mosques made it look so like a New-England village, situated as it is in a green plain, and on the placid river. Evidences of lively Turkish life were about,—numerous soldiers, the caparisoned horses of Turkish officers, and the clashing cymbal sounds of a Turkish band, playing an old English tune, which I have frequently heard in representations of Norman history in the theatre. How familiar it sounded on the remote Nile. Some English refugee had been here, and taught the Arabs; who have a native musical skill, and under French teachers, as in the military bands of Cairo, make fine musicians.

On my return down the Nile, early in the morning, before sunrise, we landed at this place, and I strolled into the square, where the market-women were exposing fruits, vegetables, milk, butter, cheese, bread, and all the products. I was there struck with the civilized restraint, which is not so apparent in Upper Egypt. I walked several times through the bazaar, a large, wide street, which would have been an ornament to any city. The superiority of the shops, the fine stores of a peculiar kind of cloth that is manufactured here, the abundance of Jew and Greek merchants and Turks, the enterprising appearance of the place, (owing doubtless to this comparatively unproductive part of the valley of the Nile,) all had an interest from its contrast.

Beni Hassan.—Who does not here recall the expression in the book of Job, a "tomb cut in the rock?" The name of the Ositarsen is here, who, say some, expelled the shepherd kings from Egypt, and was contemporary with Joseph; and who, Bunsen says, with more explicitness than accuracy, lived a thousand years before Moses, and that in his reign the shepherd kings invaded Egypt. But, turning from such crude chronological conclusions, how interesting the proof of Scripture truth contained here. The interest of Egyptian customs and trades developed here, is all written in Wilkinson. In the tomb of Pahri, I was gratified by the testimonies in favor of Scripture that crowded upon me. But, doubtless, the shepherd kings were expelled by Amosis; and Nolan's views on this point seem more reasonable, excepting his dates, for which I prefer to trust to Hales. As to the last fragment of Manetho, which Bunsen accepts and Lepsius rejects, I think it either a forgery, or a lie of Manetho.

Miss Martineau, in her book, exaggerates somewhat the beauty of the trades and customs represented in the tombs. In all of them, you can trace doorways and pillars, some sculptured, some, like the best tombs in Thebes, unfinished. Few enter all the tombs, as there are thirty-one in all, and but six or eight are interesting. The next to the two last in the face of the mountain has a vaulted portico, and two fluted pillars; its basement is painted a deep red.

Ositarsen the First is settled by Dr. Lepsius, of Berlin, to have been the Setorsarsen of the twelfth dynasty. The expulsion of the shepherd kings, by Amosis, according to Hales, dates 1909 B. c.; while, as Bunsen says, the shepherd kings invaded Egypt in his time. His chronology (by his accepting every fragment of Manetho, which is doubtless in parts a forgery) differs several hundred years from Hales's. Josephus, ambitious to prove the Hebrews a great people, has falsified history. He wished to identify them with the shepherd kings. With Hales's chronology I think it can be reconciled; but with the lesser chronology of Usher, and the greater of Bunsen, it cannot be. This, and the proofs from these tombs and those of Ghizeh, will be fully shown in another work.

I noticed in one of the tombs, Sechonsosis' name, of the same dynasty as Manetho names. The idea that the captives in this tomb were Joseph's brethren, which Mrs. Romer, in her Travels, makes such a great noise about, is well exposed by Miss Martineau; as well as the Elginism of Mrs. Romer, in removing a figure of one of the captives. They cannot be Joseph's brethren, because they are figures of thirty-seven captives, instead of Joseph's ten brethren.

The Doric style of the columns is very beautiful, showing, in this highly ancient monument of Egypt, the origin of architecture, so improved by the Greeks; for, except the pyramids, Beni Hassan's tombs are the oldest monuments in Egypt.

Miss Martineau says it is safe to visit Beni Hassan; but I think that she was not ashore, among the scowling vagabonds that abound all the way up from Gebel El Teir to the tombs, as often as I was.

In one little Arab village, I entered just as three or four had reclined around a woman sitting under a tree. She was of the red hue of the Abyssinians, and, as I remarked, it was the acacia which blooms in Abyssinia. I could not but fancy she was apostrophizing, in her song, the tree of her native land, in the manner of the poet:—

"Oh, Abyssinian tree!
We pray, we pray to thee,
By the glow of thy golden fruit,
And the violet hue of thy flower,

And the greeting mute .

Of thy boughs' salute,
To the stranger who seeks thy bowet

"Oh, Abyssinian tree'
How the traveller blesses thee,
When the night no moon allows,
And the sunset hour is near,

And thou bendest thy boughs

To kiss his brows,
Saying,' Come, rest thee here.'
Oh, Abyssinian tree!
Thus bow thy head to me."

But the sentiment was only for a moment, for two tall, stout fellows, armed with clubs, came out and checked my admiration. Two Turks stood there, who had observed my admiration for the singer; which now controlling, I walked away, throwing her a piastre, and after making our purchases at the village, we continued on our way.

As to the convent of the pulley, whose beggarly monks are seen at this, as well as the convent of St. Anthony and St. Paul, and those abounding here, I leave them to the pages of Curzon, who, in his Monasteries of the Levant, has fully described and exposed their claims to the support and attention of the Christian world.

Oshmunein is the site of Hermopolis Magna of the Greeks and Romans; but few ruins remain of the great city of Hermes of the Egyptians, the stories of whom make us well conclude, with Nolan, that it was the divinely taught astronomical and provident wisdom of Joseph that furnished the tradition and original of Hermes. That Joseph's interpretation of dreams gave them Hermes,* and his astrological science, there is no manner of doubt.

Here they built their city; and as he was the original of the Mercury of the Greeks and Romans, as the divinity of wisdom and learning here at Hermopolis Magaa, the Macedonian and the Emperors Ptolemys and Roman Emperors cultivated his worship. What a sublime idea, that Scripture Joseph gave Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans their finest originals of mythology; and, carry the idea through: was not Noah, Osiris; and Typhon the deluge? was not Shem, Pthah,and did they not worship Ham as an astrologer? [see in Scripture the allusion to "the wisdom of Canaan."] Did they not gain their spirituality of belief from the Hebrew divine doctrine of the immortality of the soul 1 and were not their Amenti the last judgment, and all their natural religion the remains of primitive revelation given to the patriarchs and Hebrews, and partly inculcated among the Egyptians by Moses and Joseph?

Few remains mark the site of the great Hermopolis, and only some bricks tell what was the great city of Hermes, but the well of Joseph yet gladdens the Palestine traveller, and the localities of real, defined Scripture antiquity, are settled without doubt. What a host of convictions confirm the truth of the Bible in Egypt! The mysteries of Egypt were bugbears and charlatanism, and the truth of Scripture is the highest, best truth, possessing, as Sir W. Jones said, "more science, more antiquity, more lofty poetry, more true wisdom than all the writings of all the authors in the world."

Passing over, I was near the mountains on the Libyan side, two miles distant from the river. Here I entered a town nearly as large as Benisoof, which was really a curiosity. I doubt whether it has been visited by many travellers. The houses were handsomely built, better than any of the towns down the Nile. Hundreds of Bedouin encampments were around it, and the town was walled. Going into the gates, I walked through numberless streets, where women, engaged in