands and equally invisible rods would rapidly perform their duty—the trap-door would rise again—and the visitor would be bowed out with great courtesy, and go home, carrying with him substantial marks to remind him of his interview.

Though this more than Oriental custom has been abolished, enough remains of barbarity to explain why successive chiefs of the hated police Hermandad—Trepoff, Mesentzoff, and Drentelen—should have been the mark of the bullet of popular revenge. A Russian writer says:—

"A history of the secret doings, of all the horrors and crimes perpetrated by this disgraceful institution, would fill up many volumes, before the contents of which the most sensational novels would appear tame and shallow. There is scarcely any sphere of public or private life which is exempted from the irresponsible control of this Inquisition of the nineteenth century. The verdict of a Court has no value whatever for the Third Section. Not only acquitted political offenders are as a rule transported, administratively, to some distant town of the Empire, but even the judges themselves, when they are considered to have passed too lenient a verdict, are liable to be forced into resigning their office, and to be thenexiled in company with the very prisoners who had stood before them!"

Lest this description should appear to be overdrawn, I may quote from the letter of the St. Petersburg correspondent of an English journal, which is certainly not unfavourable to the Government of Alexander II. The letter was written after the recent proclamation of a state of siege. And the writer says:—

"As proofs and instances, not so much of martial law as of the repressive measures adopted (in many cases by ordinary administrative agency, without the machinery of martial law), I may mention that at the present time, as I am well informed,more than 600 persons of the privileged classes are under arrest, to be deported to Siberia without trial. In one of the temporary governor-generalships in the south of the Empire (Odessa), sixty privileged persons have been already sent to Siberia without trial, and 200 persons of this class are under arrest to be judged. So great is the number of persons of this category to be escorted that a practical difficulty is said to have arisen in connection with their deportation. A noble, or privileged person, who has not been judicially sentenced, when sent to Siberia by 'administrative process' (as it is called,i.e., by the orders of the Third Section, or Secret Police), must be escorted by two gensdarmes, it being against the laws to manacle a privileged person who is uncondemned. It appears that there are not gensdarmes enough thus to escort the number of persons to be deported, and the Ministry of Secret Police has, I understand, proposed to get rid of this difficulty by sending the privileged persons fettered like ordinary criminals.... The Third Section, or Secret Police, which is in its proceedings essentiallyextra leges, claims to act independently of any other department of the Empire. This institution, which lays hold of suspected persons, whether justly or unjustly suspected, and consigns them to Siberia at its pleasure, savours more of Asiatic lawlessness than of enlightened European rule, such as it must be the desire of all in authority to see established throughout the Empire.... I have myself met with respectable, honourable men, who have been arrested and imprisoned, in some cases for a few weeks, in other cases during months,followed by years of exile in Siberia, without any charge being brought against them; and it is the possibility of this recurring to them, or to others, that constitutes a Reign of Terror."

The above description is from the correspondent of theDaily News. Clearly it is a very pleasant position to be a "privileged person" in Russia. It marks its occupant, by preference, as a possible candidate for exile to Siberia; the more cultivated classes being essentially those which constitute the active element of political dissatisfaction.

Of the treatment of political exiles in Siberia, as it has been carried on for a long time past, I have before me a thrilling description from the pen of Mr. Robert Lemke, a German writer, who has visited the various penal establishments of Russia, with an official legitimation. He had been to Tobolsk; after which he had to make a long, dreary journey in a wretched car, until a high mountain arose before him. In its torn and craggy flank the mountain showed a colossal opening similar to the mouth of a burnt-out crater. Fetid vapours, which almost took away his breath, ascended from it.

Pressing the handkerchief upon his lips, Mr. Lemke entered the opening of the rock, when he found a large watch-house, with a picket of Cossacks. Having shown his papers of legitimation, he was conducted by a guide through a long, very dark, and narrow corridor,which, judging from its sloping descent, led down into some unknown depth. In spite of his good fur, the visitor felt extremely cold. After a walk of some ten minutes through the dense obscurity, the ground becoming more and more soft, a vague shimmer of light became observable. "We are in the mine!" said the guide, pointing with a significant gesture to the high iron cross-bars which closed the cavern before them.

The massive bars were covered with a thick rust. A watchman appeared, who unlocked the heavy iron gate. Entering a room of considerable extent, but which was scarcely a man's height, and which was dimly lit by an oil-lamp, the visitor asked, "Where are we?" "In the sleeping-room of the condemned! Formerly it was a productive gallery of the mine; now it serves as a shelter."

The visitor shuddered. This subterranean sepulchre, lit by neither sun, nor moon, was called a sleeping-room. Alcove-like cells were hewn into the rock; here, on a couch of damp, half-rotten straw, covered with a sackcloth, the unfortunate sufferers were to repose from the day's work. Over each cell a cramp-iron was fixed, wherewith to lock-up the prisoners like ferocious dogs. No door, no window anywhere.

Conducted through another passage, where a few lanterns were placed, and whose end was also barred by an iron gate, Mr. Lemke came to a large vault, partly lit. This was the mine. A deafening noise of pickaxes and hammers. There he saw some hundreds of wretched figures, with shaggy beards, sickly faces, reddened eyelids; clad in tatters, some of them barefoot, others in sandals, fettered with heavy foot-chains. No song, no whistling. Now and then they shyly looked at the visitor and his companion. The water dripped from the stones; the tatters of the convicts were thoroughly wet. One of them, a tall man, of suffering mien, laboured hard with gasping breath, but the strokes of his pickaxe were not heavy and firm enough to loosen the rock.

"Why are you here?" Mr. Lemke asked.

The convict looked confused, with an air almost of consternation, and silently continued his work.

"It is forbidden to the prisoners," said the inspector, "to speak of the cause of their banishment!"

Entombed alive; forbidden to say why!

"But who is the convict?" Mr. Lemke asked the guide, with low voice.

"It is Number 114!" the guide replied, laconically.

"This I see," answered the visitor; "but what are the man's antecedents? To what family does he belong?"

"He is a count," replied the guide; "a well-known conspirator. More, I regret to say, I cannot tell you about Number 114!"

The visitor felt as if he were stifled in the grave-like atmosphere—as if his chest were pressed in by a demoniacal nightmare. He hastily asked his guide to return with him to the upper world. Meeting there the commander of the military establishment, he was obligingly asked by that officer—

"Well, what impression did our penal establishment make upon you?"

Mr. Lemke stiffly bowing in silence, the officer seemed to take this as a kind of satisfied assent, and went on—

"Very industrious people, the men below; are they not?"

"But with what feelings," Mr. Lemke answered, "must these unfortunates look forward to the day of rest after the week's toil!"

"Rest!" said the officer; "convicts must always labour. There is no rest for them. They are condemned to perpetual forced labour; and he who once enters the mine never leaves it!"

"But this is barbarous!"

The officer shrugged his shoulders, and said, "The exiled work daily for twelve hours; on Sundays too. They must never pause. But, no; I am mistaken. Twice a year, though, rest is permitted to them—at Easter-time, and on the birthday of His Majesty the Emperor."

Can we wonder, when we see the ultra-Bulgarian atrocities practised in Russia, that "Terror for Terror!" should at last have become the parole of the men of the Revolutionary Committee?

I will not go over the harrowing details of the events of the last seven or eight months; they are still fresh in every one's remembrance. The only measures that could stay this destructive contest are systematically withheld by the Czar, who will not permit the slightest display of popular sentiments within the lawful domain of Representative Government. Many years ago a distinguished French writer described the Russian system as "a tyranny tempered by the dagger." Alexander, too, himself is fully aware of this tragic concatenation of events. He is even known to have often, in the very beginning of his reign, expressed a feeling of fear lest his own end should be a violent one, like that of so many of his predecessors. The attempts of Karakasoff and Berezowski have lately been repeated by Solovieff. Whilst strongly condemning the deed of the latter, even the ConservativeStandardfelt called upon, by the dangers of the situation at large, to make the following comments, which possess a lasting interest:—

"It would be well if this painful incident could be disposed of by a homily upon individual wickedness and individual perverseness. Unhappily, it is but too certain that not only the deed itself, but the peculiar circumstances attending it, are closely related with the existing condition of a considerable section of Russian society. We are obliged to add that this condition is closely connected, in turn, with the form of government and the methods of administration that prevail in that country.... In spite of the emancipation of the serfs from the condition of territorial slavery, the Russian people have made little visible progressin the acquisition of political freedom. The Czar is still an absolute Sovereign; his Ministers still remain responsible to no will but his, and their agents have to answer only to their superiors for the manner in which they exercise authority.... The sanguine youth of the nation, eager for a career, and burning for activity, finds itself debarred from any course of distinction save that of arms, or that official existence which too often places men in Russia in antagonism to their own countrymen.... The old method of government—of police supervision, of private espionage, of imprisonment, of exile, of political silence—has been tried, and the result is discontent and extensive conspiracy. We fear that even the confession of sensualistic atheism by Solovieff will not prevent his memory from being cherished by thousands of his countrymen. They will forget everything, save his desire to endow them with more freedom. Whatever his faults, they will consider that he perished in their cause, andwhat they will be most disposed to blame will be the unsteadiness of his hand and the uncertainty of his aim."

TheTimesalso, whilst pleading for Solovieff's execution, acknowledged the fact of the sway of Czardom being rotten to the core, in the following words:—"It cannot be disputed that whole classes in Russia are penetrated almost to desperation with a sense of social oppression and wrong.... A social condition like this is the natural soil in which the brooding temperament which seeks a remedy in assassination is nourished."

When all the safety-valves are closed, Nature takes its revenge, and ever and anon occasions the inevitable outburst. Russia is at present under a state of siege from St. Petersburg to Moscow and Warsaw, from Kieff to Kharkoff and Odessa. An Army of Porters, about 15,000 strong, must watch the streets of the capital, day and night; and policemen are set to watch the watchers. Under General Gurko, the crosser of the Balkans, who is now Vice-Emperor, the last lines of legality have also been crossed—if the word "legality" applies at all to Russian institutions. He is invested with unlimited powers, in the place of the disheartened tyrant. The very Grand Dukes are under his orders. Arrests among officers of the army have been the immediate consequence of General Gurko's satrap rule. In several cases, compromising letters and prints were discovered, and executions both of officers, like Lieutenant Dubrovin, and of privates, have followed. The gallows are in permanent activity. But perhaps the most significant feature—and a promising one too—is the order issued, under court-martial law, that in all the barracks a list of the soldiers' arms is to be drawn up, and to be handed over to the police! This is the strongest sign of a suspicion against the army itself; and on the army the whole power of Czardom reposes.

When we hear of the arrest of a Senator, of a Director of the Imperial Bank, of Professors, of the son of the Chancellor of the dreaded "Third Section," of the wife of the procurator of a Military Court, of the nephew of the Chief of the Secret Police, and many other such cases, we are driven to the conclusion that, in spite of its furious acts of repression, the autocratic system has become untenable—that it must sooner or later fall. Like the Roman Emperor, Alexander II. mightbe glad if revolt had but a single neck. But is it possible for him to imagine that there exists but one party of malcontents? Do not the very arrests just mentioned belie such an assertion?

Conspirators are laid hold of by the Czar'ssbirritogether with men who would not think of armed resistance. Despotism is frightened, in fact, by the very shadows on the wall. Even the Slavophil and Panslavist parties—still the ready instruments of aggressive policy—have both become imbued with Constitutional ideas that look like sacrilege in the eyes of the Pope-Czar. The revolutionists ofLand and Liberty("Zemlja i Wolja"); the Socialist Jacobins who follow the doctrines of theTocsin("Nabat"); the Nihilists, properly speaking; and the moderate Constitutionalists, are all alike the enemies of the present form of Government. In some districts the peasantry have risen; and, remarkable to say, the first troop of Cossacks that was led against the insurgents, refused to fight them. These are portents whose gravity cannot be mistaken.

Ten years ago, when the Napoleonic Empire still stood erect, I said, in an article on "The Condition of France," in theFortnightly Review:—

"A mighty change is undoubtedly hovering in the air. There may be short and sharp shocks and counter-shocks for a little while; but, unless all signs deceive, the great issue cannot be long delayed. The calmest observer is unable to deny the significance of the electrical flashes occasionally shooting now across the atmosphere. It is as if words of doom were traced in lurid streaks, breaking here and there through the darkened sky. We are strongly reminded of the similar incidents which marked the summer of 1868 in Spain. Those incidents were then scarcely understood abroad; yet they meant the subsequent great event of September. Even so there are now signs and portents in France—only fraught with a meaning for Europe at large."

This was published in December, 1869. In the following year, September, 1870, Bonapartist rule was a thing of the past.

Czardom, on its part, may play out its last card by embarking upon a fresh war. It will only thereby hasten its doom. Though in Russia concentrated action, for the sake of overthrowing a system of Government, is surrounded with greater difficulties than in France, I fully expect that the day is not far distant when Autocracy must either bend by making a concession to the more intelligent popular will, or be utterly broken and uprooted. "Terror for Terror!" is a war-cry of despair; but on such a principle a nation's life cannot continue. The moment may come when the Tyrant will be driven to bay in his own palace. And loud and hearty will be the shout of freemen when that event occurs—of the men striving for liberty in the great prison-house of the Muscovite Empire itself, as well as of all those abroad who have still some pity left in their hearts for the woes of a host of down-trodden nations.

Karl Blind.

The idea of the Paradisiacal happiness of the earliest human beings constitutes one of the most universal of traditions. According to the Egyptians, the terrestrial reign of the God Ra, by which the existence of the world and of humanity was inaugurated, was an age of gold, to which Egyptians ever recurred regretfully; so that in order to convey the idea of any given thing transcending imagination, they were in the habit of affirming that "nothing had ever been seen like unto it since the days of the God Ra."

This belief in an age of innocence and bliss, by which the career of humanity began, is also to be met with amongst all peoples of Aryan or Japhetic race, and was theirs anterior to their separation, the learned having long agreed that this is one of the points on which Aryan traditions are most plainly derivable from one common source with those of the Semitic race, of which last Genesis affords us the expression. But with Aryan nations this belief was closely linked with a conception specially their own—that, namely, of four successive ages of the world; and we find this conception attain to fullest development in India. Created things, and among them humanity, are destined to endure for 12,000 divine years, each of which contains 360 years as reckoned by men. This enormous period of time is divided into four ages or epochs: the age of perfection, orKritayuga; the age of the threefold sacrifice—that is, the perfect accomplishment of all religious duties, orTrêtayuga; the age of doubt or of the obscuration of religious notions,Dvaparayuga; finally, the age of perdition, orKaliyuga, which is the present age, only to be brought to a close by the destruction of the world.[50]The Works and Days of Hesiod show us thatprecisely the same succession of ages was held by the Greeks, but without their duration being calculated by years, and with the supposition of a new humanity being produced at the beginning of each; the gradual degeneracy, however, which marks this succession of ages is expressed by the metals after which they are named—gold, silver, brass, and iron. Our present humanity belongs to the age of iron, and is the worst of all, although it began with the heroes. Zoroastrian Mazdeism also admits this theory of the four ages, and we find it expressed in theBundehesh,[51]but under a form less nearly akin to the Indian conception than was Hesiod's, and without the same spirit of crushing fatalism. Here the duration of the universe is fixed at 12,000 years, divided into four periods of 3000. In the first all is pure; the good GodAhuramazdareigns over his creation, in which as yet evil has not appeared; in the second, the evil spirit Angromainyus issues from the darkness in which he had up to this time remained inert, and declares war against Ahuramazda, and then begins their conflict of 9000 years, which occupies three of the world's ages. During the first 3000 years Angromainyus has but little power; during the second, the success of the two principles remains pretty evenly balanced; finally, during the last age, which is that of historic times, evil prevails, but this age is to terminate with the final defeat of Angromainyus, to be followed by the resurrection of the dead and the beatitude of the risen just. The advent of the prophet of Iran, of Zarakhustra (Zoroaster) is placed at the close of the third age, or exactly in the middle of that period of 6000 years which is assigned to the duration of the human race under their actual conditions.

Certain learned authorities—as, for instance, Ewald and M. Maury—have striven to discover in the general order of Biblical history traces of this system of the four ages. But impartial criticism must admit that they have not made out their case; the foundations on which they have tried to establish their demonstration are so entirely artificial, so opposed to the spirit of the Scripture narrative, that they break down of themselves.[52]And, indeed, M. Maury is the first to allow that there is afundamental opposition between the Biblical tradition and the legend of Brahminical India or of Hesiod. In this last, as he himself remarks, we see "no trace of a predisposition to sin transmitted by inheritance from the first man to his descendants, no vestige of original sin."

No doubt, as Pascal has so eloquently said, "it is in this abyss that the problem of our condition gathers its complications and intricacies, so that man is more inconceivable without this mystery than this mystery is inconceivable to man;" but the truth of the fall and of original sin is one of those against which human pride has most constantly rebelled, is, indeed, the one from which it spontaneously seeks to escape. Hence of all portions of primeval tradition as to the beginnings of humanity it has been the earliest obliterated. As soon as men felt the sense of exultation to which the progress of their civilization and their conquests in the material world gave birth, they repudiated the idea. Religious philosophers springing up outside the revelation which was held in trust by the chosen people took no account of the Fall; and, indeed, how could that doctrine have been made to harmonize with the dreams of Pantheism and emanation? By rejecting the notion of original sin, and substituting the doctrine of emanation for that of creation, most of the peoples of pagan antiquity were led to the melancholy theory of the four ages, such as we find it in the Sacred Books of India and the poetry of Hesiod. It was by the law of decadence and continual deterioration that the ancient world believed itself so heavily laden. In proportion as time passed and things departed further and further from their point of emanation, they corrupt themselves and grow ever worse. This is the effect of an inexorable fate and of the very force of their development. In this fatal evolution towards decline, there is no room left for human freedom; the whole revolves in a circle from which there is no means of escaping. With Hesiod, each age marks a decadence from the one that preceded it; and, as the poet explicitly declares regarding the iron age inaugurated by heroes, each of these ages taken separately follows the same descending scale as does their totality. In India the conception of the four ages orYuga, by developing itself and producing its natural consequences, engenders that of theManvantara. According to this new theory the world, after having accomplished its four ages of constant degeneration, undergoes dissolution (pralaya), things having reached such a pitch of corruption as to be no longer capable of subsisting. Then there springs up a new universe, with a new humanity—doomed to the same cycle of necessary and fatal evolution, which the fourYugasin turn go through, till a new dissolution takes place; and so on to infinity. Here we have, indeed, fatalism under the most cruelly inexorable form, and also the most destructive of all true morality. For there can be no responsibility where there is no freedom, nor is there in reality any good or evil where corruption is the effect of an irresistible law of evolution.

How far more consolatory is the Biblical statement, hard though it first appear to human pride, and how incomparable the prospects it opens out to the mind! It admits that man, almost as soon as created, fell from his state of original purity and Edenic bliss. In virtue of the law of heredity everywhere imprinted on Nature, it was the fault committed by the first ancestors of humanity in the exercise of their moral freedom which condemned their descendants to punishment, and by bequeathing to them an original taint predisposed them to sin. But this predisposition to sin does not condemn man fatally to its committal; he may escape from it by the exercise of his free will; and in the same way he may by personal effort raise himself gradually out of the state of material decline and misery to which the fault of his ancestors has brought him down. The pagan conception of the four ages unrolls before us a picture of constant degeneration, whereas the whole order of Biblical history from its starting-point in the earliest chapters of Genesis affords the spectacle of the progressive rise of humanity from the period of its original fall. On one hand, its course is conceived of as a continual descent; on the other, as a continual ascent. The Old Testament, which we must here embrace in one general view, occupies itself but little indeed with this ever-ascending course as regards the development of material civilization, of which, however, it cursorily points out the principal stages with a good deal of exactness. It rather traces for us the picture of moral progress, and of the more and more definite development of religious truth, the apprehension of which goes on ever gaining in spirituality, purity, and breadth amongst the chosen people, by a series of steps marked by the calling of Abraham, the promulgation of the Mosaic Law, and, lastly, by the mission of the prophets, who in their turn announce the last and supreme progress. This is to result from the coming of the Messiah, and the consequences of this last providential fact will go on continually developing themselves, and tending towards a perfection, the term of which lies in the Infinite. This notion of a rise after the fall, the fruit of man's free effort assisted by divine grace and working within the limit of his powers towards the accomplishment of the providential plan, is shown to us by the Old Testament as existing only in one people, the people of Israel; but the Christian spirit has extended the view to the universal history of mankind, and thus has arisen that conception of a law of continual progress unknown to antiquity, to which our modern society is so invincibly attached, but which is, we should never forget, an idea due to Christianity.

Zoroastrianism was unlike other pagan religions in this, that it could not fail to admit and preserve the ancient tradition of a first sin. Rather would it have been forced to construct for itself an analogical myth, had it not found such in the primitive memories that it bent to its own doctrines. The tradition squared, indeed, but too well with its system of a dualism having a spiritual basis, although as yet but imperfectly freed from confusion between the physical and moral worlds. It explained quite naturally how man, a creature of the good God, and consequently originally perfect, should have fallen under the power of the evil spirit, thus contracting a taint which in the moral order subjected him to sin, in the material to death, and to all the miseries that poison earthly existence. Thus the notion of the sin of the first authors of humanity, the heritage of which weighs constantly on their descendants, is a fundamental one in Mazdean books. The modification of legends relative to the first man even resulted in the mythic conceptions of the later periods of Zoroastrianism, in attaching a rather singular repetition of this first transgression to several successive generations in the initial ages of humanity.

Originally—and this is at present one of the points most solidly established by science—originally in those legends common to Oriental Aryans before their separation into two branches, the first man was the personage that the Iranians call Yima, and the Indians Yama. A son of Heaven and not of man, Yima united the characteristics that Genesis divides between Adam and Noah, fathers both, the one of antediluvian, the other of postdiluvian humanity. Later, he appears as merely the first king of the Iranians, but a king whose existence, as well as that of his subjects, is passed in the midst of Edenic beatitude in the paradise of Airyana-Vædja,[53]the dwelling-place of the earliest men. But after a time when life was pure and spotless, Yima committed the sin which weighs on his descendants, and in consequence of that sin, lost his power, was cast out of Paradise, and given up to the dominion of the serpent, the evil spirit Angromainyus,[54]who finally brought about Yima's death by horrible torments.[55]It is an echo of the tradition about the loss of Paradise ensuing upon a transgression prompted by the Evil Spirit that we find in what is incontestably one of the oldest portions of the Sacred Scriptures of Zoroastrianism.[56]"I created the first and the best of dwelling-places. I who am Ahuramazda: the Airyana-Vædja is of excellent nature. But against it Angromainyus, the murderer, created a thing inimical, the serpent out of the river and the winter, the work of the Dœvas."[57]And it is this scourge, caused by the power of the serpent, which occasions the departure for ever from the paradisiacal region.

Later, Yima appears as no longer the first man, or even the first king. The period of a thousand years assigned to his existence in Eden[58]is now divided between several successive generations, occupying the same space of time, from the moment when Gayomaritan, the type of humanity, began to find himself struggling against the hostility ofthe Evil Spirit up to the death of Yima. This is the system adopted by the Bundehesh. The history of the sin which made Yima lose his primal happiness, and subjected him to the power of the adversary, still remains connected with the name of that hero. But this transgression is no longer the original sin; and in order to be able to attribute it to the ancestors whence all humanity springs, its story is again told here (subserving a double purpose) in connection with the first pair whose existence was completely terrestrial and similar to that of other human beings—Masha and Mashyâna. "Man was; the father of the world was. Heaven was destined to be his on condition of his being humble in heart, and doing with humility the work of the law, of his being pure in thought, pure in word, pure in deed, and of his never invoking the Dœvas. Under these conditions man and woman were reciprocally to make each other's happiness. They drew near and became man and wife. At first they spoke these words: 'It is Ahuramazda who has given the water, the earth, the trees, the beasts, and the stars, the moon and the sun, and all the blessings which spring from a pure root and pure fruit.' Later, falsehood ran through their thoughts, perverted their disposition, and said to them: 'It is Angromainyus who has given the water, earth, trees, beasts, and all above-named things.' Thus, it was that in the beginning Angromainyus deceived them concerning the Dœvas, and to the end this cruel one has only sought to seduce them. By believing this lie, both became like unto demons, and their souls will be in Hell until the renewal of bodies."

"They ate during thirty days; they clothed themselves in black raiment. After these thirty days they went hunting; a white goat presented itself; with their mouths they drew milk from her udder, and nourished themselves with that milk which delighted them....

"The Dœva who told the lie, grew more bold, and presented himself a second time,and brought them fruits which they ate, and by so doing of the hundred advantages they enjoyed there remained to them only one.

"After thirty days and thirty nights a fat white sheep appeared; they cut off his left ear. Instructed by the celestial Yazata[59]they brought fire from the tree Konar, by rubbing it with a piece of wood. Both set fire to the tree; they blew up the fire with their mouths; they first burnt the branches of the tree Konar, next of the date-tree, and the myrtle.... They roasted the sheep, dividing it into three parts.[60]... Having eaten of the flesh of the dog they covered themselves with the skin of that animal. Then they gave themselves up to the chase and made themselves garments of the hair of wild beasts."[61]

We may here observe that in Genesis also, vegetable food is the only one made use of by the first man in his state of bliss and purity; the only one promised him by God. Animal food does not become lawfultill after the Flood. It is also after the Fall that Adam and Havah first clothe themselves with coats of skin made for them by Yahveh himself.

The late lamented George Smith believed that amongst the fragments of the Chaldean Genesis, discovered by him, one might be interpreted as relating to the fall of the first man, and that it contained the curse pronounced upon him by the God Ea, after his transgression.[62]But this was an illusion, which a more profound study of the cuneiform document has dispelled. Smith's translation, which was too hasty, immature, and, moreover, hardly intelligible, turns out erroneous from beginning to end. Since then Mr. Oppert has given us an entirely different version of the same text,[63]the first possessing a really scientific character, in which the general meaning becomes tolerably clear, though there are still many obscure and uncertain details. One thing at least is now quite established: the fragment has no kind of reference to original sin and the curse of man. We must therefore leave it entirely outside the sphere of our present researches; endeavouring, however, to convey a warning to such as may be tempted, in dependence on the celebrated Assyriologist, to make use of it in a Commentary on the Bible.

Thus, then, we have no formal and direct proof that the tradition of the original transgression, as told in our Holy Scriptures, formed part of the cycle of the records of Babylon and Chaldea, respecting the origin of the world and of man. Neither do we find any allusion to the subject in the fragments of Berosus. But, despite this silence, a similarity between Chaldean and Hebrew traditions on this point, as upon others, has so great a probability in its favour as almost to amount to a certainty. Further on we shall return to certain very valid proofs of the existence of myths relating to a terrestrial paradise in the sacred traditions of the lower basin of the Euphrates and Tigris. But it behoves us to dwell for a few moments on the representations of the sacred and mysterious plant, guarded by celestial genii, that Assyrian bas-reliefs so often display. Up to the present time no text has been found to elucidate the meaning of the symbol, and we have to deplore a want, that no doubt will one of these days be met by the discovery of new documents. But the study of these figured monuments alone renders it impossible to doubt the high importance of this representation of the sacred plant. Whether it appear alone, or, as sometimes happens, worshipped by royal figures, or, as I have just said, guarded by genii in an attitude of adoration, it is incontrovertibly one of the loftiest of religious emblems; and what places this character beyond doubt is, that we often see above the plant the symbolic image of the Supreme God, the winged disc—surmounted or not by a human bust. The cylinders of Babylonian or Assyrian workmanship present this emblem no less frequently than the bas-reliefs of Assyrian palaces, and always under the same conditions, and evidently attributing to it an equal importance.

It is very difficult to avoid comparing this mysterious plant, in which everything points out a religious symbol of the first order, with that famous tree of life and knowledge which plays so prominent a part in the narrative of the earliest transgression. All paradisiacal traditions make mention of it; the tradition in Genesis, which sometimes seems to admit of two trees, one of life and one of knowledge, sometimes of one tree only combining both attributes, and standing in the midst of the garden; the Indian tradition, which supposes four plants on the four counterforts of Mount Méru; and, lastly, that of the Iranians, which sometimes treats of a single tree springing from the very middle of the holy spring of water, Ardvî-çûra, in Airyana-Vædja, and sometimes of two, corresponding exactly to those of the Biblical Eden. This similarity is so much the more natural, that we find the Sabians or Mendaites, an almost pagan sect, dwelling in the environs of Bussorah, who retain a great number of Babylonian religious traditions, to be also conversant with the tree of life, which they designate in their Scriptures asSetarvan, "that which shades." The most ancient name of Babylon in the idiom of the Ante-Semitic population,Tin-tir-kî, signifies "the place of the tree of life." Finally, the representation of the sacred plant which we assimilate with that of the Edenic traditions, appears as a symbol of life eternal on those curious sarcophagi, in enamelled clay, belonging to the latest period of Chaldean civilization, after Alexander the Great, which have been discovered at Warkah, the ancient Uruk.

The manner of representing this sacred plant varies in Assyrian bas-reliefs and exhibits different degrees of complexity.[64]It is, however, invariably a plant of moderate size, of pyramidal form, having a straight stem from which spring numerous branches, and a cluster of large leaves at its base. In one example only[65]is the plant represented with sufficient accuracy to enable us to classify it as theAsclepias acidaorSarcostemma vinimalis, the plant known as the Soma to the Aryans of India, the Haoma to the Iranians, the crushed branches of which afford the intoxicating liquor offered as a libation to the gods, and identified with the celestial beverage of life and immortality. More generally, however, the plant has a conventional and decorative aspect, not answering exactly to any natural type, and it is this purely conventional form which the Persians have borrowed from Assyro-Babylonian art, and which represents the Haoma on gems, cylinders or cones of Persian workmanship in the era of the Achemenides.[66]Such an adoption of the most usual shape of the sacred plant of the Chaldeans and Assyrians by the Persians, in order to represent their own Haoma—although the conventional bore no similarity to the real plant—proves that they recognized a certain analogy in the conception of the two emblems. In point of fact the Persians have shown great discernment in their borrowing and adapting; and where they took Chaldeo-Assyrian art for model and for teaching, they only adopted such of those religious symbols common in the basin of the Euphrates and Tigris, as might be rendered applicable to their own peculiar doctrines, and even to a very pure Mazdeism. The adoption of the image of the divine plant of the Chaldeo-Assyrians in order to represent the Haoma is, therefore, a conclusive sign that an assimilation of the symbols had taken place, and we find in it a new proof in support of the close connection between the plant guarded by genii on Assyrian or Babylonian monuments and the tree of life of paradisiacal tradition. Indeed, if Indians vary in opinion as to the nature of the mysterious trees of their earthly paradise of Mènu, even generally admitting of four different species, and if the Bundehesh-pehlevi, in bestowing on the tree of Airyana-Vædja the name ofKhembe, appears to have had in view one of the plants placed by Indians on the counterforts of Mèru—i.e., thePanelea orientalis, which in Sanscrit is calledKadamba; it is the "white Haoma," the Haoma type that is almost always found in the sacred books of Mazdeans springing from the middle of the fountain Ardvî-çûra, and distilling the beverage of immortality. The Aryans of India connected a similar idea with their Soma, for the fermented liquor that they produced by pounding its branches in a mortar, and offered as a libation to their gods, is named by themAmritam, "ambrosia draught that renders immortal." The Haoma and its sacred juice is also called "that which keeps off death," in the ninth chapter of theYaçnaof the Zoroastrians. It is for this reason that, both with the Indians and the Iranians, the personification of the sacred plant and its juice, the god Soma, or Haoma, prototype of the Greek Dionysius, becomes a lunar divinity, inasmuch as he is the guardian of the ambrosia stored by the gods in the moon. And here we have another similarity forced upon us when we stand before Assyrian bas-reliefs, where the sacred plant is guarded by winged genii, having heads of eagles or peripterous vultures. These symbolic beings present, indeed, a singular analogy with the Garuda, or rather the Garsudas of Indian Aryans, genii, half men, half eagles. Now, in the Indian myths, more particularly in the beautiful story of theAstika-parvaof the Mahâbhârata, it is Garuda who reconquers the ambrosiaAmritam—that is, the sacred juice of the Soma, used for libations, that had been stolen by demons, and who restores it to the celestial god, himself remaining its guardian. The part played by him and by the eagle-headed genii of Assyrian monuments, with regard to the tree of life, is consequently the same as that which we find in Genesis assigned toKerubin, armed withflaming swords, who were placed by God at the gate of Eden, after the expulsion of the first human pair, to prevent the entrance into Paradise, and to guard its tree of life.

In one part at least of Chaldea properly so called, to the south of Babylon, it appears as though it were no longer the type we have just been considering that was employed to represent the tree of life. It was the palm, the tree that furnished the majority of the inhabitants of the district with food, and with fruit from which they distilled a fermented and intoxicating liquor, a kind of wine; the tree to which they were wont to attribute in a popular song as many benefits as there are days in the year—this palm it was that was there considered the sacred, the paradisiacal tree. We have the proof of this in cylinders that show us the palm surmounted by the emblem of the Supreme God, and guarded by two eagle-headed genii. Moreover, the essential character of the tree of life lies in its fruits affording an intoxicating juice, the beverage of immortality; and accordingly the books of the Sabians or Mendaites associate it with the tree Setarvan, "the perfumed vine," Sam Gufro, above which hovers "the Supreme Life" in the same way as does the emblematic image of divinity in its highest and most abstract form above the plant of life in the monumental representations of Babylon and Assyria.

And, further, the fact that in the cosmogonic traditions of the Chaldeans and Babylonians respecting the tree of life and paradisiacal fruit, there was contained a dramatic myth, closely resembling in form the Biblical narrative of the Temptation, appears to be as positively established as may be in the absence of written texts, by a cylinder of hard stone preserved in the British Museum.[67]There we actually see a man and woman, the former wearing on his head the kind of turban peculiar to Babylonians,[68]seated opposite each other on either side of a tree, from whose spreading branches two big fruits hang—one in front of each of the figures who are stretching out their hands to gather it. A serpent is rearing himself behind the woman. This representative might serve as a direct illustration of the narrative in Genesis, nor as M. Friedrich Delitzsch has observed, can it lend itself to any other interpretation.

M. Renan has no hesitation in agreeing with ancient commentators in finding a vestige of the same traditions among the Phenicians in the fragments of the Book of Sanchoniathon, translated into Greek by Philo of Byblos. In point of fact it is there told, in connection with the first human pair, that Aion—which seems a rendering of Havah—"invented feeding on the fruits of the tree." The learned academician even thinks he discovers in this passage an echo of some type of Phenician figured representation, retracing a scene such as thatrecorded in Genesis, and visible on the Babylonian cylinder. Certain it is that, at the epoch of the great influx of Oriental traditions into the classic world, we see a representation of the kind figure on several Roman sarcophagi, where it indicates positively the introduction of a legend analogous to the narrative of Genesis, and associated with the myth of the formation of man by Prometheus. One famous sarcophagus in the Capitol Museum displays in the neighbourhood of the Titan, son of Japetos, who is performing his work as modeller—a pair—man and woman—in the nudity of primeval days, standing at the foot of a tree, the man's gesture showing that he means to gather its fruit.[69]We meet with the same group in a bas-relief built into the wall of the small garden of the Villa Albani in Rome, only here it is in still closer conformity with the Hebrew tradition, as a huge serpent is coiled round the trunk of the tree beneath which the two mortals are standing. It is this plastic type that was imitated and reproduced by the earliest Christian artists, when they attempted the representation of the fall of our first parents, which formed so favourite a subject with them, both in sculpture and painting.

On the sarcophagus of the Capitol the presence in proximity of Prometheus of one of the Parcæ drawing the horoscope of the man whom the Titan is forming, leads us to suspect in these sculptured subjects the influence of the doctrine of those Chaldean astrologists who had spread themselves, during the later centuries before the Christian era, throughout the Greco-Roman world, and had acquired an especial amount of credit in Rome. Nevertheless, the date of these last monuments renders it possible to look upon the representation of the first pair beside the tree of Paradise, of which they are about to eat, as directly borrowed from the Old Testament itself, as well as from the cosmogony of Chaldea or Phenicia. But the existence of this tradition in the cycle of the indigenous legends of the Canaanites seems to me placed beyond doubt by a curious painted vase of Phenician workmanship of the seventh or sixth centuryB.C., discovered by General di Cesnola, in one of the most ancient sepulchres of Idalia, in the Isle of Cyprus.[70]

There we actually see a leafy tree, from the branches of which hang two large clusters of fruit, while a great serpent is advancing with undulating movements towards the tree, and rearing itself to seize hold of the fruit.[71]

Now, we are justified in doubting that in Chaldea, and still more in Phenicia, a tradition parallel to the Biblical account of the Fall ever assumed a significance as exclusively spiritual as it does in Genesis, or that it contained the moral lesson also to be found in the story as given in the Zoroastrian scriptures. The spirit of grossly materialistic Pantheism in the religion of those lands rendered this impossible. Nevertheless, we may remark that among the Chaldeans, and their disciples the Assyrians, at all events from a given epoch, the notion of the nature of sin and the necessity of repentance was to be found more precisely formed than amongst the majority of ancient peoples, and consequently it is difficult to believe that the Chaldean priesthood did not, in their profound speculations on religious philosophy, seek for some solution of the problem of the origin of evil and sin.

With the foregoing reservation, it is, indeed, probable that the Chaldean and Phenician legend of the fruit of the tree of Paradise was nearly akin in spirit to the cycles of ancient myths common to all the branches of the Aryan race. To the study of these M. Adalbert Kuhn has contributed a book of the highest interest.[72]He deals with such as refer to the invention of fire, and to the beverage of life. These are to be found in their most ancient form in the Vedas, and they then passed over, more or less modified by the course of time, to the Greeks, Romans, Slavs, as well as the Iranians and Indians. The fundamental conception of these myths, which are only to be found complete in their oldest forms, is of the universe as an immense tree, whose roots embrace the earth, and whose branches form the vault of heaven.[73]The fruit of this tree is fire—indispensable to human existence, and the material symbol of intelligence; and the leaves distil the Elixir of Life. The gods had reserved to themselves the possession of fire, which sometimes, indeed, descends on earth in the form of lightning, but which men were not themselves to produce. He who—like the Prometheus of the Greeks—discovers the method of artificially kindling a flame, and communicates this discovery to other men, is impious, has stolen the forbidden fruit from the sacred tree, is accursed, and the wrath of the gods pursues him and his race.

The analogy between these myths and the Bible narrative is striking indeed. They are, really, one and the same tradition, only bearing a quite different sense, symbolizing an invention of a material order, instead of dwelling on the fundamental fact of the moral order, and disfigured further by the monstrous conception, too frequent in Paganism, of the Divinity as a formidable and adverse power, jealous of the happiness and progress of man. The spirit of error among the Gentiles had distorted the mysterious symbolic memory of the events by which the fate of humanity was decided. The inspired author of Genesis took it up under the form that it had evidently retained among the Hebrews, as among the other nations where it had acquired a material meaning, but he restored to it its true significance, and made it the occasion of a solemn lesson.

Some remarks are still needed regarding the animal form assumed by the tempter in Bible story, that serpent who, as figured monuments have shown us, played the same part in the legends of Chaldea and Phenicia.

The serpent, or, more correctly speaking, different kinds of serpents, held a very considerable place in the religious symbolism of the peoples of antiquity. These creatures figure therein with most opposite meanings, and it would be contrary to the laws of criticism to group together confusedly, as some learned scholars were once wont to do, the contradictory notions linked in old myths with different serpents, so as to form out of them one vast Ophiological system,[74]referred to a single source, and brought into relation with the narrative in Genesis. But by the side of divine serpents, essentially benign in character, protective, prophetic, linked with gods of health, life, and healing, we do find in all mythologies a gigantic serpent, who personifies a hostile and nocturnal power, a wicked principle, material darkness, and moral evil.

Among the Egyptians we meet with the serpent, Assap, who fights against the sun and moon, and whom Horus pierces with his weapon. Among the Chaldeo-Assyrians we find mention made of a great serpent called the "enemy of the gods,"aiub-ilani. We need not introduce here the myth of the great cosmogonic struggle between Tiamat, the personification of Chaos, and the god Masuduk, related in a portion of the epic fragments, in cuneiform character, discovered by George Smith. Tiamat assumes the form of a monster often repeated on monuments, but this form is not that of the serpent. We are distinctly told that it was from Phenician mythology that Pherecides of Syros borrowed his account of the Titan Ophion, the man-serpent precipitated into Tartarus, together with his companions, by the god Kronos (El), who triumphed over him at the beginning of things, a story strikinglysimilar to that of the defeat of the "old serpent, who is the accuser and Satan," repulsed and imprisoned in the abyss, which story does not, indeed, occur in the Old Testament, but existed among the oral traditions of the Hebrews, and makes its appearance in Chapters xii. and xx. of the Apocalypse of St. John.

Mazdeism is the only religion in whose symbolism the serpent never plays any but an evil part, for even in that of the Bible it sometimes wears a benign aspect, as, for instance, in the story of the brazen serpent. The reason is, that in the dualistic conception of Zoroastrianism the animal itself belonged to the impure and fatal creation of the evil principle. Thus, it was under the form of a great serpent that Angromainyus, after having tried to corrupt Heaven, leaped upon the earth; it was under this form that Mithra, god of the pure sky, fought with him; and, finally, it is under this form that he is eventually to be conquered and chained for 3000 years, and at the end of the world burned up with molten metals.[75]

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