of the orthographical system of the language, where any such system can be traced."

To these remarks Dr. Young adds, "The general inference to be derived from an examination of the names now discovered, is somewhat more in favour of an extensive employment of an alphabetical mode of writing, than any that could have been deduced from the pillar of Rosetta, which exhibits, indeed, only foreign names, and affords us, therefore, little or no information respecting the mode of writing the original Egyptian names of the inhabitants."

But it will be seen that it is not alone as a key to the phonetic character of the hieroglyphics of Egypt that these remarkable papyri are valuable. They are scarcely less interesting as historical documents, furnishing a clue to the religious and domestic habits of the ancient Egyptians, and to the customs and mode of sustentation of the priesthood. Remarkable, however, as the chance appears which placed this Greek autograph in the hands of almost the only man in England capable of turning it to good account, it was by no means a solitary example of an Egyptian legal document. From invaluable stores, secured by the enterprise and diligence of Sir George Grey, Dr. Young procured various Egyptian conveyances in the enchorial character, with separate Greek registries on the margin. By means of these, many additional examples of enchorial proper names were obtained in addition to the minute illustrations they afforded of the domestic history of Egypt, and of its singular customs and religious rights. Historians and archæologists have been long labouring to recover, from every dusty charter-chest and neglected record office, the chartularies of the middle ages, and rejoicing, as over discovered treasures, when they were so fortunate as to light on a parchment bearing date in the eleventh or twelfth century. But here were documents relating to the sale of lands in the neighbour

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