NOTES*.

Eve.

ADAM AND EVE.

HE Rabbins relate rather a pleasant fable respecting the etymology of the word.

Eve," say they, "is derived from a word which signifies "to prattle." The first woman took this name for the following reason;-when God had created the world, he threw down from heaven twelve baskets filled with prattle; the wơman gathered up nine of them, whilst her husband had hardly time to collect the other three."

If we may credit some oriental historians, Eve had a rival.

"Adam," they write, " lived two hundred and thirty years with another woman named Lilith, who had been made of impure earth; and demons were the fatal progeny of this adultery."

They relate another absurd story, to which the prophecy of Enoch has given some colour.

* I owe a great part of these notes to the researches of an English writer, translated (into French) by M. de Cantwell.

"Cain, after his crime, lived in the valley. The family of Seth, distinguished by its virtues, remained, with Adam, on the mountain. But the inhabitants of the mountains, having one day beheld dances beneath them, descended, and fell in love with the women of the valley, and had commerce with them; and hence arose the mixture of virtue and vice." The prophecy of Enoch, on the other hand, represents the women of the valley as so very beautiful that God committed the charge of them to the angels, who suddenly became enamoured of them. From the celestial and terrestrial union, say they, proceeded the giants, who pursued their pleasures in human flesh, and in a short time peopled the earth.

God precipitated them into the grand abyss with the archangels.

Another oriental fable relates, that the rebellious angels declared war against the supreme Being; that they married the daughters of men ; that from this union sprung the demons; and that God, incensed by so many crimes, resolved to rid the earth of them by means of the deluge.

According to all these accounts the women were always the causes of evil; whence we may easily discover the principles of the ancients, who ever calumniated them.

THE PATRIARCHS.

FROM the deluge to the time of Abraham there appears a wide blank in the history of wo

men.

Our first shepherds did not despise any employments: Gideon and Amurath applied their hands to the labours of housekeeping and husbandry. Abraham, in order to entertain the angels properly, went himself and took a calf from his herd, skinned it, and gave it his wife to dress*. The princes of antiquity took the same trouble as Abraham, and the princesses applied themselves to cookery †.

The women were at this time charged to grind the corn. As mills were unknown, they bruised it between two stones; two women were employed at this work even in the time of Jesus Christ. "Two women," says he, "shall be grinding at the mill, the one shall be taken and the other left."

The principal employment of the women was spinning; they made use of the distaff and the spindle.

*This is not exactly true; "Abraham ran unto the herd, and fetched a calf tender and good, and gave it unto a young man; and he hasted to dress it." Gen. xviii. 7.

+ See Homer.

It seems, as I have observed in the text, that the amusements of the women were confined to some dances and songs. The more we enquire respecting this subject, the more we are obliged to think that the women were then condemned to so many employments that the cessation from labour on the days of rest was their chief plea

sure.

The wives of the patriarchs suckled their own children. The concubines complied, likewise, with this custom. It was adopted, too, by the Egyptians, the Canaanites, the Scythians, the Medes, and the Persians.

The men had at that time the power of repudiating their wives, without assigning any other reason than their good pleasure. They had also the right of annulling all the oaths, vows, and engagements of their daughters and their wives, provided they had not been present at the time of making them; for in such case their opposition ought to have been then signified, as their silence passed for a notification of their assent.

Nothing can more clearly prove to us, than these customs, the slavery to which the women were reduced. We perceive that even their thoughts and their secret inclinations were subject to the men. This barbarism was more excusable in these primeval ages of ignorance than the injustice of the laws against women established in more enlightened periods.

The Rabbins are fond of fabulous origins. They

pretend that Noah, at the particular request of Adam himself, carried his body into the ark, and, by this holy barrier, separated the women from the men; hence, say they, the custom of confining the women.

We can discover, in these first ages, nothing worthy of the title of "golden," which has been applied to them. Abraham and Isaac were continually afraid of being assassinated for their wives; and the oath which they exacted from their neighbours, not to attempt their lives, savoured little of a golden age.

THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS AND THE CHINESE.

THE ancient Egyptians are the only people among whom we discover, at this period, any traces of study and education. The priests taught the sciences, and, among others, astronomy. It is supposed that the women were not excluded. Many of them prophesied from dreams, and from the prodigies which they observed in the

air.

It is believed that the ancient Egyptians prohibited their women to learn music; because, say they, "this art relaxes the springs of the mind." The Israelites differed from them on this head. Moses frequently mentions celebrated female