other-while all were out-topped in grandeur by one, upon whose summit the bright moon rested as on a pedestal.

Drawing nearer to the shore, which was sufficiently elevated to raise this silent city of tombs above the level of the inundation, I rested my oar, and allowed the boat to rock idly upon the water; while, in the meantime, my thoughts, left equally without direction, were allowed to fluctuate as idly. How vague and various were the dreams that then floated through my mind that bright vision of the temple still mingling itself with all! Sometimes she stood before me, like an aërial spirit, as pure as if that element of music and light, into which I had seen her vanish, was her only dwelling. Sometimes, animated with passion, and kindling into a creature of earth, she seemed to lean towards me with looks of tenderness, which it were worth worlds, but for one instant, to inspire; and again - -as the dark fancies, that ever haunted me, recurred-I saw her cold, parched, and blackening, amid the gloom of those eternal sepulchres before me!

Turning away, with a shudder, from the cemetery at this thought, I heard the sound of an oar plying swiftly through the water, and, in a few moments, saw, shooting past me towards the shore, a small boat in which sat two females figures, muffled up and veiled. Having landed them not far from the spot where, under the shadow of a tomb on the bank, I lay concealed, the boat again departed, with the same fleetness, over the flood.

Never had the prospect of a lively adventure come more welcome to me than at this moment, when my busy fancy was employed in weaving such chains for my heart, as threatened a bondage, of all others, the most difficult to break. To become enamoured thus of a creature of my own imagination, was the worst, because the most lasting, of follies. It is only reality that can afford any chance of dissolving such spells, and the idol I was now creating to myself must for ever remain ideal. Any pursuit, therefore, that seemed likely to divert me from such thoughts-to bring back my imagination to earth and reality, from the vague region in which it had been wandering, was a relief far too seasonable not to be welcomed with eagerness.

I had watched the course which the two figures took, and, having hastily fastened my boat to the bank, stepped gently on shore, and, at a little distance, followed them. The windings through which they led were intricate; but, by the bright light of the moon, I was enabled to keep their forms in view, as, with rapid step, they glided among the monuments. At length, in the shade of a small pyramid, whose peak barely surmounted the plane-trees that grew nigh, they vanished from my sight. Ihastened

to the spot, but there was not a sign of life around; and, had my creed extended to another world, I might have fancied these forms were spirits, sent down from thence to mock me-so instantaneously had they disappeared. I searched through the neighbouring grove, but all there was still as death. At length, in examining one of the sides of the pyramid, which, for a few feet from the ground, was furnished with steps, I found, midway between peak and base, a part of its surface, which, although presenting to the eye an appearance of smoothness, gave to the touch, I thought, indications of a concealed opening.

After a variety of efforts and experiments, I, at last, more by accident than skill, pressed the spring that commanded this hidden aperture. In an instant the portal slid aside, and disclosed a narrow stairway within, the two or three first steps of which were discernible by the moonlight, while the rest were all lost in utter darkness. Though it was difficult to conceive that the persons whom I had been pursuing would have ventured to pass through this gloomy opening, yet to account for their disappearance otherwise was still more dificult. At all events, my curiosity was now too eager in the chase to relinquish it;-the spirit of adventure, once raised, could not be so easily laid. Accordingly, having sent up a gay prayer to that bliss-loving Queen whose eye alone was upon me, I passed through the portal, and descended into the pyramid.

CHAPTER VI.

Ar the bottom of the stairway I found myself in a low, narrow passage, through which, without stooping almost to the earth, it was impossible to proceed. Though leading through a multiplicity of dark windings, this way seemed but little to advance my progress-its course, I perceived, being chiefly circular, and gathering, at every turn, but a deeper intensity of darkness.

"Can anything," thought I, "of human kind sojourn here? and had scarcely asked myself the question, when the path opened into a lorg gallery, at the farthest end of which a gleam of light was visible. This welcome glimmer appeared to issue from some cell or alcove, in which the right-hand wall of the gallery terminated, and, breathless with expectation, I stole gently to wards it.

Arrived at the end of the gallery, a scene presented itself to my eyes, for which my fondest expectations of adventure could not have prepared me. The place from which the light proceeded was a small chapel, of whose interior, from the dark recess in which I stood, I could take, unseen

myself, a full and distinct view. Over the walls of this oratory were painted some of those various symbols, by which the mystic wisdom of the Egyptians loves to shadow out the History of the Soul; the winged globe with a serpentthe rays descending from above, like a glory-and the Theban beetle, as he comes forth after the waters have passed away, and the first sunbeam falls on his regenerated wings.

In the middle of the chapel, on a low altar of granite, lay a lifeless female form, enshrined within a case of crystal-as it is the custom to preserve the dead in Ethiopia - and looking as freshly beautiful as if the soul had but a few hours departed. Among the emblems of death, on the front of the altar, were a slender lotus branch broken in two, and a small bird just winging its flight from the spray.

To these memorials of the dead, however, I paid but little attention; for there was a living object there upon which my eyes were now intently fixed.

The lamp, by which the whole of the chapel was illuminated, was placed at the head of the pale image in the shrine; and between its light and me stood a female form, bending over the monument, as if to gaze upon the silent features within. The position in which this figure was placed, intercepting a strong light, afforded me, at first, but an imperfect and shadowy view of it. Yet even at this mere outline I felt my heart beat high- and memory had no less share, as it proved, in this feeling than imagination. For, on the head changing its position, so as to let a gleam fall upon the features, I saw, with a transport which had almost led me to betray my lurking-place, that it was she-the young worshipper of Isisthe same, the very same, whom I had seen, brightening the holy place where she stood, and looking like an inhabitant of some purer world.

The movement, by which she had now afforded

1" On voit en Egypte, après la retraite du Nil et la fécondation des terres, le limon couvert d'une multitude de scarabées. Un pareil phénomène a dû sembler aux Egyptiens le plus propre à peindre une nouvelle existence." M. Jombard. Partly for the same reason, and partly for another, still more fanciful, the early Christians used to apply this emblem to Christ. "Bonus ille scaraLeus meus," says St. Augustine," non ea tantum de causâ quod unigenitus, quod ipsemet sui auctor mortalium speciem induerit, sed quod in hac nostra fæce sese volutaverit et ex hac ipsà nasci voluerit."

2 Les Egyptiens ont fait aussi, pour conserver leurs morts, des caisses de verre."-De Pauw. He mentions, also, in another place, a sort of transparent substance, which the Ethiopians used for the same purpose, and which was frequently mistaken by the Greeks for glass.

3 Un prêtre, qui brise la tige d'une fleur, des oiseaux qui s'envolent, sont les emblèmes de la mort et de l'âme qui se sépare du corps."-Denon.

Theseus employs the same image in the Phædra :

Όρνις γαρ ώς τις εκ χερών αφαντος είν

Ι.ηδημ' ες άδου πικρον όρμησασα μου

me an opportunity of recognising her, was made in raising from the shrine a small cross of silver, which lay directly over the bosom of the lifeless figure. Bringing it close to her lips, she kissed it with a religious fervour; then, turning her eyes mournfully upwards, held them fixed with a degree of inspired earnestness, as if, at that moment, in direct communion with Heaven, they saw neither roof, nor any other earthly barrier, between them and the skies.

What a power is there in innocence! whose very helplessness is its safeguard-in whose presence even Passion himself stands abashed, and turns worshipper at the very altar which he came to despoil! She, who, but a short hour before, had presented herself to my imagination as something I could have risked immortality to win-she, whom gladly, from the floor of her own lighted temple, in the very face of its proud ministers, I would have borne away in triumph, and dared all punishments, divine and human, to make her mine

that very creature was now before me, as if thrown by fate itself, into my power - standing there, beautiful and alone, with nothing but her innocence for her guard! Yet, no-so touching was the purity of the whole scene, so calm and august that protection which the dead extended over the living, that every earthly feeling was forgotten as I gazed, and love itself became exalted into reverence.

1

But, entranced as I felt in witnessing such a scene, thus to enjoy it by stealth seemed to me a wrong, a sacrilege and, rather than let her eyes encounter the flash of mine, or disturb, by a whisper, that sacred silence, in which Youth and Death held communion through undying Love, I would have suffered my heart to break, without a murmur, where I stood. Gently, as if life itself depended on my every movement, I stole away from that tranquil and holy scene-leaving it still holy and tranquil as I had found it— and, gliding

4 A cross was, among the Egyptians, the emblem of a future life.

"The singular appearance of a Cross so frequently recurring among the hieroglyphics of Egypt, had excited the curiosity of the Christians at a very early period of ecclesiastical history; and as some of the Priests, who were acquainted with the meaning of the hieroglyphics, became converted to Christianity, the secret transpired. The converted heathens,' says Socrates Scholasticus, explained the symbol, and declared that it signified Life to Come."Clarke.

Lipsius, therefore, is mistaken in supposing the Cross to have been an emblem peculiar to the Christians. See, on this subject, L'Histoire des Juifs, liv. vi. c. 16.

It is singular enough that while the Cross was thus held sacred among the Egyptians, not only the custom of marking the forehead with the sign of the Cross, but Baptism and the consecration of the bread in the Eucharist, were imitated in the mysterious ceremonies of Mithra.- Tertull. de Proscriptione Hereticorum.

Zoega is of opinion that the Cross, said to have been for the first time found, on the destruction of the temple of Serapis, by the Christians,could not have been the crux ansata; as nothing is more common than this emblem on all the Egyptian monuments.

back through the same passages and windings by which I had entered, reached again the narrow stairway, and re-ascended into light.

The sun had just risen, and, from the summit of the Arabian hills, was pouring down his beams into that vast valley of waters - as if proud of last night's homage to his own divine Isis, now fading away in the superior splendour of her Lord. My first impulse was to fly at once from this dangerous spot, and in new loves and pleasures seek forgetfulness of the wondrous scene I had just witnessed. "Once," I exclaimed, "out of the circle of this enchantment, I know too well my own ceptibility to new impressions, to feel any doubt that I shall soon break the spell that is now around me."

sus

But vain were all my efforts and resolves. Even while swearing to fly that spot, I found my steps still lingering fondly round the pyramid-my eyes still turned towards the portal which severed this enchantress from the world of the living. Hour after hour did I wander through that City of Silence, till, already, it was mid-day, and, under the sun's meridian eye, the mighty pyramid of pyramids stood, like a great spirit, shadowless.'

Again did those wild and passionate feelings, which, for the moment, her presence had subdued into reverence, return to take possession of my imagination and my senses. I even reproached myself for the awe, that had held me spell-bound before her. "What," thought I, "would my companions of the Garden say, did they know that their chief-he whose path Love had strewed with trophies-was now pining for a simple Egyptian girl, in whose presence he had not dared to utter a single sigh, and who had vanquished the victor, without even knowing her triumph!"

A blush came over my cheek at the humiliating thought, and I determined, at all risks, to await her coming. That she should be an inmate of those gloomy caverns seemed inconceivable; nor did there appear to be any egress out of their depths but by the pyramid. Again, therefore, like a sentinel of the dead, did I pace up and down among those tombs, contrasting mournfully the burning fever in my own veins with the cold quiet of those who lay slumbering around.

At length the intense glow of the sun over my head, and, still more, that ever restless agitation in my heart, became too much for even strength like mine to endure. Exhausted, I threw myself down at the base of the pyramid - choosing my place directly under the portal, where, even should

1 It was an idea entertained among the ancients that the Pyra mids were so constructed (mecanicâ constructione," says Ammianus Marcellinus) as never to cast any shadow,

2 From the story of Rhodope, Zoega thinks," videntur Arabes ansam arripuisse, ut in una ex pyramidibus, genii loco, habitare dicerent mulierem nudam insigni pulchritudinis, quæ aspecto suo

slumber surprise me, my heart, if not my ear, might still keep watch, and her footstep, light as it was, could not fail to awake me.

After many an ineffectual struggle against drowsiness, I at length sunk into sleep-but not into forgetfulness. The same image still haunted me, in every variety of shape, with which imagination, assisted by memory, could invest it. Now, like the goddess Neïtha, upon her throne at Sais, she seemed to sit, with the veil just raised from that brow, which till then no mortal had ever beheld-and now, like the beautiful enchantress Rhodope, I saw her rise from out the pyramid in which she had dwelt for ages,—

"Fair Rhodope 2, as story tells,

The bright unearthly nymph, who dwells 'Mid sunless gold and jewels hid,

The Lady of the Pyramid !"

So long had my sleep continued, that, when I awoke, I found the moon again resplendent above the horizon. But all around was looking tranquil and lifeless as before; nor did a print on the grass betray that any foot had passed there since my own. Refreshed, however, by my long rest, and with a fancy still more excited by the mystic wonders of which I had been dreaming, I now resolved to revisit the chapel in the pyramid, and put an end, if possible, to this strange mystery that haunted

me.

Having learned, from the experience of the preceding night, the inconvenience of encountering those labyrinths without a light, I now hastened to provide myself with a lamp from my best. Tracking my way back with some difficulty to the shore, I there found not only my lamp, but also some dates and dried fruits, of which I was always provided with store, for my roving life upon the waters, and which, after so many hours of absti nence, were now a most welcome and necessary relief.

Thus prepared, I again ascended the pyramid. and was proceeding to search out the secret spring, when a loud, dismal noise was heard at a distance. to which all the melancholy echoes of the cere tery gave answer. The sound came, I knew, from the Great Temple on the shore of the lake. and was the sort of shriek which its gates — the Gates of Oblivion as they are called-used always to send forth from their hinges, whe opening at night, to receive the newly-landed dead.

3

I had, more than once before, heard that sourd. and always with sadness; but, at this moment, i

homines insanire faciat."— De Usu Obeliscomum. See also L'e de Murtadi, par l'attier.

3" Apud Memphim æneas quasdam portas, que Lethes et Cent (hoc est oblivionis et lamentationis appellantur, aperiri, Caves asperumque edentes sonum."— Zoega.

thrilled through me like a voice of ill-omen, and I almost doubted whether I should not abandon my enterprise. The hesitation, however, was but momentary; even while it passed through my mind, I had touched the spring of the portal. In a few seconds more, I was again in the passage beneath the pyramid; and, being enabled by the light of my lamp to follow the windings more rapidly, soon found myself at the door of the small chapel in the gallery.

I entered, still awed, though there was now, alas, nought living within. The young Priestess had vanished like a spirit into the darkness; and all the rest remained as I had left it on the preceding night. The lamp still stood burning upon the crystal shrine; the cross was lying where the hands of the young mourner had placed it, and the cold image, within the shrine, wore still the same tranquil look, as if resigned to the solitude of death of all lone things the loneliest. Remembering the lips that I had seen kiss that cross, and kindling with the recollection, I raised it passionately to my own;-but the dead eyes, I thought, met mine, and, awed and saddened in the midst of my ardour, I replaced the cross upon the shrine.

I had now lost every clue to the object of my pursuit, and, with all that sullen satisfaction which certainty, even when unwelcome, brings, was about to retrace my steps slowly to earth, when, as I held forth my lamp, on leaving the chapel, I perceived that the gallery, instead of terminating here, took a sudden and snake-like bend to the left, which had before eluded my observation, and which seemed to give promise of a pathway still farther into those recesses. Re-animated by this discovery, which opened a new source of hope to my heart, I cast, for a moment, a hesitating look at my lamp, as if to inquire whether it would be faithful through the gloom I was about to encounter, and then, without further consideration, rushed eagerly forward.

CHAPTER VII.

THE path led, for a while, through the same sort of narrow windings as those which I had before encountered in descending the stairway; and at length opened, in a similar manner, into a straight and steep gallery, along each side of which stood, closely ranged and upright, a file of lifeless bodies', whose glassy eyes appeared to glare upon me preternaturally as I passed.

1 See, for the custom of burying the dead upright, ("post funus stantia busto corpora," as Statius describes it,) Dr. Clarke's preface to the 2nd section of his fifth volume. They used to insert precious

Arrived at the end of this gallery, I found my hopes, for the second time, vanish; as the path, it was manifest, extended no further. The only object I was able to discern, by the glimmering of my lamp, which now burned, every minute, fainter and fainter, was the mouth of a huge well, that lay gaping before me-a reservoir of darkness, black and unfathomable. It now crossed my memory that I had once heard of such wells, as being used occasionally for passages by the priests. Leaning down, therefore, over the edge, I examined anxiously all within, in order to see if it afforded the means of effecting a descent into the chasm; but the sides, I could perceive, were hard and smooth as glass, being varnished all over with that sort of dark pitch, which the Dead Sea throws out upon it slimy shore.

After a more attentive scrutiny, however, I observed, at the depth of a few feet, a sort of iron step, projecting dimly from the side, and, below it, another, which, though hardly perceptible, was just sufficient to encourage an adventurous foot to the trial. Though all hope of tracing the young Priestess was now at an end-it being impossible that female foot should have ventured on this descent-yet, as I had engaged so far in the adventure, and there was, at least, a mystery to be unravelled, I determined, at all hazards, to explore the chasm. Placing my lamp, therefore, (which was hollowed at the bottom, so as to be worn like a helmet,) firmly upon my head, and having thus both hands at liberty for exertion, I set my foot cautiously on the iron step, and descended into the well.

I found the same footing, at regular intervals, to a considerable depth; and had already counted near a hundred of these steps, when the ladder altogether ceased, and I could descend no further. In vain did I stretch down my foot in search of support the hard slippery sides were all that it encountered. At length, stooping my head, so as to let the light fall below, I observed an opening or window directly above the step on which I stood; and, taking for granted that the way must lie in that direction, contrived to clamber, with no small difficulty, through the aperture.

I now found myself on a rude and narrow stairway, the steps of which were cut out of the living rock, and wound spirally downward in the same direction as the well. Almost dizzy with the descent, which seemed as if it would never end, I, at last, reached the bottom, where a pair of massy iron gates were closed directly across my path, as if wholly to forbid any further progress. Massy and gigantic, however, as they were, I found, to my surprise, that the hand of an infant might stones in the place of the eyes. "Les yeux étoient formés d'émeraudes, de turquoises," &c.-Vide Masoudy, quoted by Quatremire.

"Light as a lime-bush, that receives

Some wandering bird among its leaves."

No sooner, however, had I passed through, than the astounding din, with which the gates clashed together again', was such as might have awakened death itself. It seemed as if every echo throughout that vast, subterranean world, from the Catacombs of Alexandria to Thebes's Valley of Kings, had caught up and repeated the thundering sound. Startled as I was by the crash, not even this supernatural clangour could divert my attention from the sudden light that now broke around me

soft, warm, and welcome, as are the stars of his own South to the eyes of the mariner who has long been wandering through the cold seas of the North. Looking for the source of this splendour, I saw, through an archway opposite, a long illuminated alley, stretching away as far as the eye could reach, and fenced, on one side, with thickets of odoriferous shrubs; while along the other extended a line of lofty arcades, from which the light, that filled the whole area, issued. As soon, too, as the din of the deep echoes had subsided, there stole gradually on my ear a strain of choral music, which appeared to come mellowed and sweetened in its passage, through many a spacious hall within those shining arcades; while among the voices I could distinguish some female tones, which, towering high and clear above all the rest, formed the spire, as it were, into which the harmony tapered as it rose.

So excited was my fancy by this sudden enchantment, that-though never had I caught a sound from the fair Egyptian's lips-I yet persuaded myself that the voice I now heard was hers, sounding highest and most heavenly of all that choir, and calling to me, like a distant spirit from its sphere. Animated by this thought, I flew forward to the archway, but found, to my mortification, that it was guarded by a trellis-work, whose bars, though invisible at a distance, resisted

all my efforts to force them.

While occupied in these ineffectual struggles, I perceived, to the left of the archway, a dark cavernous opening, which seemed to lead in a direction parallel to the lighted arcades. Notwithstanding, however, my impatience, the aspect of

chilled my very blood. It was not so much darkness, as a sort of livid and ghastly twilight, from which a damp, like that of death-vaults, exhaled, and through which, if my eyes did not deceive me, pale, phantom-like shapes were, at that very moment, hovering.

3

Looking anxiously round, to discover some less | formidable outlet, I saw, over the vast foldinggates through which I had just passed, a blue, tremulous flame, which, after playing for a few ¦ seconds over the dark ground of the pediment, settled gradually into characters of light, and formed the following words:

You, who would try

Yon terrible track, To live, or to die,

But ne'er to look back

You, who aspire

To be purified there
By the terrors of Fire,
Of Water, and Air-

If danger, and pain,
And death, you despise,
On-for again

Into light you shall rise;
Rise into light

With that Secret Divine, Now shrouded from sight

By the Veils of the Shrine ! But if

Here the letters faded away into a dead blank. more awfully intelligible than the most eloquent words.

A new hope now flashed across me. The dream of the Garden, which had been for some time almost forgotten, returned freshly to my mind. "Am I, then," I exclaimed, “in the path to the promised mystery? and shall the great secret of Eternal Life indeed be mine?"

66 "Yes!" seemed to answer out of the air, that

spirit-voice which still was heard at a distance crowning the choir with its single sweetness. I hailed the omen with transport. Love and Im would give even a thought to fear, with two saca mortality, both beckoning me onward-w blessed that unknown enchantress, whose steps had bright hopes in prospect? Having invoked and led me to this abode of mystery and knowledge, I instantly plunged into the chasm.

had at first met my eye, I now found, as I entered, Instead of that vague, spectral twilight which

2 See, for the echoes in the pyramids, Plutarch. de Placita Philosoph.

3 "Ce moment heureux (de l'Autopsie) étoit preparé par des selimes effrayantes, par des alternatives de crainte et de joie, de lumet de ténèbres, par la lueur des éclairs, par le bruit terrible de is for qu'on imitoit, et par des apparitions de spectres, des illus magiques, qui frappoient les yeux et les oreilles tout ensemble. Dupuis.

E