season to prevail with more than usual intensity. After this phenomenon has continued for a few days, the waters gradually increase within the banks of the river. This increase proceeds with perfect regularity until about the middle of July, when they begin to overflow the banks; and by the 20th of the following month, Egypt presents the astonishing appearance of a vast sea, spotted over with villages and towns, and traversed in various directions by causeways which have been laid on mounds thrown up for the purpose of preserving the communication between them. The inundation continues increasing until the time of the autumnal equinox, when it begins as gradually to diminish; and before the end of November, the Nile has once more subsided within its banks, and again its clear blue waters sparkle in the burning sun of Egypt.

The industry and skill of the inhabitants have at all times been directed to the diffusion of these fertilizing waters over the greatest possible extent by means of canals and embankments; and these their efforts have been greatly assisted by the natural conformation of this most singular country. The surface of Egypt is convex; it rises gradually from the mountains that bound it to the east and west to the bed of the river, which runs like a deep furrow along the summit of the convexity; a circumstance of course highly favourable to the distribution of its waters during the inundation. Many of the ancient kings of Egypt were held in grateful remembrance by after ages on account of their efforts in the construction of lakes, canals, and mounds for this purpose; and there is a very distinct allusion to them in the prophecies of Isaiah, chap. xix. 5-7. We have already explained the entire dependence of the

fertility of Egypt on the inundation, and therefore sufficiently accounted for this anxiety in the wide diffusion of its waters, which communicate a fertility unparalleled elsewhere on the earth's surface to a country which without them would be a desert; the excessive dryness of the atmosphere and the all but total absence of rain excluding the possibility of vegetable life there; so that one and not the least of the marvels of Egypt is to see these two extremes of fertility and barrenness in contact with each other.

Another equally extraordinary effect of the extreme dryness of the atmosphere in Egypt demands our particular attention. Moisture, the great agent in decomposition, has been entirely abstracted from the atmosphere by the burning sands of the deserts, and consequently time, whose corroding tooth so rapidly destroys the works of men's hands in other countries, passes over the monuments of ancient days in Egypt almost without effecting any perceptible change in them. The paintings that cover the walls of temples which have been for the most part roofless for nearly 2000 years still remain undefaced; the colours are perceptible, and in certain cases they have even retained much of their original freshness. If such be the case with works of so fugitive and fragile a character as these, this perfect preservation will, of course, be still more conspicuous in the granite, basalt, and hard limestone of which the Egyptians made so free a use in their constructions. The sculptures and inscriptions on these substances seem to have undergone no change in the long period that has elapsed since many of them were sculptured; so that the fragments of temples which were levelled to the ground by Cambyses

500 years before the Christian era, have not yet lost the polish they possessed when they first issued from the artist's hands. Thus the combination of extreme freshness and extreme antiquity in its works of art is another of the marvels of Egypt. This is made very conspicuous when some accidental cause affords the opportunity of measuring, as it were, the period that has really elapsed since their execution. The obelisk that is still erect among the ruins of Alexandria retains much of the freshness, sharpness, and high polish of its first execution on its north and east faces: but the minute particles of sand with which the air is charged in passing over the desert have entirely defaced its south and west sides by beating against it during the 1600 years in which it has stood in its present position; for probably about that time it was removed to Alexandria from some other city where it had been originally erected.

The same anomaly is even more observable in the excavations in the sides of the mountains, whereby the Egyptians have perpetuated the proofs of their skill and industry. On first surveying the immense cavern temple at Ipsambul in Nubia, the spectator might well imagine that the artists were still at work in it. It is impossible that the white of the walls can at any time have been purer or more perfect, the outlines of the figures sharper, or the colours more brilliant than now; and this impression is strengthened when he comes to that part of it where the tracings and first outlines show that this great work was never finished. But the black dust that, to the depth. of many inches, covers the rocky floor on which he treads, and into which the doors, the door-posts, and internal

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fittings of the temple have long since corroded and mouldered, soon convinces him of his mistake, by showing him demonstrably how many ages have rolled away since the hands by which these wonders were accomplished have been motionless in the grave.

This congeniality of the climate of Egypt to the perpetuation of works of art has preserved them to our times in numbers which are truly astonishing, when we take into account the disastrous history of the downfall of that ancient monarchy, the invasions, the civil wars, and the successive conquests by which her original population was well nigh annihilated; and still more when we consider that for the last 1600 years they have been entirely neglected by the inhabitants, and left in great measure to dilapidation and ruin.

These remains of the departed greatness of Egypt consist generally of places for religious worship and ceremonies and for civil assemblies. The site of almost every city of note in Upper or Southern Egypt is marked by the ruins of a temple, or palace-temple, which was at once the residence of the monarch and the place where the solemn religious and civil assemblies of the chief estates in Egypt were held. These ruins are covered with reliefs, generally coloured, and representing the idols to which they had been dedicated receiving the homage of the kings by whom they had been founded; and also the battles, sieges, and other events of the wars, out of the spoils of which these acts of munificence were performed. These pictures often cover a vast extent of wall, and are crowded with figures in action, executed with much spirit and fidelity; the costume and the peculiarities of feature and colour of the inhabitants of the different nations being strictly preserved. In a third class

of designs, the king of Egypt is represented as a returned conqueror marching in triumph to the temple, dragging long lines of captives of different nations to the feet of the divinity to which it is dedicated. All these reliefs are accompanied by explanatory inscriptions in the hieroglyphic or sacred characters of Egypt. The mode of reading these characters has been recently so far recovered as to enable us to ascertain that they embody exactly the information that was wanted to make the pictures they accompany available for the elucidation of the religion and history of Egypt. They give us the names of the gods represented, the ceremonies to be observed in their worship, their genealogies, and other mythological particulars. The pictures of kings have also invariably their names written over them; and this is also the case with the foreigners with whom they were at war, with the towns and fortresses they were besieging, and with the captives that were led bound in the triumphal processions. The dates of the erection of the temples and of the occurrence of the wars, have also been preserved. They are computed by the years and months of the monarch's reign, in exactly the same manner as in the books of Kings in the Old Testament.

In some instances, these temples are excavations hewn in the face of the rock, like that at Ipsambul in Nubia, which has just been mentioned.

Portions of these ruins, consisting of statues of gods, kings, and sphinxes, of obelisks, and of fragments of columns, friezes, etc., have also been removed from Egypt in great numbers, and transferred to the different museums of Europe. These have likewise hieroglyphic inscriptions

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