at the mouth of the river. A height of only twenty-three feet or twenty-four feet at Cairo, near which the Nilometer is situated, is followed by famine; a height of twenty-seven feet lays the whole country waste. The rains in April and May in the highlands of Central Africa are supposed to be the cause of this marvellous phenomenon, on which depends, and has depended for ages, the very existence of millions of the human family, and, in ancient times, the fate of the world's most splendid empire; and yet, though lawless storms are the feeders of this river of Egypt, so strong and sure is the hand of the Creator, so delicate the balances in which He holds the adjustments of nature, that the Nile has continued to rise and fall within the prescribed limits, with rare exceptions, for, at any rate, four thousand years. The cultivation of the soil is most easy. The plough is hardly required; it serves chiefly as a harrow. In the sculptures, the sower precedes the ploughshare, which is a slight instrument, and managed by a single hand. At the same time, the rise of the river was watched with intense anxiety, and the cultivation of the country was matter of extreme difficulty, in the years when the required height was not attained. With what joy does Moses contemplate the physical features of the Promised

Land:-"For the land, whither thou goest in to possess it, is not as the land of Egypt from whence ye came out, where thou sowedst thy seed, and wateredst it with thy foot, as a garden of herbs: but the land, whither ye go to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven: a land which the Lord thy God careth for: the eyes of the Lord thy God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year even unto the end of the year."Deut. xi., 10-12.

Eyes wearied with the monotony of Egyptian scenery, hearts sick of the monotony of Egyptian life, revelled in the prospect of a land of rich natural beauty-of brooks, purling through green meadows nestled in the bosom of the hills, of mountains, springs, and foamy torrents, and all the brilliant variety of a highland country. Egypt is a monotone. Her part has been a monotone in the great choral hymn of the progress of the ages. Her unfathomable sphynx expresses, as perfectly as human art can express it, the mystery of the life of man. And Egypt is as far from the solution of it now, as when Moses led forth his shepherd tribes to seek, amid the awful desolations of Sinai, the solution from the lips of God. I do not know whether it has ever struck you, as you look into the faces of the Egyptian images at

the Museum or the Crystal Palace, that they are full of wonder and awe-as children amazed at a mystery which holds them in its spells, rather than as men of intellect and resolution, who see the mystery, but are minded to explore it or die. The Apollo looks out with open face into the universe. Beauty in the Venus of Milo reigns. The masterpieces of Greek art hold up their heads with defiant or conquering strength and courage : you see that the men who carved those images are men who will invent, discover, and explore all domains where man's foot may tread; they have in them the principle of progress-they will grow, create, and leave a glorious legacy to the Future. The Egyptian figures, on the other hand, are full of intellect; but it is beaten, baffled, oppressed by the mystery which oppresses the world. The men who wrought those images will not strive to wring out the secret from nature. Nature will master them; they will bow down, and worship abjectly what they cannot explore. Every beast and reptile, every blade of grass, will re-present the mystery, and seem to them full of God. And such was actually their history. Their sphynx looked out with calm, unintelligent, unaspiring wonder over the prolific land on whose borders it stood sentinel-beautiful in the serenity of its despair and thus the people looked with

idolatrous awe and reverence at the teeming fertility of the soil and of every living thing in Egypt; and they bowed down their souls, and worshipped every form of animal existence; birds, beasts, reptiles, and every thing, however obscene and loathsome, which moveth upon the face of the earth. Take the testimony of Herodotus:

"Egypt, though bordering on Libya, does not abound in wild beasts; but all that they have are accounted sacred, as well those that are domesticated as those that are not. But if I should give the reasons why they are consecrated, I must descend in my history to religious matters, which I avoid relating as much as I can; and such as I have touched upon in the course of my narrative, I have mentioned from necessity. They have a custom relating to animals of the following kind : Superintendents, consisting both of men and women, are appointed to feed every kind separately; and the son sucIceeds the father in this office. All the inhabitants of the cities perform their vows to the superintendents in the following manner: Having made a vow to the god to whom the animal belongs, they shave either the whole heads of their children, or a half or a third part of the head, and then weigh the hair in a scale against silver, and whatever the weight may be, they give to the superintendent of the animals; and she in return cuts up some fish, and gives it as food to the animals; such is the usual mode of feeding them. Should any one kill one of these beasts, if wilfully, death is the punishment; if by accident, he pays such fine as the priests choose to impose. But whoever kills an ibis or a hawk, whether wilfully or by accident, must necessarily be put to death.

"In whatever house a cat dies of a natural death, all the

family shave their eyebrows only; but if a dog die, they shave the whole body and the head. All cats that die are carried to certain sacred houses, where, being first embalmed, they are buried in the city of Bubastis. All persons bury their dead dogs in sacred vaults within their own city; and ichneumons are buried in the same manner as the dogs: but field-mice and hawks they carry to the city of Buto, the ibis to Hermopolis; the bears, which are few in number, and the wolves, which are not much larger than foxes, they bury wherever they are found lying."-Herodotus, ii. 65—67.

I think, if you look at them, the statues of the two peoples will expound their character, and explain their history. There are few Englishmen who have not seen the rich remains of Egyptian art and life which are contained in the Museum of our country, and who have not staid to gaze curiously on thoses trange symbols carved in stone by the Egyptian priests, which as yet half hide and half reveal the secrets of the primæval ages of history. Into the vexed question as to the duration of man's existence upon this earth, which, not from this ground alone, is being urged upon our attention, I have happily here no call to enter. Science treads boldly, not to say defiantly, on ground which is claimed in the sacred name of revelation; and has, not seldom, been compelled to recall her dicta and retrace her steps. Perhaps the reason of this defiant attitude is partly the jealousy with which narrow