27, when the prosecutions for blasphemy were leading
hundreds and thousands to see what could be said against Christianity, with
a very powerful bias to make the most of all that they could find, some
friends of mine, of more ingenuity than erudition, strongly recommended to
my attention the works of a shoemaker at Norwich, named Mackey, who they
said was more learned than any one else, and had completely shown up _the
thing_. It is worth a note that I perfectly remember the cause of their
excitement to have been the imprisonment of the Rev. Robert Taylor, for
publishing various arguments against revelation. I examined several works
of Mackey's, and I have yet one or two bound up among my wonders of nature
and art. As in time to come, when neither love nor money will procure a
copy of these books, some tradition may set inquirers looking after them,
perhaps it may be worth while to preserve a couple of extracts for the
benefit of those who have the sense to hunt the index of "N. & Q." before
they give up anything.

"The Virgin Andromeda, the daughter of _Cepheus_ and _Cassiopeia_, was
the representative of Palestina; a long, narrow, rocky strip of land;
figuratively called the daughter of Rocks and Mountains; because it is
a country abounding with rocks and stones. And the Greeks, really
supposing _Cepha_, a rock or stone, to have been the young ladies
father, added their sign of the masculine gender to it, and it became
Cepha-_us_. And mount Cassius being its southern boundary was called
_Cassiobi_; from its being also the boundary of the _overflowed Nile_,
called Obi, which the Greeks {566} softened into _Cassiopeia_, and
supposed it to have been her mother;..."--_Mythological Astronomy, part
second_, Norwich, 1823, 12mo., p. xiii.

"The story of ABRAHAM, notwithstanding all the endeavours of
theologians to give it the appearance of the history of human beings,
has preserved its mythological features with an outline and colouring,
easily to be recognised by every son of _Urania_ [Ur of the Chaldees is
subsequently made to contain the root of _Uranus_]. We have just seen
that the Egyptians have their harvest about the time which the sun
_passes over_ the equator, and if we go back to the time of _Abraham_
we shall find that the equator [perhaps he means equinox] was in
_Taurus_; the Egyptians must, then, have had their harvest while the