CELTIC LANGUAGE. 37
language. We are traceable to two individuals,
Adam and Eve ; but by gradual procreation we
have branched into a "number almost without num-
ber," assuming in our progress peculiar shades,
grades, and habits. Nor is a tree perhaps a bad
comparison : it shoots from a single germ or root
— it branches every year — you may engraft it and
transplant it, till perhaps, through time, it gives
you enough to do to identify it; still its primary
root indicates the genus, and t+iat root must grow
out of Nature.
We are aware it will be urged against us here,
the freedom with which the serpent converses with
the woman, and the fluency with which the woman
converses with the serpent and with her Maker.
Without at all resorting to Eastern allegory, which
our greatest divines admit,* we answer, we bow
* " We have the assurance of Bishop Horsley," says the
reflectful Coleridge, "that the Church of England does not
demand the literal understanding of the document contained
in the second (from verse 8) and third Chapters of Genesis
as a point of faith, or regard a different interpretation as
affecting the orthodoxy of the interpreter : divinesof the most
unimpeachable orthodoxy, and the most averse to the allego-
rizing of scripture history in general, having from the earliest
ages of the Christian Church adopted or permitted it in this
instance. And, indeed, no unprejudiced man can pretend to
doubt, that if in any other work of Eastern origin he met
with trees of life and of knowledge ; or talking and convers-
able snakes :
Inque rei signwn serpentem serperejussum ;