Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

236
USE OF THR CROSS.
languages, and on etymologies ;
(Edipuses and Herineses
without end, riddles which would trouble (Edipus himself
to solve, and which Thoth, Trismegistus, Teut, Tat,
Hermes, Mercury, Ermenseil, or by whatever name he is
known, would be puzzled to comprehend the drift and
object of. Thus have the histories of Jupiter, and Saturn,
and Peleg, and the Titans, and Japhet, and the Cimme-
rians, and a hundred others, been written ; and this is
learning. Horace Walpole compares antiquaries to old
women : a very irroverend remark.
But lest you should rank me among the sisterhood,
we will return to some matters of fact connected with
this remarkable Circle.
As far as my antiquarian reading goes, the cruciform
disposition is peculiar to this one. In the smaller monu-
ments indeed, of which so many distinct kinds are in-
cluded under the vague term of Cromlechs, a disposition
of the stones in a form somewhat resembling that of a
cross, has occasionally been observed ; but in most of
them, perhaps, it seems to have been the result either of
accident or necessity. It is generally understood also
that it was not till after the time of Constantino, or the
vision of the Labarum, that the Cross became a general
object of veneration. Yet it seems unquestionable that
the figure of a cross was known to the Gothic nations,
and also used by them, before they were converted to
Christianity. As they seem to have borrowed other hie-
roglyphic emblems from the east, so this seems to have
been among the figures which they might have obtained
in the same manner, and have also used in their monu-
ments, without its being necessary to suppose that they
adopted it as Christians, or after they had become such.
We need not now dive into that mysticism which sup-
poses that the Egyptians used this emblem as typical or
prophetic. Dr. Young has shewn that the Crux ansata.