shall take care not to attempt to describe anything; for either my description would not express the thousandth part of what ought to be said, or, if I draw a faint sketch, I should be taken' (which would have been a great misfortune) for an enthusiast, or, per haps, for a madman (which may chance to be the case as it is). It will suffice to add, that no people, either ancient or modern, ever conceived the art of architecture on so sublime and so grand a scale as the ancient Egyptians. Their conceptions were those of one hundred feet high;' (of a man a hundred feet high? or of an architecture a hundred feet high?) and the imagination which, in Europe, rises far above our porticoes,' (what a height for the imagination to soar!) sinks abashed' (at what?) at the foot of the 140 columns of the Hypostyle hall at Karnac!' And this is a specimen of the silly verbiage which a man travels to Thebes to give vent to! Belzoni gives a much better idea of the feelings the traveller experiences on first contemplating these ruins, when he says " It appeared to me like entering a city of giants, who, after a long conflict, were all destroyed, leaving ruins of their various temples, as the only proofs of their former existence." The remainder of the monuments of Egypt, from this point down to the mouths of the Nile, have been described by modern travellers with considerable minuteness, but it remains for some future traveller to unite all that has been discovered into one work, and present the world with a just description of what Egypt was and is.

To proceed, however, with our remarks upon the Marquis; his notions of the sculpture and painting of the Egyptian subjects, upon which the Italians bestow more attention than we do, are just and well expressed. After quoting from an Arabian historian a description of the ruins of Memphis, as they existed in the thirteenth century, he adds :

You must not be surprised at the language of the historian. In Europe we have had no opportunity of forming a correct idea of the degree of perfection which the Egyptians had attained in statuary as well as painting. Our ideas have been acquired from the few diminutive specimens generally worked with great negligence, and belonging to religious ceremonies, which, as they were to be executed according to an established and fixed pattern, prevented the artist from displaying the extent of his art, or of his genius. We have, therefore, concluded, that the Egyptians knew nothing either in painting or sculpture, and that the productions of their artists were by no means to be compared with those of other nations. But the fact is far otherwise. The perfection to which the Egyptians had carried the arts of statuary and painting, has surprised the greatest connoisseurs. In the tomb discovered by Belzoni, the whole excavation, sculptured and painted, was in the most finished style of art. Mr. Salt observes, that their colours are generally pure and brilliant, but intermixed with each other nearly in the proportion of the rainbow, and so subdued by the proper introduction of black, as not to appear gaudy, but to produce a harmony, that in some of the designs is really delicious.

Nor is the language of artists themselves less strong. Mr. Beechy, a son of the celebrated painter, Sir William Beechy, professes himself quite fascinated with the effect of these combinations."One would think it was in Egypt," says he, that Titian, Giorgione, and Tintoret had acquired all that vigour and magic of effect which distinguishes them, in point of arrangement, and principally in the happy disposition of their darker colours."-pp. 31-32.

After a brief account of the zodiac of Dendéra, the author proceeds thus:

'Besides these monuments, still existing in their original situation, there are others that, from time to time, the rapacious hands of conquerors and travellers have imported into different countries. The Roman emperors removed to Rome not less than four obelisks, all of which are still to be seen in that ancient capital of the world. Mr. Bankes removed the obelisk of Philoe, which now graces the grounds of his estate in Wales. Belzoni opened one of the tombs belonging to the Pharaohs in the vale of Thebes, and brought to England the celebrated sarcophagus of white alabaster; he even removed the cover of the other sarcophagus, which contained the mummy of the Pharaoh Rameses Meiamon, and presented it to the university of Cambridge; other travellers have procured and brought to this country, as well as to others, statues, papyries, inscriptions, mummies, and monuments of all sorts, which are found in several museums, and particularly in the British Museum, the Museum of Paris, the Museum of Turin, perhaps the richest of all, and the Vatican library; and, last of all, the French commission, sent by Napoleon to Egypt, has given so many accurate fac similies of most of the principal monuments still existing in Egypt, and brought over so many various monuments of Egyptian antiquity, as to allow our learned men to become quite familiar with the characters, and, by dint of labour, with their subject and meaning. pp. 34-35.

He then gives an account of the Rosetta stone, of the discoveries of Mr. Bankes at Abydos, and continues―

In considering these astonishing productions, we must really wonder how a nation, which was once so great as to erect these stupendous edifices, could so far fall into oblivion, that even their language and method of writing are unknown to us, But our wonder will increase, if possible, to a higher degree, when we take into consideration the materials which have been so modelled. They had only four sorts of stones in general use for sculpture; the sandy, the calcareous, the breccia, and granite; all, except the first, are very hard; and what is most singular, we do not know with what tools they were cut out. We know by experience We know by experience that the tools of the present day will not cut granite without great difficulty; and Belzoni, who had made so many experiments on this stone, doubts whether we could give it the smoothness and surface we see in Egypt. On the calcareous stone, the figures have angles so sharp, that the best tempered chisel of our time could not produce the like. It is so hard, that it breaks more like glass than stone. And yet, with these materials they have produced the most exquisite specimens of architecture and sculptures for in both these arts their productions have a boldness of execution that has never been equalled by any other nation of the universe. The gigantic statues of Greece of Rome, are but dwarfs and pigmies when compared to

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those of Karnac, Louqsor, Esné, Dendérâ, and, indeed, of the whole of Egypt and Nubia. aq bat id don adi to goz

They had made besides considerable progress in several manufactures, to a degree which is really astonishing. Their linen manufacture had a perfection equal to our own. For in many of their figures we observe their garments quite transparent; and among the folding of the mummies Belzoni observed cloth quite as fine as our common muslin, very strong, and of an even texture. They had also the art of tanning leather, and staining it with various colours, as we do morocco; and actually knew the mode of embossing on it. Many specimens of the sort have been found with figures impressed on the leather, quite elevated. The same must be said of their art in making glass, some of which was of a beautiful black colour, and so perfect as to resemble the natural obsidian. Of such glass was made the celebrated statue of Menelaus. This information we gather from Pliny, who makes use of this observation, to prove that the art of manufacturing glass was very ancient.

Besides enamelling, the art of gilding was in great perfection among them, and they knew how to beat gold nearly as thin as ours; for Belzoni found many ornaments of the kind, and a leaf of gold, which appeared to him extremely pure, and of a finer colour than is generally seen in our own. They knew also how to cast copper and form it into sheets, and had a metallic composition not unlike our lead, but of greater tenacity. Carved works were very common, and in great perfection, particularly in the proportion of their figures; and the art of varnishing and baking the varnish on clay, was in such perfection, that the most enlightened travellers have doubted whether they could be imitated at present. I have already noticed their skill and success in painting, and in the blending of the colours; and, in indeed, the more I read and consider what they have done, and what they were capable of doing, the more I am lost in amazement; for as most of their stupendous works are of the highest antiquity, they must have been the production of their artists during the hieratic government, and so near to the deluge, that, even adopting our older system of the Septuagint chronology, a man can scarcely conceive how a nation could in so short a time, render habitable the whole valley of the Nile, and acquire such knowledge, and make so great a proficiency in most sciences, in most manufactures, and in all the arts.'-pp. 37-39.

ཞན་པ

Though the Marquis Spineto had before him the profound researches of Creuzer, on the religion of ancient Egypt, as well as the interesting and able work of Prichard, he has not succeeded in his attempts to throw much interest or novelty into his speculations. Creuzer, whose eloquence and fancy are equal to his learning, presents us with a deeply interesting picture of the ceremonies attending the preparation of the body to await the return of the soul, from the moment in which the Paraschistes made the first incision in the corpse, and was driven away with stones by the relations of the deceased, to that in which the mummy was deposited in the city of the dead. He observes that the dissector, who was thus pursued as impious for performing a necessary duty, was of the priestly cast, and that Hermes, according to tradition, dissected and embalmed the body of Osiris, and thus made the at bosg

first mummy. In the kingdom of Ava the burners of the dead are driven from society as an impure caste; and undertakers, and every person connected with the ceremonies of death, are regarded with disgust and aversion in Europe.

The passages in which the Marquis Spineto describes the region of the dead, though brief, somewhat confused, and from the want of references altogether destitute of authority, have yet a degree of interest, and make us regret that the author should not have bestowed more pains upon his work; for to have praised him would have given us infinitely more pleasure than the infliction of censure.

This place, to which the Greeks had given the appellation of Hades, and the Latins of Tartarus, was the place in which the Egyptians supposed the dead to be. It was governed by four genii, the first of whom was the god Amset; the second, the god Api. Osiris was the king who presided over them all; and we have seen the god Phtha as the ruler of the destinies of the souls of men after they had parted from the body, in order that they might be distributed, according to their merits, in the thirty-two superior regions.

It is for this reason we find the god Thoth a perpetual companion of Osiris, and, after him, the first personage in the Amenti, where he had fixed his residence and his tribunal, to regulate the destinies of the souls in each of their transmigrations from the body of one man into another. As the first, or, as he is called, celestial Thoth, he was considered an emanation of the first Demiurgos; and the Egyptians supposed, that, after having assisted him in the work of the creation, he took the human form to enlighten mankind, and then retired into the moon to assist the god Pooh in the disposition of the souls of men. For this purpose, they had divided the whole world into three zones. The first was the earth, or the zone of trial; the second was the zone of the air, perpetually agitated by winds and storms, and was considered as the zone of temporal punishment; and the third was the zone of rest and tranquillity, which was above the other two. Again, they had subdivided the first zone, or the earth, into four regions or departments; the second, or the zone of the air, was divided into two only; the first of these was subdivided into four regions, and the second into eight, making twelve altogether; these being added to the four regions of the first zone, made sixteen: and, lastly, the third zone of the tranquil atmosphere contained sixteen more regions: so that the sum total of the regions in which the souls of the dead were to be distributed, was, in fact, thirty-two.

According to this principle, they supposed that the god Pooh was the perpetual director; a sort of king of the souls, who, after having parted from the body, were thrown into the second zone, to be whirled about by the winds through the regions of the air till they were called upon either to return to the first zone, to animate a new body, and to undergo fresh trials, in expiation of their former sins; or to be removed into the third, where the air was perpetually pure and tranquil. It was over these two zones, or divisions of the world, situated between the earth and the moon, that the god Pooh exercised the full extent of his power. He had for his counsel the god Thoth, who presided over that portion of the second or tempestuous zone, which was divided into eight regions, and was only a temporary

dwelling of the dead. This was, in fact, nothing else but the personification of the grand principle of the immortality of the soul, and the necessity of leading a virtuous life; since every man was called upon to give a strict Laccount of his past conduct, and, according to the sentence which Osiris pronounced, was doomed to happiness or misery; for, generally speaking, it seems that the Egyptians had assigned to their principal gods and goddesses most closely connected with their Demiurgos, two different characters; the one presiding over, or assisting in, the creation of the universe; the other performing some duties, or exercising some act of authority in the Amenti, as was the case with the god Phtha, the goddess Smé, and others. -pp. 142-144.

He then proceeds to copy from Diodorus Siculus, a description of the ceremony of embalming; but this portion of the lecture is very meagre and unsatisfactory, and the reader who is desirous of fuller information will do well to consult the "Commentationes Herodotea" of Creuzer, and the Dissertations of Guigniaut appended to the French translation, or rather imitation of the Symbolik. From this point the author proceeds to an account of the place of burial, and to the ceremonies which attended the introduction of a mummy into "the band of Osiris," as the dead are termed by M. Creuzer.

The common place of burial was beyond the lake Acherjsia, or Archarejish, which meant the last state, the last condition of man, and from which the poets have imagined the fabulous lake of Acheron. On the borders of this lake Acherusia sat a tribunal, composed of forty-two judges, whose office, previous to the dead being permitted to be carried to the cemetery beyond the lake, was to inquire into the whole conduct of his life.

If the deceased had died insolvent, they adjudged the corpse to his creditors, which was considered as a mark of dishonour, in order to oblige his relations and friends to redeem it, by raising the necessary sums amongst themselves. If he had led a wicked lie, they ordered that he should be deprived of solemn burial, and he was consequently carried and thrown into a large ditch made for the purpose, to which they gave the appellation of Tartar, on account of the lamentations that this sentence produced among his surviving friends and relations.

This is also the origin of the fabulous Tartarus, in which the poets have transferred the lamentations made by the living, to the dead themselves who were thrown into it.

If no accuser appeared, or if the accusation had proved groundless, the judges decreed that the deceased was entitled to his burial, and his eulogium was pronounced amongst the applauses of the bystanders, in which they praised his education, his religion, his justice, in short, all his virtues, without, however, mentioning any thing about his riches or nobility, both of which were considered as mere gifts of fortune.

To carry the corpse to the cemetery, it was necessary to cross the lake, and this was done by means of a boat, in which no one could be admitted without the express order of the judges, and without paying a small sum for the conveyance. This regulation was so strictly enforced, that the kings themselves were not exempt from its severity.

The cemetery was a large plain surrounded by trees, and intersected by