hood of Thebes, more than a thousand years prior to the date which British historians are content to look upon as almost the remotest era of definite written records.

It is not easy for the ordinary reader to comprehend all the difficulties that beset the study of which we have thus described some of the first steps. Yet it may alone suffice to show how great the obstacles were, to mention that the Rosetta Stone, which is so highly valued as having furnished the first key to the nature and meaning of the characters in which the records of Egypt are inscribed, was in the hands of the ablest and most profound scholars of Europe for nearly twenty years without their being able to turn it to the least account. Now, however, it seems fully mastered. The cartouches which contain the names of the ancient Egyptian Pharaohs, and which, on the Abydos and other tables, are arranged apparently in historic order, are being read and arranged in dynasties. Chronology receives new light from the investigations; ancient history obtains many additions to its data, and the researches into the monuments of contemporary Asiatic empires, furnish sources of mutual light and fresh incentives to future study.

CHAPTER II.

THE RUINS OF EGYPT.

Far stretching thoughts are thine, Egyptian land
Of desert, and oasis, and old Nile;

Fountain of myriad dream and monster pile,
Casting each giant shadow on the strand
Of long-gone ages, peopled by a band
Of thine embalmed shapes.

ANON.

THE facilities of modern travel, and the increasing intercourse among nations, hitherto severed by space, and by political and social differences which for ages had seemed insurmountable, have made known to us in recent years numerous remarkable monuments of ancient architectural skill. During the half century that has just drawn to a close, Egypt, India, Asia-minor, and Assyria; Greece, Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Rome; Mexico, Yucatan, and even the populous valley of the Mississipi; have all yielded up to the indefatigable zeal of modern research, monuments of ancient sculpture and architecture, rivaling or surpassing nearly every previous discovery of similar memorials of past ages. But still the monuments of Egyptian skill and architectural magnificence retain their old supremacy. They appear to be at once the most ancient, the most gigantic, and, withal, the most interesting and remarkable of all the early works of man.

We find in these monuments not mere memorials of former labour and skill, but a definite and trustworthy history, which discloses to us the annals of a people more

remarkable than any other of the first founders of empires. Yet amid all the remarkable disclosures which these monuments have yielded to the patient perseverance and sagacity of recent investigators, it has been justly said, that "Egypt presents nothing more wonderful than the magnitude and durability of the public works which were accomplished by her ancient inhabitants. Prodigal of labour and expense, her architects appear to have planned their structures for the admiration of the most distant posterity, and with the view of rendering the fame of their mechanical powers coeval with the existence of the globe itself. It has been suspected, indeed, that the omnipotent spirit of religion mingled with the aspirations of a more earthly ambition in suggesting the intricacies of the Labyrinth, and in realizing the vast conception of the Pyramids. The preservation of the body in an entire and uncorrupted state during three thousand years, is understood to have been connected with the mythological tenet that the spirit by which it was originally occupied would return to animate its members, and to render them once more the instruments of a moral probation amid the ordinary pursuits of the human race. The mortal remains, even of the greatest prince, could hardly have been regarded as deserving of the minute care and the sumptuous apparatus which were employed to save them from dissolution, had not the national faith pointed to a renewal of existence after the lapse of ages, when the bodily organs would again become necessary to the exercise of those faculties from which the dignity and enjoyment of man are derived. There can be no doubt, therefore, that Egypt was indebted to the religious speculations of her ancient sages for those sublime works of architecture which still distinguish her above all the other nations of the primitive world." Still, while we gaze with wonder and admiration on the vast structures, which still stand amid the plains of Egypt, we must

not be deluded into the extravagant admiration of her ancient wisdom and piety, which has led some recent writers to seek there, rather than in the sources to which divine revelation points, for the origination not only of all human arts, but of nearly all human faith. The talented authoress of "Eastern Life," thus expresses her conception of the vast importance of the disclosures which may be anticipated from the perfect understanding of the long sealed records graven on the monuments of Egypt: "When the traveller gazes at vast buildings covered over in every part with writing; every architrave, every abacus, every recess, and every projection, all the lines of the cornice, and all the intervals of the sculptures, he is overwhelmed with the sense of the immensity of knowledge locked up from him before his eyes. Let those at home imagine the ecclesiastical history of Christendom written up thus, on every inch of the surface of its cathedrals, and the civil history of any country, from its earliest times, thus engraved on all its public buildings and palaces, and he may form some conception of what it would be, in regard to mere amount, to be able to read the inscriptions in Egypt. If he is also aware that the religion, philosophy, and science of the world for many thousand years, a religion, philosophy, and science, which reveal a greater nobleness, depth, and extent, the more they are explored, are recorded there, under our very eyes and hands, he will see that no nobler task awaits any lover of truth and of his race, than that of enabling mankind to read these earliest volumes of its own history.".

But more caution must be used in drawing our conclusions from these wonderful structures, graven with old Egypt's history. The vastness of their size and the huge massess of stone with which most of them are constructed, do not necessarily evince the highest development of human wisdom and skill. We see in them, rather, the imposing evidences of great mechanical difficulties

overcome, by which comparatively rude nations aim at giving expression to human power. The pyramids, more especially, which required the treasures of a wealthy people, and the labours of thousands for many years, to pile stone upon stone, and build up an artificial hill amid the sandy plains beside the Nile, are fit only to be the monuments of a barbarian despot. Modern science and mechanical skill can see in them nothing that time and money could not now accomplish, were the end deemed worthy of the cost and labour; while the intelligent mind will own the evidence of more intellect and mental labour in the sculptured pediment of the Athenian Parthenon, than in all the groups of pyramids which still rear their lofty points towards heaven. But, though the barbaric idea of vast stones, and gigantic structures, evincing the victory over mere mechanical difficulties, never disappears from the architecture of the ancient Egyptians, there is abundant evidence of a remarkable progress attained in civilization and the arts. Were it not for this indeed, we should look in vain for a satisfactory reason to account for the sustained interest with which successive ages have returned to the investigation of Egyptian antiquities. But while we gaze with wonder and admiration on evidences of human skill, dating back almost to the era of the Deluge and the second origin of the human race, we must exercise a judicious restraint on our fancy in its inclination to assume that all which pertained to the people, whose temples and tombs form such enduring monuments of genius and mechanical skill, was in consistent harmony with what is so worthy of admiration as the creation of human intellect. We know too well from the history both of classic and medieval art, that the highest excellence in the creation of beautiful forms, and new combinations of earlier elements of art, was perfectly compatible with the most vicious moral tastes and habits, and with most degrading conceptions of spiritual things.