tecture. But all that is needed for understanding the nature and design of these monuments, or that has a bearing on the history of their builders, is abundantly given; and to Memphis and the Pyramids, as also to the magnificent structures of Thebes, so important to the historian and the antiquary, separate chapters are devoted. We subjoin the description of the famous colossi of the plain of Thebes.

"In the direction of the river, and separated from the ruins (of the Amenopheion), by a space of 1,200 feet, are the two colossal statues, called by the natives Tama and Chama, of which the most northern is the vocal Memnon. They tower above the plain, apparently unconnected with any building. But such a state of insulation would not agree with the practice of the Egyptians; and it appears from inspection, that they are exactly in the line of the front of the Amenopheion; the fragments of two statues of gritstone, and another colossus of crystalline limestone, are found in the intermediate space. Hence it is probable that the vocal Memnon and its companion formed the commencement of a dromos, extending to the palace of the king, whose name they bear.

These statues, including the pedestal, are sixty feet in height; the pedestal is thirteen feet: but more than half of it is buried in the alluvial soil. The material is a coarse hard breccia, in which agatized pebbles or chalcedonies are intermixed, found above the limestone in the Mokattam hills at Gebel-Ah-mar. The southern is formed of one entire block; but the northern had been already broken in the time of Strabo, either by an earthquake in the year 27 B.C., or by the Persians; and in this state it remained till after the age of Domitian, when Juvenal refers to its mutilated state. It was subsequently repaired, probably in the age of Severus, by five separate pieces of sandstone: but there is no inscription to record by whom the reparation was made. The lower part of the body, the arms which are resting on the knees, and the legs and feet, are of the original material. A line of hieroglyphics at the back contains the name of the king Amunoph. That the northern statue was the vocal Memnon is attested by a multitude of inscriptions on the legs, some in the Greek, some in the Latin language. They are chiefly of the time of Adrian, who, with his empress Sabina, visited the statue; some few of that of Nero, Vespasian, and Domitian; one on the pedestal, of the thirteenth consulship of Antoninus. The sound was commonly heard at the first hour of the day, sometimes a little later; a few, among whom were Vibius Maximus and two other præfects of Egypt, were honoured with its repetition, while others came three times before their curiosity was gratified.

The sophist Callistratus adds a circumstance, no doubt of his own invention, that at sunset the statue uttered a mournful sound, as a farewell to the light. How the effect was produced we can only conjecture. It resembled, according to Pausanias, the breaking of an overstretched musical string; according to Strabo, the noise produced by a slight blow; an inscription quoted by Sir G. Wilkinson assimilates it to the sound of brass. This was confirmed by a curious experiment. He ascended the statue, and struck with a small hammer a sonorous block which lies in its lap; and inquiring of the Arabs below what they heard, they replied, 'You are striking brass.' The French Commission, having observed that about the hour of sunrise sounds issued from the ruins of Thebes, conjectured that they might be produced by the sudden change of temperature in the stone; but the fact must be better ascertained before any explanation can be built upon it. If fraud were practised, it belonged to the times when the Egyptian character had been debased by conquest and oppression, and the diffusion of its corrupt superstition through the Roman empire had degraded its ministers into jugglers. There is no proof that the statue was supposed to utter any sounds even in the Ptolemaic times."

The most remarkable phenomenon of Egypt, and that which enables the river not only to fertilize but annually to renew the soil, is the inundation. To us, who are aware of its cause, there is nothing marvellous in this; but to the ancients, who were ignorant of the existence of a rainy season within the tropics, it presented difficulties more embarrassing than even the discovery of the fountains of the stream itself. Herodotus inquired of the priests how it was that the Nile had a nature contrary to all other rivers. From them he could get no information, but various hypotheses had been proposed by Greeks, which are interesting as showing the state of natural philosophy at that time. Thales supposed that there was no real increase of the waters, but that the Etesian winds, blowing from the north, in summer, full upon the mouth of the river, prevented their discharge, and threw them back upon the low grounds of Egypt. Others attributed its rise to a connection with the Ocean, which was conceived to flow round the South of Libya, and had had its waters sweetened by long exposure to the sun. The most correct theory was that of Anaxagoras, who supposed that it was caused by the melting of the snows upon the high moun

tains of Ethiopia. But this is rejected by Herodotus as absurd; for how, says he, since it flows from a hotter to a colder region, from a region indeed so hot that the inhabitants become black from the excessive temperature, can it flow from snow? Supposing this refutation unanswerable, and conceiving it to be but fair that one who cavils at the explanations of others should not decline to venture one himself, the old historian states it as his opinion, that the Nile overflows in summer because, in winter, the sun being driven by storms from his former course to the upper parts of Libya, there dries up the streams which feed it; thus making the body of waters less in winter, and, by contrast, greater in summer, than the average. The true cause was not assigned till the second century B.C., by Agatharchides of Cnidus. We are, however, inclined to think that even yet the question of old Herodotus has not been considered in its full extent, and that there is more in what he calls the "contrary nature" of the Nile, than can be altogether explained by his ignorance of other great tropical streams. For though the phenomena of a periodical inundation are not peculiar to the Nile, it is a fact that they occur in it with greater regularity, and to a greater extent than in any other stream. And there are characteristics belonging to it, which fully account for this, and make it really, what Herodotus supposed it to be, a unique and exceptional river. And these have, we think, been scarcely brought forward with sufficient prominence in accounting for the inundation. They are, First, that the Nile is the only great river in the world, which flows at the same time from South to North, and from a tropical to an extra-tropical region; Secondly, that while the tributaries of its upper course are unusually numerous and large, it is the only great river in the world which has no tributaries in its whole middle and lower course. From the junction of the Atbara or Tacazzè in lat. 17 deg. N. to its mouths in lat. 32 deg., a distance of 1,500 miles, it is not joined by a single tributary stream. The vast majority of its waters, indeed, come from a point much nearer the Equator; from the Blue, and still more from the White, Nile, which unite in lat. 13 deg., and together drain a surface equal to the whole of Hindostan. Now the result of these things is, that the sources and upper course of the river are subject to entirely different

conditions of climate and seasons, from its middle and lower. The upper course, exclusively within the tropics, and receiving the tropical rains over a surface of almost unknown extent, furnishes an enormous mass of water, and this by the peculiarly isolated character of the remainder of the channel is conveyed northward, through 15 degrees of latitude, to the plains of Lower Egypt. Thus the phenomena of the tropics are transferred, unmodified and undiminished, far up into the temperate zone; and the Delta on the shores of the Mediterranean is watered by the floods which fell in the latitude of the Equator.

We can do little more than indicate the rich variety of information contained in the chapters on the social and intellectual culture of the Egyptians. Suffice it to say in general, that the author has with admirable judgment selected from the abundant stores of materials which the tombs and temples furnish, all that is essential to be known. Their agriculture, commerce, and mechanical and industrial arts; their warfare, domestic life, amusements and dress; their architecture, sculpture, painting and music, are successively passed under review, and each by the skill with which it is treated is made to contribute some instructive trait to the general delineation of this singular people. We think the general impression conveyed by this part of the work is, that Egyptian art and science have been somewhat overrated, and that the ponderous magnitude of their monuments, as well as the profusion of pictorial ornament which covers them, has led to too high an estimate of both their mechanical and artistic skill. Travellers, it is true, are tolerably unanimous in attributing to their architectural remains a character of sublimity. But it is well known that mere magnitude of dimension, though combined with the rudest workmanship, is often sufficient for producing this effect, by the idea of power which it suggests. Thus, Stonehenge is said to be sublime, and our most eloquent writer on the æsthetics of architecture has said that even a flat wall, if of unusual size, is a most effective architectural feature. It has, we conceive, yet to be shown that the Egyptian temples did not owe their imposing effect quite as much to mere massiveness and size, as to proportion or design.

To skill in delineative art they can still less lay claim. The conventional stiffness of their profile figures indicates a rudimentary stage of art, from which, either from actual incapacity, or from fixed habit, they were doomed never to advance. The effects of light and shadow, or the blending of colours into each other, they seem not to have attempted.

Of perspective they had no idea, and the expedients to which they had recourse when the subject required a representation of things seen obliquely, are very amusing. Thus in a funeral procession of boats, those which lie behind the line next the spectator are lifted up, so as to be completely clear of the intervening figures, and a strip of water, cut off square, and of the same length as the boat, is duly drawn under each. To give the idea of a canal or a fishpond, the surface of the water is raised up and turned perpendicularly towards the spectator. In battle-scenes, which are their most spirited productions, where the genius of the artist was unfettered by the restrictions of sacerdotal conventionalism, the superior prowess of the king is indicated by his gigantic size; and his exploits are as much exaggerated as his dimensions, as where he is shown grasping whole troops of his enemies by the hair, or crushing them under his chariot wheels. Sculpture was brought by them to a much higher degree of perfection than drawing. The same stereotyped rigidity of form and attitude is indeed everywhere observable, but it cannot be denied that the enormous size and immoveable serenity of expression of their colossal statues have much of the sublime.

It is in mechanical science, however, that the Egyptians have been commonly supposed to have made the greatest advances. The enormous masses of their columns and statues, and, above all, of the pyramids, have been accepted as irrefragable evidence of pre-eminent mechanical skill. But it would appear that even here we have attributed to science what was due to mere strength. Herodotus and Diodorus give differing accounts of the manner in which the pyramids were constructed, but neither of them shows any application of engineering skill. No representations of the ordinary contrivances of capstan or pulley are found. On the other hand we have a representation of the moving of a colossal statue, which is effected by the main strength