fair cold Died under 2 Years old 709

The LONDON MAGAZINE:

Or, GENTLEMAN's Monthly Intelligencer.

For APR I. L, 1753.

To be Continued. (Price Six-Pence each Month.)

Containing, (Greater Variety, and more in Quantity, than any Monthly Book of the fame Price.)

With a Beautiful MAP of the SCILLY ISLANDS, accurately engraved, and a fine Portrait of BAMPFYLDE MOORE CARE W, drawn from the Life.

MULTUM IN PARVO.

LONDON: Printed for R. BALDWIN, jun. at the Rofe in Pater-Nofter-Row. Of whom may be had, compleat Sets from the Beginning to this Time, neatly Bound, or Stitch'd, or any firgle Month to compleat Sets.

The king's fenior chaplain we are obliged to defer to our next, when the verses to a gentle man going to wifit Herculaneum, and other pieces, fhall be confidered. We bave received two letters from different bands, both figned Philaletbes, which shall have a proper regard paid to them in our next.

THE

LONDON MAGAZINE.

APRIL,

Mediterranean; but this part was then inhabited by the Philistines †, and between it and the Red Sea lay a defert, then called the defert of the Red-Sea 1, through which it is probable they could not march for want of water, therefore they turned to the right, or fouth, and encamped upon the coast of the Red Sea from whence they appeared to be intangled in the land §; for on the left they were shut in by the wilderness of the Red-Sea, which prevented its being poffible for them to march northward; on their right they had impaffable mountains, which made it equally impoffible for them to march to the fouthward; and in front B they had the Red Sea, which it was thought they could not país, as they were not provided with any fort of paffage boats, and confequently could not pro ceed to the eastward.

Numb. xxxiii. 7. † Exod. xiii. 17. Exod. xiv. 3.

Egyptian fide of the Red Sea, there is to weft fouth west a remarkable aperture in the mountains, and the country near to these fountains is at this time called the defert of Sedur.

with antient unknown characters, and in fome places at 12 or 14 feet from the ground, which is the more furprising, as in thefe mountains there is neither water, nor any thing to be gotten to eat. Upon which the bishop remarks, that thefe characters are, probably, the antient Hebrew character, which the Ifraelites having learned to write, after the law was given from Mount Sinai, they diverted themfelves with practifing it on these mountains, during their forty years abode in the wilderness; but that this character having been difufed during the Babylonish captivity, is loft, the Chaldee character being now used instead of it. This conBjecture is the more probable, as the ITraelites could then know no other way of writing but by engraving on stone, which was the way in which the Ten Commandments were communicated to them, and which they were ordered to write upon the posts of their houses, and on their gates, therefere they were obliged to practife upon the rocks in the wildernefs, in order to learn to write them upon their pofts and gates when they came to be fettled in the Promised Land.

Now the Bible tells us, that the Ifraelites, in their 4th day's journey, turned from Etham, in the edge of the wilderness *, A and encamped before Piha-hiroth, which fignifies in Hebrew the mouth or opening of Hiroth, from whence they croffed the Red-Sea, and went out into the wildernefs of Shurt; therefore it is probable that Etham lay a little to the weft of the place where Suez now ftands, and that Piha-hiroth lay about or near a day's journey fouth-east of Etham, confequently at this very aperture in the mountains taken notice of in this Journal; and as there was no complaint for want of water for fome time after their paffing the Red Sea, we must fuppofe, that they fupplied themselves at thefe fountains, which for that reafon ftill retain the name of the Fountains of Mofes; to which we C fhall add, that the country, now called the defert of Sedur, is probably the very fame with what is by Mofes called the wildernefs of Shur.

The Journal further informs us, that, September the 8th, they came to a rivulet which emptied itfelf into the Red-Sea fome leagues below where they paffed it, but that the water, tho' very clear, was fomewhat bitter, and that in the mountains to the fouth-eaft they came to a place called Marah.

D

The correfpondence here again with the Bible is furprifing; for Mofes tells us, that the Ifraelites, after paffing the RedSea, went three days in the wilderness of Shur, without finding water, and that E when they came to Marah, they could not drink the waters because they were bitter; therefore it is very probable, tho' the author of the Journal does not take notice of it, that the rivulet of bitter water mentioned by him, rifes from fountains of bitter water near this place, which is to this day called Marah; and

if the water of the river, near its mouth, was bitter, the waters of the fountains, from which it rifes, muft have been much more fo.

F

The Journal likewife takes notice, that they paired through some very rude mountains, called the mountains of Faran, which name certainly comes from Paran, G the name given to this part of the country, and often mentioned in the Bible || ; and that to the north of thefe mountains they paffed thro' others, called the Written mountains, because the faces of almost all the marble rocks are engraved

The WORLD, N°. 15, April 12.

The Author, after a fhort Introduction, proceeds to treat of the whimsical Variations of GARDENING.

TH

HIS (fays he) is more particularly the cafe with the counties adjacent to London, over which the Genius of gardening exercises his power so often and fo wantonly, that they are usually new-created once in 20 or 30 years, and no traces left of their former condition. Nor is this to be wondered at; for gardening, being the drefs of nature, is as liable to the caprices of fashion, as are the dreffes of the human body; and there is a certain mode of it in every age, which grows antiquated, becomes obfolte and ridiculous in the next. So that, were any man of tafte now to lay out lefs than half a century ago, it would his ground in the ftyle which prevailed occafion us much aftonishment and laughter, as if a modern beau fhould appear in the drawing-room in red stockings, or introduce himfelt into a polite affembly in one of my lord Foppington's perriwigs.

What was the prevailing mode in Milton's days, may be gueffed from a paffage in his Il Penferofo, where he describes Retired leifure taking his delight in trim gardens. The practice, it should feem, was to embroider and flourish over the ground with curious knots and flowers, as the fame poet calls them in another part of his

c.

Numb. xxxiii. 6. § Deut. vi. 9.

+ Exod. xv. 22.

† Exod. xv. 23.

works; Genef. xxi, 21,