Assertion. The evil days come. Negation. No pleasure in them. Principal. The sun shall be darkened. Inferior. The light. The moon. Subservient to them both. The stars. Rational. Internal, v. 2. Irrational. Weakened faculties (Animal, v. 3, ap. pearing in the External. Simple eminent effects, and most remarkable alterations, v. 5, of Superior. The keepers of the house shall tremble. Natural, v. 4. {The beginning. The doors shall be shut in the streets, when the Mixt, v. 4, latter end. Of voice of the grinding is low. Inward and outward, in want of sleep, which binds up both. He shall rise up at the voice of the bird. Vital and natural; the active daughters of music belonging to All the daughters of music shall be brought low. The body in respect of parts. Brain, and the parts arising thencefrom. Heart, and the parts arising thencefrom, as they relate to Excrementions. The almond-tree shall flourish. Aliment. Sperm. or hard. The grashopper shall be a burden. Sang. or tender. Desire shall fail. Without the scull. The silver cord shall be loosed. In the energetic and figurative language of the Man of Wisdom, the failings and infirmities of age are touchingly and beautifully traced from their commencement, to that natural consummation when, with Horace, it may be said, "(Jam te) premet nox, fabulæque manes The first indications of age approaching, are the slightest shades of mental deficiences, those threatenings of obscurity which are as the gloaming preceding the darkness of night: (') "Remember now thy Creator "in the days of thy youth, while the evil "days come not, nor the years draw nigh "when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure " in them."(2) (1) Ecclesiastes xii. 1. (2) Lorinus says, that these last words have a much more extensive meaning in the original;—that they relate to the capability of performing one's ordinary duties or business. Dr. Mead, who has written a commentary on these verses, in his Medica Sacra, observes, that with the mental failings commences the enumeration of the evils of the day, "while the sun, or the light, or "the moon, or the stars, be not dark 66 ened, nor the clouds return after the "rain." Accordingly, we are not to infer from this that the eyes themselves are dimmed, but that, as wisdom and understanding, in various parts of the Scripture, find their emblems in light and its different sources, so are we here to understand that the qualities of the mind are now becoming obscured. We are therefore to conclude that the Preacher designates by the sun, light, moon, and stars being darkened, the weakening of the inward powers of the mind; that the general effects of strickened age are drawing nigh, and that these (being defects) are permanent, and not fleeting, for the clouds return after the rain. It appears from some translations of Sir John Chardin, that the winter following spring is a common metaphor for the progress of life from infancy to age; (1) and according to D'Herbelot (Bibliotique Orientale) there was a festival celebrated by the ancient Persians at the end of winter, called Rocoub Alcousag,' which are words. signifying the cavalcade of the old man without a beard.' In this festival a bald and beardless old man, mounted on an ass, and holding a raven in one of his hands, went about striking with a switch all he met, and this figure is emblematical of winter; consequently the converse of (1) Oriental Literature, vol. ii. p. 76. 'this must have appeared natural to them: 'to represent old age by winter.' The words of Solomon, in the second verse, will be found, on examination, to be an exact delineation of an Eastern winter; hardly a cloud, according to Dr. Russell, is to be seen all summer; (Descrption of Aleppo, vol. i. p. 66); but the winter is frequently dark and gloomy, and often dark clouds return, and pour down a fresh deluge after a great deal of rain had descended just before. (Description of Aleppo. Appendix.) Whereas, after the first rains of autumn, there is frequently a considerable interval of fine weather before it rains again. Now comes the time when the external characteristics of old age are marked; when the oak, from a vigorous leafy tree, becomes a hollowed stem bent by time, broken by the storm, its leaves scattered, |