Egypt of the Pharaohs and the Khedivé

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

The best return in my power for the favourable reception the reading public, and many writers in the periodical press, have accorded to this book, is to take care that the Edition I am now about to issue shall be as little unworthy as I can make it of the continuance of their favour; though, indeed, this, which they have a right to expect, is no more than I ought to be glad to do for my own sake.

I have, therefore, carefully revised the whole volume. In this revision I have, without omitting, or modifying, a single statement of fact, or of opinion, introduced as much new matter as nearly equals in bulk a fourth of the old. These additions include a few reminiscences of my Egyptian tour, which had not recurred to me while engaged on the original work; but, in the main, they consist of fuller developments of some of its more important investigations and views.

As I find that several copies of the first edition were taken off in the autumn, and early winter, by persons who were about to proceed to Egypt, I have, for the convenience of any, who, for the future, may be disposed to use the work as a travelling companion in the land of the Pharaohs and of the Khedivé, added a map of the country and an index: the former, I trust, will be found a good example of the accuracy of Messrs. Johnston’s cartography.

Wherstead Vicarage: January 16, 1873.

INTRODUCTION

Those particulars of the History of Egypt, and of its present condition, in which it differs from other countries, are factors of the idea this famous name stands for, which must be brought prominently into view in any honest and useful construction of the idea. Something of this kind is what the author of the following work has been desirous of attempting, and so was unable, as he was also unwilling, to pass by any point, or question, which fell within the requirements of his design. His aim, throughout, has been to aid those who have not studied the subject much, or perhaps at all, in understanding what it is in the past, and in the present, that gives to Egypt a claim on their attention. The pictures of things, and the thoughts about them, which he offers to his readers, are the materials with which the idea of Egypt has been built up in his own mind: they will judge how far with, or without, reason.

The work had its origin in a tour the author made through the country in the early months of this year. It consists, indeed, of the thoughts that actually occurred to him at the time, and while the objects that called them forth were still before him; with, of course, some pruning, and, here and there, some expansion or addition. They are presented to the reader with somewhat more of methodical arrangement than would have been possible had the hap-hazard sequence, in which the objects and places that suggested them were visited, been adhered to.

As he started for Egypt at a few hours’ notice, it did not occur to him to take any books with him. This temporary absence of the means of reference, and verification, will, in some measure, account for the disposition manifested throughout to follow up the trains of thought Egyptian objects quicken in the beholder’s mind. These excursus, however, as they will appear to those who take little interest in the internal, and ask only for the external, incidents of travel, have been retained, not merely because they were necessary for what came to be the design of the work, but also because, had they been excluded, the work would have ceased to be something real; for then it would not have been what it professes to be, that is, a transcript of the thoughts which the sights of Egypt actually gave rise to in the authors mind.

Wherstead Vicarage: May 13, 1871.

CONTENTS

Transcriber’s Note: The map is clickable for a larger version.

EGYPT OF THE PHARAOHS, AND OF THE KHEDIVÉ. — CHAPTER I. EGYPT AND THE NILE.

The history of the land of Egypt takes precedence, at all events chronologically, of that of its people.

The Nile, unlike any other river on our globe, for more than the last thousand miles of its course, the whole of which is through sandy wastes—the valley of Egypt being, in fact, only the river channel—is not joined by a single affluent. Nor, in this long reach through the desert, does it receive any considerable accessions from storm-water. From the beginning of its history—that is to say, for more than five thousand years, for so far back extend the contemporary records of its monuments—Egypt has been wondering, and, from the dawn of intelligent inquiry in Europe, all who heard of Egypt and of the Nile have been desiring to know what, and where, were the hidden sources of the strange and mighty river, which alone had made Egypt a country, and rendered it habitable.

Nowhere, in modern times, has so much interest been felt about this earliest, and latest, problem of physical geography as in England; and no people have contributed so much to its solution as Englishmen. At this moment the whole of the civilised world is concerned at the uncertainty which involves the fate of one of our countrymen, the greatest on the long roll of our African explorers, who has, now for some years, been lost to sight in the perplexing interior of this fantastic continent, while engaged in the investigation of its great and well-kept secret; but who, we are all hoping, may soon be restored to us, bringing with him, as the fruit of his long and difficult enterprise, its final and complete solution.[1] Thoughts of this kind do not stand only at the threshold of a tour in Egypt, as it were, inviting one to undertake it, but accompany one throughout it, deepening the varied interest there is so much everywhere in Egyptian objects to awaken.

One of the first questions to force itself on the attention of the traveller in Egypt is—How was the valley he is passing through formed?

This is a question that cannot be avoided. It was put to Herodotus, more than two thousand years ago, by the peculiarities of the scene. He answered it after his fashion, which was that of his time. It was, he said, originally an arm of the sea, corresponding to the Arabian Gulf, the Red Sea; and had been filled up with the mud of the Nile. Those were days when, as was done for many a day afterwards, the answers to physical questions were sought in metaphysical ideas. The one to which the simple-minded, incomparable, old Chronicler had recourse on this occasion was that of a supposed symmetrical fitness in nature. There is the Red Sea, a long narrow gulf, a very marked figure in the geography of the world, trending in from the south, on the east side of the Arabian Hills. There ought therefore to be on the west side of this range a corresponding gulf trending in from the north: otherwise the Arabian Gulf would be unbalanced. That compensatory gulf had been where Egypt now is. The demonstration was complete. Egypt must have been an arm of the sea, which had been gradually expelled by the deposit from the river. This argument, however, is not unassailable, even from the fitness-of-things point of view. Had the fitness-of-things been in this matter, and in this fashion, a real agent in nature, it should have made the valley of Egypt somewhat more like the Red Sea in width; and it should also have interdicted its being filled up with mud. It should have had the same reasons and power for maintaining it, which it had originally for making it. In this way, however, did men when they first began to look upon the marvels of Nature with inquiring interest, suppose that metaphysical conceptions, creatures of the brain, were entities in Nature, and would supply the keys that were to unlock her secrets.

‘Egypt is the gift of the Nile.’ But I believe that it is the gift of the Nile in a much larger sense than Herodotus had in his mind when he wrote these words. It is the gift of the Nile in a double sense. The Nile both cut out the valley, and also filled it up with alluvium. The valley filled with alluvium is Egypt. The excavation of the valley was the greater part of the work. That it was formed in this way was suggested to me by its resemblance to the valley of the Platte above Julesburg, as it may be seen even from a car of the Pacific Railway. You there have a wide valley, like Egypt, perfectly flat, bounded on either side by limestone bluffs, sometimes inclined at so precipitous an angle that nothing can grow upon them, excepting, here and there, a conifer or two; and sometimes at so obtuse an angle that the slopes are covered with grass. These varying inclinations reproduce themselves in the bounding ranges of the valley of Egypt. The Platte writhes, like a snake, from side to side of its flat valley, cutting away in one place the alluvium, all of which it had itself deposited, and transporting it to another. It is continually silting up its channel, first in one place, and then in another, with bars and banks, which oblige the stream to find itself a new channel to the right or left. The bluffs, though now generally at a considerable distance from the river, must have been formed by it, when it was working sometimes against one, and sometimes against the other side of the valley; and sometimes also for long periods leaving both, and running in a midway channel. Why should not the Nile have done the same?

This supposition is supported by the fact that when you have a soft cretaceous limestone, and rocks that may be easily worn away, the valley of Egypt is wide. When, as you ascend the stream, you pass at Silsiléh into the region of compact siliceous sandstone, the valley immediately narrows. And when you enter the granite region at Assouan, there ceases to be any valley at all. The river has not been able, in all the ages of its existence, to do more than cut itself an insufficient channel in this intractable rock. All this is just what you would expect on the supposition that it was the river that had cut out the valley.

We are sure, at all events, of one step in this process. For there is incontrovertible evidence that, in the historical period, the river flowed at a level twenty-seven feet higher than it does at present, as far down as Silsiléh. In several places, down to that point, may be found the Nile alluvium, deposited on the contiguous high ground at that height above the highest level the river now reaches in its annual inundations. There is, besides, the old deserted channel from a little below Philæ to Assouan, into which the river cannot now rise. Here, then, is the evidence of Nature.

We have also the testimony of man to the same fact, contemporary testimony inscribed on the granite. Herodotus tells us, that from the time of Mœris, the Egyptians had preserved an uninterrupted register of the annual risings of the Nile. This Mœris of the Greeks was Amenemha III., one of the last kings of the primæval monarchy, before the invasion of the Hyksos. This register was preserved both in a written record, in which the height of the inundation was given in figures for each year, (this is what Herodotus mentions,) and also in engraved markings on suitable river-side rocks. Of these markings, we, fortunately, have a series at Semnéh, in Nubia. Sesortesen II., the father of Amenemha III., had conquered Nubia. This event took place between two and three thousand years before our era. To secure his conquest, he built at Semnéh a strong castle on one of the perpendicular granite cliffs, between which the Nile had cut its channel. His son, not content with instituting the written register Herodotus mentions, ordered that the height of the inundation should, each year, be inscribed on the granite cliffs of Semnéh, which had been fortified by his father, and where an Egyptian garrison was kept. This castle, little injured by time, is still standing. Here was the most appropriate place for such a register. It was the actual bank of the river; it was perpendicular; it was indestructible; it measured all the water that came into Egypt. Amenemha must have been familiar with the place, for it was the custom of the princes to accompany the king in war. Now, there are thirteen of Amenemha’s inscriptions at this day on this cliff. Each gives a deeply-incised line for the height of the rising, and under it is an hieroglyphic inscription, informing us that that line indicates the height to which the river rose in such and such a year of Amenemha’s reign. In every instance the date is given. In the reign of Amenemha’s successor, the invasion of the Hyksos took place, terminated the old monarchy, and for four hundred years threw everything into confusion. But, what we are concerned with, is the fact that in the reign of this king and his successor, the Nile rose, on an average, twenty-four feet above the level to which it rises now.

Here, then, are two witnesses, Nature and Man. The coincidence of their testimony is as clear and complete as it is undesigned. It may, therefore, be accepted as an undoubted fact, that the Nile is now flowing from Semnéh to Silsiléh at a level lower by at least twenty-four feet than it did at the date of the inscriptions. Nature says there was a time when it rose at least twenty-seven feet higher than at present, for at that height it deposited alluvium. There is no discrepancy in these three additional feet, though there would have been something like a discrepancy had Nature indicated three feet less than the markings.

The only question for us to consider is, how this was brought about. It could have been brought about only in one way, and that was by the river deepening its channel. As far down as Silsiléh it had been flowing at a higher level. Here there must have been a cataract, or an actual cascade. Whatever the form of the obstruction, the stream carried it away. And so, again and again, working backwards, it ate out for itself a deeper channel all the way up to Semnéh. This is just how the Niagara river is dealing with its channel. It has undertaken the big job of deepening it, from Lake Ontario to Lake Erie, down to the level of Ontario. The stone it has to work in is very hard and compact. It has now done about half the work, and every one sees that it will eventually complete it. All that is required is time. The River Colorado, we are told, runs for six hundred miles of its course in a canon, a mile in perpendicular depth, all cut through rock, and some of it granitic.

This is what the Nile did in the historic period for at least two hundred miles of its course. It planed down this part of its channel to a lower level, to what may be called the level of Egypt. Why should it not have done precisely the same work in the prehistoric period for, in round numbers, the four hundred miles from Silsiléh to Cairo, that is to say, for the whole valley of Egypt? That is just what I believe it did. Of course, there were aboriginal facilities which decided it upon taking that course. There may also have been greater depressions in some places than in others. There was harder work here, and lighter work there. The planing was carried on rapidly in one district, and slowly in another. But I believe that, after making whatever deductions may be thought proper for aboriginal depressions, it is safe to conclude that the valley of Egypt was, in the main, cut out by the Nile. It did not begin to obtain its abrading power after the reign of Amenemha III.

There may have been a cataract once at Cairo. When this was carried away, another must have been developed somewhere above its site, and so on backwards all the way to Silsiléh, where we are sure that there was once something of the kind. In a still remoter past the river may not have come as far north as Cairo, but may have passed through the Faioum, or by the Natron Lakes, into the desert. This is a question which, to some degree, admits of investigation.

The river would not always be bearing on the same side of the valley. A little change in any part of the channel, and which might result from any one of a variety of causes, would deflect its course. It is so with all rivers. These causes are always everywhere at work. The river would thus be always shifting from one side of the valley to the other; and, impinging in turn on the opposite bounding hills, would always be widening the valley.

The number of side canals, especially the Bahr Jusuf, which, throughout almost the whole length of the valley, is a second Nile, running parallel to the original river, must, during the historical period, by lessening the volume of water in the main channel, have very much lessened its power of shifting its course. But every one who voyages on the Nile will become aware that this power is still very great. He will often hear, and see, large portions of the incoherent bank falling into the water. In many places he will observe the fresh face of recent landslips. On the summit of these slips he will occasionally have presented to him interior sections of some of the houses of a village which is being carried away by the stream.

On the fresh faces of recent slips I often observed that the stratification was unconformable, and irregular. This indicated that the sand and mud out of which the alluvium had been formed, had not been deposited at the bottom of a quiet lake-like inundation, but must have been formed at the bottom of a running stream, precisely in the same way as the sand-banks and mud-banks of the existing channel are always at the present time being formed. This irregular stratification is just what we might expect to find in the alluvium of a valley through which runs a mighty river, always restlessly shifting its channel to the right, or to the left.

To experts in geology there will be but little, or nothing, new in the above given account of the process, by which the Nile formed Egypt. All river valleys have been formed, more or less, by the action of running water. It is, however, interesting both to those who are familiar, and to those who are not, with such investigations, to trace out the steps of the process, in such a manner as to be able to construct a connected view of as many of its details as can be recovered. In any case this would be interesting; but here it has an exceptional, and quite peculiar, interest, for it enables us to picture to the mind’s eye how the whole of the most historical country in the world was formed by the most historical river in the world—a physical operation, on which much that man has achieved, and, indeed, on which what man is himself at this day, very largely depended. Pictures of this kind are only one among the many helpful contributions, which science can now make to history.

I was not in Egypt during the time of the inundation; I can, therefore, only repeat on the authority of others, that for the first few days it has a green tint. This is supposed to be caused by the first rush of the descending torrents sweeping off a great deal of stagnant water from the distant interior of Darfour. This green Nile is held to be unwholesome, and the natives prepare themselves for it by storing up, in anticipation, what water they will require for these few days. The green is succeeded by a red tint. This is caused by the surface washing of districts where the soil is red. The red water, though heavily charged with soil, is not unwholesome. With respect to the amount of red in the colour of the water of the inundation, I found it stated in a work which is sometimes quoted as an authority on Egyptian subjects, that it is so great that the water might be mistaken for blood. This I do not understand, as the soil this water leaves behind has in its colour no trace of red. By the time the water of the inundation reaches the Delta, it has got rid of the greater part of its impurities. This causes the rise of the land in the Delta to be far slower than in Upper Egypt. In winter, when the inundation has completely subsided, the water, though still charged with mud, in which, however, there is no trace of red, is pleasant to drink, and quite innocuous. The old Egyptians represented in their wall-paintings these three conditions of the river by green, red, and blue water.

For myriads of years this mighty river has been bringing down from the highlands of Abyssinia and Central Africa its freight of fertile soil, the sole means of life, and of all that embellished life, to those who invented letters, and built Karnak. It is still as bountiful as ever it was of old to the people who now dwell upon its banks; but to what poor account do they turn its bounty! How great is the contrast between the wretchedness this bounty now maintains, and the splendour, the wealth, the arts, the intellectual and moral life it maintained four and five thousand years ago!

The Egyptians have a saying, with which, I think, most of those who have travelled in Egypt will agree, that he who has once drunk the water of the Nile will wish to drink it again.

CHAPTER II. HOW IN EGYPT NATURE AFFECTED MAN.

The physical features, and peculiarities of a country are one of the starting-points in the history of its people. If we do not provide ourselves with a knowledge of these matters before we commence our investigation of what the people were, and did, the character of the people, and of the events is sure very soon to make us feel the want of it. It is so in a higher degree with the history of the Egyptians, than with that of any other people. They were, emphatically, a people that stood alone; and the peculiarities of the people were the direct result of the peculiarities of the country.

Its environment by the desert gave it that security, which alone in early days could have enabled nascent civilization to germinate and grow. It possessed also a soil and climate which allowed its inhabitants to devote themselves to some variety of employments and pursuits, and so prevented their being all tied down to the single task of producing food. The absence of these two great natural advantages elsewhere placed insurmountable difficulties in the way of advancement in other parts of the world, so long as the arts by which man battles with nature were few, and feeble; and the organization of society in consequence only rudimentary. So was it, for instance, in Europe, at the time when Egypt was at the zenith of its greatness; where, too, for long centuries afterwards, nothing could have been done without the aid of slavery, which alone made mental culture possible for the few at the cost of the degradation and misery of the many. Egypt was differently circumstanced. There one man might produce food sufficient for many. The rest, therefore, could devote themselves to other employments, which might tend, in different ways, to relieve man’s estate, and embellish life. In this matter the river and the climate were their helpers. The river manured with an annual warp, irrigated, cleaned, and softened the land; and the climate, working harmoniously with the river, made the operations of agriculture easy, speedy, certain, and very productive. What in other countries, and in later times, the slow advances in arts, and knowledge, and in social organization, as the successive steps became possible, brought about for their respective inhabitants, Nature did, in a great measure at once, and from the first, for the Egyptians.

Another of the early hindrances to advancement arose out of the difficulties of communication, which prevented either a military force from maintaining itself away from home, or a single governing mind from acting at a distance. Of course in matters of this kind the effects of the want of sufficient means of communication are greatly aggravated by the want of foresight, and the distrust men have in each other, which belong to such times and circumstances. Nothing but the organization of tribes and cities can be accomplished then. Egypt, however, had advantages in the great and varied gifts of nature to which our attention is now directed, which enabled her, in some remote prehistoric period, to emerge from this politically embryonic condition, and to form a well-ordered and homogeneous state, embracing a population of several millions, who were in possession of many of the elements of wealth and power, and had attained to a condition that would suggest, and encourage culture. Of these advantages, that which came next in order to the soil and climate, was that its good fortune had conferred upon it a ready-made means of communication, absolutely complete and perfect; no part of the country, either in the valley of Egypt, or in the Delta, being more than a few miles distant from one of the most easily navigable rivers in the world.

And that nothing might be wanting, this advantage was equalised to all by a provision of nature that, at a certain season of the year, the descending current of the river should, for the purposes of navigation, be overbalanced by a long prevalence of northerly winds; thus giving every facility, by self-acting agencies, to both the up and the down traffic.

I may also observe that the river ran precisely in that direction in which it could serve most effectually as a bond of union, by serving most largely as a channel of commerce. If its course had been along the same parallel of latitude, that is, from East to West, or reversely, then throughout its whole length the productions of its banks would have been the same. It would, therefore, have been of little use as a means of commercial interchange. Where there was no variety of productions there would have been no commodities to exchange. But as its course was in the direction of a parallel of longitude, its stream offered a highway for the exchange of the varying products of the different degrees of latitude it passed through. This difference in the direction of their courses already constitutes a vast difference in the comparative utility of the streams of the Amazon and of the Mississippi; and must ensure to them very dissimilar futures.

Another of the provisions that had been made for the early progress of the country was something quite unique: there was not by nature, and there could not be constructed by man, a single strong place in the whole of Egypt, such as would enable powerful and ambitious individuals, or malcontent factions of the people, to maintain themselves in independence of the rest of the community, or to defy the government. Nature had supplied no such places, and the conditions of the country were such that they could not be formed. This is a point which involves so much that I will return to it presently.

It ought not to be unnoticed here, for it is one of the important peculiarities of the country, that Egypt yields both a winter and a summer harvest. The overflow of the river, and the warmth of the winter sun suffice for the former, which consists of the produce of temperate regions; and artificial irrigation for the latter, which consists of the produce of the tropics. This gives it the advantage of the climates of two zones; the one temperate and the other tropical; for, though it lies to the north of the tropic, its winter, by reason of its environment by the heat-accumulating desert, resembles our summer, and its summer, for the same reason, that of the tropics. Egypt is thus enabled to exceed all other countries in the variety of its produce. Both its wheat and its cotton are grown beneath its palms. This variety of produce ought to contribute largely to the wealth, and well-being of a country; and it was, we know, a very considerable ingredient in the greatness of the Egypt of the Pharaohs.

The characteristics of surrounding nature had corresponding effects on the ideas, too, and sentiments of the ancient Egyptians. We may, for instance, be absolutely certain that had they lived in an Alpine country, although they might have had the power of commanding the requisite materials on easier terms, they never would have built the Pyramids, for then an Egyptian Pyramid would have been but a pigmy monument by the side of nature’s Pyramids. But as these structures stood in Egypt, when seen from the neighbourhood of Memphis and Heliopolis, and throughout that level district of country, they went beyond nature. There they were veritable mountains; and that is what the word means. There were no other such mountains to be seen. In that was their motive. Man had entered into rivalry with nature, and had outdone nature.

So was it with one instance. And so was it on the whole, generally. The guise in which nature presented herself to the eye of the Egyptian was grand and simple. Nature to him meant the broad beneficent river; the green plain; the naked bounding ridge on the right hand, and on the left; upon, and beyond these the lifeless, colourless desert; above, the azure depth traversed by the unveiled sun by day, and illumined with the gleaming host of heaven by night. Here were just five grand natural objects, and there were no more. We rehabilitating to our mind’s eye the scene, must add a sixth, the orderly, busy, thronging community itself. But to them these five objects were all nature. No dark forests of ancient oak, and pine; no jutting headlands; no island-sown seas; no hills watered from above, nor springs running among the hills; no cattle upon a thousand hills; no shady valleys; no smoking mountains. Just five grand objects; everywhere just the same, and nothing else. Their thoughts and sentiments could only have been a reflection of nature (their mind as a glass reflected nature), and of the instincts which the form of society nature had imposed upon them gave rise to. And their acts could only have been the embodiment of their thoughts and sentiments, which must needs have been in harmony with surrounding nature. And hence the character of the people, which was grand and simple; but withal sensibly hard, somewhat rigid and formal, without much tenderness, and with little geniality; solid, grave, and serious.

Under such circumstances the individual was nothing. There could be no Homeric Chieftains; no Tribunes of the people; no eccentricities of genius. The community was an organism, of which every member had his special functions and purpose; a well-ordered machine which did much work, and did it smoothly.

This complete organization of society—it was what the gifts and arrangements of nature had enabled them to attain to—had brought them face to face with the ideas of law and justice. But under their form of society—and it has not been different under other forms the world has since seen—it was understood that some laws, which were necessary, were not good, and that justice did not rule absolutely. We see—it shows itself in all that they did—that their minds were too thorough, and logical, to rest satisfied under these contradictions; they therefore worked out for themselves to its legitimate, and complete development the old Aryan thought of a life beyond this present existence: this was that western world of theirs, in which no law would be bad, and in which there would be no miscarriage of justice. And thus it came to be that their doctrine of a future life was the apotheosis of their social ideas of law, and justice, and right.

And nature encouraged them in this belief. Every day they saw the sun expire in the western boundary of the solid world; and the next morning rise again to life. They saw also the mighty river always moving on to annihilation in the great sea, just as the sun sank every evening into the desert: but still it was not annihilated. Its being was lost, and was recovered, at every moment. It was ever dying, but equally it was ever living. These two great phenomena of nature (through our increased knowledge they teach other lessons now) aided the idea which the working of society was making distinct in their apprehension, and confirmed them in the belief of their own immortality. With the Egyptian also death would not be the end: the renewal he beheld in the sun, and in the river, would not fail himself.

The complete organization of the whole population had been rendered possible by the peculiar advantages of the country. The enterprising among the Pharaohs availing themselves of this complete organization, and of these peculiar advantages, were thereby enabled to command the whole resources of Egypt, and to wield the whole community at their will, as if it had been but one man.

I reserved for separate and fuller consideration the point that nature had nowhere provided Egypt with a single spot where the ambitious, the discontented, or the oppressed could maintain themselves; or to which, we may add, they could even secede. In this respect also, Egypt is quite unique. The configuration of the country, combined with the absence of rain, brought about this peculiarity. The valley of Egypt, speaking roundly, is five hundred miles long, and five miles wide, with a broad navigable river flowing through the midst of it. The Government will always be in possession of the river. It follows then that before the disaffected can be drawn together in formidable numbers at any rendezvous—for the distances they would have to traverse would not admit of this—the Government will be able to send troops by the river in sufficient force to disperse them; or, at all events, to prevent their receiving reinforcements.

A second reason is, that these handfuls of isolated insurgents must always remain within reach of the Government troops sent against them. They would not be able to withdraw themselves from the flat, open banks of the river; for there is nowhere vantage ground they could occupy, except in the desert; and there in twenty-four hours, that is before they could be starved, they would by thirst be reduced to submission. For, from the absence of rain, there are no springs on the high ground; and from the same cause the nitre accumulates in the soil to such a degree, as to render the well-water brackish, and unfit for drinking.

A third reason is the dependence of the agriculture of Egypt on irrigation. The people, therefore, in any neighbourhood cannot intermit their attention to their shadoofs and canals for the purpose of insurrection, or for any other purpose whatsoever. Were they to do so starvation would ensue. The Government also, being in possession of the river, could at any moment stop the irrigation, by destroying the shadoofs and canals, of a malcontent district.

Here, then, are three reasons, any one of which would, singly, be sufficient to make the Government in Egypt omnipotent. What conceivable chance, then, can the people have, when all the three are, at all times, combined against them? This explains much in the past and present history of the country. Nature had decided that in it there should be no strongholds for petty potentates, no castles for freebooters, no mountain fastnesses for untameable tribes, no difficult districts to harbour insurgent bands; no possibility of getting away from the bank of the river; no possibility of withdrawing attention, for a time, from the most artificial of all forms of agriculture. For long ages the wandering Arab of the desert was the only possible disturber of the peace of this exceptional country. Nature first gave to it, in its singular endowments, the means of union; and then eliminated those physical obstacles to its realization which, elsewhere, for long ages proved insurmountable. The point to be particularly noted here is, that these circumstances have ever given to the Government for the time being every natural facility for uniting the whole country into a single State, and ruling it despotically.

The Delta is no exception, for the branches of the river, and the canals by which this whole district is permeated, and the absence of defensible positions, reduce it, in respect to the points I have been speaking of, to the same condition as that of the long narrow valley above it.

A time may come when the moral force of public opinion will outweigh, and overmatch these natural facilities for establishing, and working a despotism; but there is no indication in the existing condition of the country of such a time being at hand. And that this is the only force that can be of any effect in such a country is demonstrated by its history. In the remote days of its greatness there was in some sort a substitute for it in the priestly municipal aristocracy, or oligarchy, of each city. The priests were the governing class, and supplied the magistracy. They were an united and powerful body. Wealth, religion, knowledge, the habitual deference of the people, made them strong. They thus became, to some considerable extent, a bulwark, behind which, in each separate city, some of the rights of person and of property could find protection from the arbitrary caprices of despotism. In this way something that was in the mind of man was at that time counterworking the consequences of physical arrangements: and this only is the way in which a country so circumstanced can be helped in the future.

Nothing, however, of this kind is now at work in modern Egypt. It has, therefore, but one ground for the hope of escaping from the despotism which so heavily oppresses it, and that is in the chance of external aid, which means the chance that some European power should assume the protectorate of the country. It must, however, be a power in which public opinion is in favour of liberty and political justice, and in which the economical value of security for person and property is understood. The Egyptians themselves desire such a consummation. They know how blessed to them would be the day which should relieve them from the grinding and senseless exactions of an oriental taskmaster, and place them under the sway of good and equal laws. Their wish is that this beneficent protector should be England. They almost expect that it will be. I was asked, why do you not come and take possession of the country? In Egypt this appears the natural conclusion of existing conditions. But a protectorate carried out thoroughly, and unflinchingly, and entirely for Egyptian objects, would be far better for both parties than simple English possession. If we were to make a gain by ruling the country, we should always be tempted to go a little further. We should find it very difficult to stop at any particular point, or to be clean-handed at all, when everything was in our power.

The motives for interference are strong. How saddening is it to the traveller to see the poor good-natured Fellah, his naked limbs scorched by the blazing sun, baling up the water from the river, during the livelong day, for his little plot of ground; and to think that all that will be left to him of its produce will be barely enough to keep himself, and his little ones, in millet-bread and onions; all the rest having been cruelly swept away to support at Cairo unused, and unuseable, palaces and regiments, and to make a Suez Canal for the furtherance of the policy of France, but for the naval and commercial benefit of England, and to build sugar-factories for a trading Khedivé. Of what benefit to the wretched cultivator are all the bounties of Egyptian nature, and all his own heavy moil and toil? This is one of the remorseless, and purposeless oppressions done under the sun, which it would be well that some modern Hercules should arise in his might, and in his hatred of such heartless and stupid injustice, to beat down, and make a full end of. An Egypt, in which every man might reap securely the fruit of his labour, would be a new thing in the world, and a very pleasant thing to look upon. At present, the riches of Egypt mean wealth without measure for one man, and poverty without measure for all the rest of the world.

The case of the poor Fellah is very hard: so also is that of his palm-tree. It came into existence, and grew up to maturity under great difficulties. It was hardly worth while to give it space and water, and to fence it round in its early days; for so soon as it could bear a bunch of fruit, it was to be taxed. Why, then, should the oppressed villager go to the cost of rearing it? He would be only toiling for a domestic despot, or foreign bond-holder. How many a palm-tree that might now be helping to shade a village, and beneath which the children might be playing, and the elders sitting, has by this hard and irrational impost, been prevented from coming into being. And of all the gifts of nature to Egypt, this palm-tree is one of the most characteristic, and of the most useful: its trunk supplies the people with beams; its sap is made into a spirit; its fruit is in some districts a most useful article of food, and everywhere a humble luxury; baskets are made of the flag of its leaf, and from the stem of the leaf beds, chairs, and boxes; its fibres supply materials for ropes and cordage, nets and mats; it has, too, its history in Egypt, for its shaft and crown, first suggested to the dwellers on the banks of the Nile, in some remote age, the pillar and its capital. A wise ruler, whether his wisdom was that of the head, or of the heart, would do everything in his power to induce his people to multiply, throughout the land, what is so highly useful, and in so many ways. But the plan despotic wisdom adopts is to kill the bird that lays the golden egg, and by a process which shall at the same time cause as few as possible of the precious kind to be reared for the future.

Every traveller in the valley of the Nile, who can think and feel, finds his pleasure, at the sight of the graceful form of this beneficent tree, clouded by the unwelcome recollection of the barbarous and death-dealing tax that is laid upon it.

If, when the Turkish empire falls to pieces, England should shrink from undertaking, on her own sole responsibility, the protectorate of Egypt, the great powers of Europe, together with the United States of America, might, as far as Egypt is concerned, assume the lapsed suzerainty of the Porte, and become the protectors of Egypt conjointly.

CHAPTER III. WHO WERE THE EGYPTIANS?

What were the origin and affinities of the ancient Egyptians? To what race, or races, of mankind did they belong? At what time, whence, and by what route did they enter Egypt? The answer to these questions, if attainable, would not be barren.

We have just been looking at the physical characteristics of the country, and noting some of the effects they must have had on the character and history of the people. The inquiry now indicated, if carried to a successful issue, will enable us, furthermore, to understand, to some extent, what were the aboriginal aptitudes the people themselves brought with them. These were the moral and intellectual elements on which the influences of nature had to act. The result was the old Egyptian. He was afterwards modified by events and circumstances, by increasing knowledge, and by the laws and customs all these led to; but the two conditions we are now speaking of were the starting-points, and which never ceased to have much influence in making this people feel as they felt, and enabling them to do what they did. To have acquired, therefore, some knowledge about them will be to have got possession of some of the materials that are indispensable for reconstructing the idea of old Egypt. We feel with respect to these old historical peoples as we do about a machine: we are not satisfied at being told that it has done such or such a piece of work; we also want to know what it is within it, which enabled it to do the work—what is its construction, and what its motive power.

Six thousand years before our own time may be taken as the starting-point of the monumental and traditional history of the old monarchy. This inquiry, however, will carry us back to a far more remote past.

There is but one way of treating this question: that is, to apply to it the method we apply to any question of science—to that, for instance, of gravitation, or to any other: precisely the same method applied in precisely the same way. We must collect the phenomena; and the hypothesis which explains and accounts for them all is the true one. This will act exclusively: in establishing itself it will render all others impossible.

Other hypotheses, however, which have been, or may be, entertained must not be passed by unnoticed, in order that it may be understood that they do not account for the phenomena; or, to put it reversely, that the phenomena contradict them.

When history begins to dawn, the first object the light strikes upon, and which for a long time alone rears its form above the general gloom, is the civilization of Egypt. It stands in isolation, like a solitary palm by the side of a desert spring. It is also like that palm in being a complete organism, and in producing abundance of good fruit. All around is absolute desert, or the desert sparsely marked with the useless forms of desert life. On inquiry we find that this thoroughly-organized civilization, fully supplied with all the necessaries, and many of the embellishments of life, and which is alone visible in the dawning light, must have existed through ages long prior to the dawn. It recedes into unfathomable depths of time far beyond the monuments and traditions.

Some salient particulars at once arrest our attention. The people, though African by situation, do not, at first sight, strike us as possessing, preponderantly, African affinities. If there be any, they are not so much moral, or intellectual, as physical. They appear to be more akin to the inhabitants of the neighbouring Arabian peninsula, from which there is a road into Egypt. But here also the resemblances are not great: even that of language is far from conclusive. Their complexion, too, is fairer. On neither side is there any suspicion, or tradition of kindred. There is even deep antipathy between the two. Their religion, again, and religion is the summa philosophia—the outcome of all the knowledge, physical and moral, of a people, is unlike that of their neighbours. The Greeks, however, and this is worthy of remark, thought it only another form of their own. They were laborious, skilful, and successful agriculturists; and there was no record of a time when it had been otherwise with them. They were great builders. They had always practised the ordinary arts of life, spinning and weaving, metallurgy, pottery, tanning, and carpentering. They had always had tools and music. They had a learned and powerful priesthood. Their form of government was that of a monarchy supported by privileged classes, or of an aristocracy headed by a king, and resting on a broad basis of slavery, and a kind of serfdom. Their social order was that of castes.

We cannot ascertain precisely at what point in the valley this civilization first showed, or established itself. Of two points, however, which are of importance, we are sure. It did not descend the Nile from Ethiopia, and it did not ascend it from the coast of the Delta. It is true that Memphis was the first great centre of Egyptian life of which we have full and accurate knowledge. The founder, however, of the first historical dynasty, and who appears to have made Memphis his capital, came from This, or Abydos, in Upper Egypt. We may almost infer from this that Abydos was an earlier centre of Egyptian power than Memphis.

The idea, then, of an unmixed African origin may, I think, be at once and summarily dismissed.

Something may be alleged in support of a Semitic origin. Where, however, we may ask, is the theory on behalf of which nothing can be alleged? If it were so it would never have come into existence. What we have to consider in this, as in every doubtful or disputed matter, is not what can be said in favour of certain views, or what can be said against them, but which way the balance inclines when the arguments on each side have been fairly put into their respective scales.

To begin, then, with the language, which is the most obvious ground for forming an opinion in a matter of this kind. It happens that in this case nothing conclusive can be inferred from the language. First, because in it no very decisive Semitic affinities have been made out; and, secondly, because, had they been found to be much more important than some have supposed them to be, this would not of itself prove a preponderance of Semitic blood.

Colour is rather adverse to the Semitic theory. The Egyptian was not so swarthy as the Arab; whereas, if he had been a Semite, he ought to have been, at the least, as dark. In the wall-paintings a clear red represents the complexion of the men, and a clear pale yellow that of the women. In this clearness of tint we miss the swartness of the Arab.

It is true he was darker than the Jew. Little, however, can be inferred from this, for the Jews were an extremely mixed people. Abraham came from Haran, in Mesopotamia, and is called in Deuteronomy a Syrian. He must, in fact, have been a Chaldean. The wife of Joseph was a high-caste Egyptian. The wife of Moses was a Cushite. And when the Israelites went up out of Egypt ‘a mixed multitude’ went out with them. This can only mean that in the multitude of those who threw in their lot with them there was a great deal of Semitic blood, through the remnant of the Hyksos, which had been left behind when the great mass of that people had been expelled from Egypt, and also a great deal of Egyptian blood. From these sources, then, were derived no inconsiderable ingredients for the formation of what was afterwards the Jewish nation. The great-grandmother of David was a Moabitish woman. Solomon’s mother was a Hittite, and one of his wives an Egyptian. And we know that a very considerable proportion of conquered Canaanites were eventually absorbed by their conquerors. No argument, therefore, can be founded upon the complexion of so mixed a people as the Jews.

In features, taking the sculptures and paintings for our authority, the Egyptian was not a Semite. His nostrils and lips were not so thin, and his nose was not so prominent. In this particular, which is important, he presents indications of a cross between the Caucasian and the Ethiopian, or modern Nubian.

Their social and political organization—that of castes, and of a well-ordered, far-extended state—was completely opposed to Semitic freedom and equality, in which the ideas of the tribe, and of the individual, preponderated over those of the state, and of classes.

Religion is the interpretation of the ensemble. It takes cognizance of the powers that are behind, or within, visible external nature, and of the reciprocal relations between these powers and man. The mind of man is the interpreter. As is the interpreter so will be the interpretation.

Now, from the hard simplicity of nature in the Semitic region, or from the simplicity of life and thought resulting from it, or from the early apprehension by that part of the human family of the idea of a Creator, or from other causes not yet made out (though, indeed, it is the fact, and not the cause, that we are now concerned with), there has always been a disposition in the Semitic mind to think of God as one. In the earliest indications we possess of their religious thought each tribe, each city, almost each family, appears to have had its own God. They never could have created, or accepted, a Pantheon. The idea of Polytheism was unnatural, illogical, repulsive to them. The inference, therefore, is that in the large hierarchy of heaven, which approved itself to the Egyptian mind, there could be nothing Semitic. The religion, the religious thought of Egypt, which so stirred the whole heart, and swayed the whole being of the people as to impel them to raise to the glory of their gods the grandest temples the world has ever seen, was, in its whole cast and character, an abomination to the Semite.

Next after Religion, the most important effort of the human mind is Law. Law is distinguishable from Religion. It is not an effort to embrace and interpret the whole, but a general and enforced application of some of the conclusions of that interpretation to the regulation of the conduct of men towards each other. Its principles are those of justice and expediency, but with very considerable limitations—not absolute justice, but justice as then and there understood; and not in every point and particular, but in those matters only in which evidence is possible, and the observance also of which can be enforced by penalties; nor absolute expediency, but again, as it is then and there understood, and limited to such matters as admit of being carried out, and enforced, by public authority.

This, it is plain, may be regarded—and as a matter of observation and history is still, and has in all times been, regarded—either as something distinct from, or as a department of, religion.

If treated as a part of religion, then either the very letter itself of the law, or else the principles on which it is founded, and of which it is an application, must be accepted as from God. In the former case God is regarded as the actual legislator, and sometimes going a step further, as the actual executor of His own law. In the latter case He is regarded, because He is the primary source, at all events, of its principles, as ultimately their guardian, and the avenger of their violation.

The Semitic sentiment, looked upon law in the former of these two lights. It formed this conception of it, because the people held in their minds the two ideas, that God was One, and that He was the Creator. A people who have come to regard God as one will necessarily concentrate on the idea of God all moral and intellectual attributes. Out of this will arise a tendency to exclude all merely animal attributes, and, to a great extent, such phenomena as present themselves to the thought as merely human—such, for instance, as were the attributes of Mars, Venus, and Mercury. God then, being the perfection of wisdom, justice, and goodness, is the only source of law. He is, also, the actual Lawgiver in right of His being the Creator. The world, and all that it contains, is His. His will is the law of His creation. The gods of Egypt, however, like those of Greece, were not anterior to Nature, were not the creators of Nature, but came in subsequently to it, and were in some sort emanations from it; the highest conception of them, in this relation, was that they were the powers of Nature.

Now, in this important and governing matter of law, the Egyptian mind did not take the Semitic view. God appeared to the Egyptian, not so much in the character of the direct originator, as in that of the ultimate guardian of the law, in our sense of these words. They had had kings who had been wise legislators, and the complete punishment for violations of the law would be in the life to come.

A review, then, of the whole field makes it appear highly improbable that the Egyptians were Semites.

But if they were neither African nor Semitic, what were they? There are not many alternatives to choose from. The process soon arrives at a complete exhaustion. They must have been—there is no other possible race left—mainly Aryan: that is, of the same race as ourselves.

There is no antecedent improbability in this. That an Aryan wave should have reached the Nile was, indeed, less improbable than that others, as was the case, should have reached the Ganges and the Thames. That one had not, would almost have needed explanation.

That the Egyptians themselves had not the faintest trace, either of a tradition, or of a suspicion, that it had been so, is only what we might have been sure of. No other branch of the race, from the Ganges to the Thames, had preserved any record of their ancestors’ migrations, or any tradition of their old home, or of their parentage. This only shows—which will explain much—that the migration took place at so remote a period, so long before the invention of letters, that we feel as if it might have resulted from some displacement, or variation, of the axis of our earth in the glacial epoch.

That the complexion of the Egyptians is not so fair as that of Europeans, is a remark of no weight. Europeans may have become fairer by the operation of causes analogous to those which made the Egyptians darker. Among the Hindoos, the Brahman, who is indubitably Aryan, is generally as dark as the Egyptian was. The colour of the Egyptian may have been heightened in precisely the same way as that of the Brahman; first, by intermixture with the previous possessors of the soil, and afterwards by exposure through a long series of generations, with but little clothing, to the floods of light and heat of a perennially cloudless and all but tropical sun.

They might, on their arrival, have found an Ethiopic race in possession of the valley of the Nile, and having come from a distance with but few women, may have largely intermarried with the conquered, and displaced aborigines.

That there had been some intermixture may be inferred from the complexion of the Egyptians, and from the thickening of their features.

There is also a moral argument in favour of this supposition in the fact that the Egyptians never, even in their best days, showed repugnance to intermarriage with the Ethiopians, or even to being ruled by Ethiopian sovereigns. They followed Tirhakah and Sabaco into Syria just as readily as they had followed Sethos and Rameses. We see on the sculptures the Ethiopian Queen of Amenophis.

Had the language been manifestly Aryan in its roots and structure, this, under the circumstances, would have been conclusively in favour of our supposition. Its not being so is, however, not conclusive against it. The Northmen, who invaded, and settled in Normandy, abandoned their own language, and adopted that of France. Again, the Norman invasion led to a great modification of the language of England, but the new tongue was not that of the invaders. Indeed, it seems only in accordance with what might have been expected—that the non-Aryan element in the people having been so potent as, to a great extent, to cloud the Aryan complexion, and coarsen the Aryan features, the language which was ultimately formed, should not have been, to any great extent, Aryan.

We find caste existing in Egypt from the earliest times. This becomes intelligible on the supposition of an Aryan origin. It is a parallelism to what took place on the ground occupied in India by another, but later, offset of this race. Caste could not develop itself spontaneously in the bosom of an indigenous, and homogeneous people. It is impossible to conceive such a phenomenon under such circumstances. It must be the result of two causes: foreign conquest, and pride of blood. As to the former, we are sure that there could have been no other means by which the Egyptians could have been introduced into the valley of the Nile, as they were not indigenous Africans; and as to pride of blood, we know that this feeling exists so strongly among Aryan peoples, that it may almost be regarded as one of the characteristics of the race. It was natural, therefore, that, wherever they came to dwell on the same ground with a conquered and subject population of a colour different from their own, they should introduce this, or some equivalent, organization of society. If they had found a dark race in Europe we should have had caste in Europe; but here the hardness of the struggle for existence in old times, aided by the absence of difference in colour between the conquerors and the conquered, made it impossible. In all European aristocracies, whatever may have been their origin, we can detect traces of this old Aryan disposition towards exclusiveness founded on pride of blood.

In religion, which is for those times one of the surest criteria of race, there was so close an approximation of the gods, and of the whole system of Egypt, to those of Greece, that, as has been observed already, the Greeks supposed that the two were identical. They were in the habit of speaking of the deities of Egypt as the same as their own, only that in Egypt they had Egyptian names. Of course, it is impossible for any people to suppose that the religion of another people is identical with its own, unless the fundamental ideas of the two systems are the same. This similarity, then, indicates that they were both offsets from the same stock, and that they parted from the old home after the fundamental and governing ideas of the mythology they carried with them had been elaborated there.

But in this matter we may go much further than Greece. If we view all the Aryan religions collectively, we shall find that the one idea that was the life-giving principle in every one of the whole family was the belief in a future life. The Hindoo and the Persian, the Greek and the Roman, the Celt and the Teuton, all alike, as if by a common instinct, agreed in this. This, therefore, is distinctly Aryan, and no religion from which it is absent could belong to that race. How, then, and this is almost a crucial test, does the religion of old Egypt stand in this matter? Exactly as it ought to do, on the supposition that it had an Aryan origin. This was its central, its formative, its vital idea. It was this that built the thousand mighty temples in which the living might learn those virtues, and practise that piety, which would be their passport to the better world to come. It was this that embalmed the bodies of the dead, whose souls were still alive. Without it the religion of old Egypt could never have been a living force, nor anything but the merest mummy of a religion. At all events, without it, it could have had no origin in Aryan thought.

Another point to be considered is that of artistic tastes and aptitudes. These are shown most conspicuously in the architecture of a people, and the subsidiary architectonic arts of sculpture and painting; they may be followed also into the arts which minister to the conveniences and embellishments of everyday life, and which are chiefly exhibited in the style of the dress of a people, and of the furniture of their houses. Here, again, I think the working of the Aryan mind is seen in old Egypt. Their ideas and tastes in these matters were singularly in harmony with the ideas and tastes that have in all ages developed themselves in the bosom of Aryan communities wherever settled. On the whole, our taste approves of what they did in these applications of man’s creative power, the necessary deductions having been made for the trammels which the fixity of their religious ideas imposed upon them; and for the fact that all that they did were but first unaided essays, uncorrected by comparisons with the arts of other people. When we consider what great disadvantages in this respect they worked under, we must come to the conclusion that no nation ever showed so much invention, or more native capacity for art. We cannot suppose that they borrowed from any other people the idea of the pillar with its ornamented capital; the arch; the ornamentation of buildings with the sculptured and painted forms of man, of animals, and of plants; the use of metallic colours; the art of making glass; the forms of their furniture; the art of embalming the dead; the art of writing; and a multitude of other arts which were in common practice among them in very remote times.

The same may be said of their aptitude for science, which has ever been a distinct characteristic of Aryans, and never of Semites. Science is a natural growth among the former, and has appeared among the latter only occasionally, and then evidently as an exotic. The mechanics, the hydraulics, the geometry, the astronomy, of the old Egyptians were all their own.

We also find among them evidences of a genius for organization in a high degree, and of a singular power of realizing to their thoughts, and of working for the attainment of, very distant objects, both of which are valuable peculiarities of the Aryan mind, and in both of which the Semitic mind is markedly deficient.

One point more. Herodotus observes that the Egyptians resembled the Greeks in being content each of them with a single wife. On our supposition, this is just what might have been expected. There are no practices among mankind so inveterate as those connected with marriage; and the ancient Egyptians, having been an offset from the race of mankind which had originally been monogamic, could not, although they had long been settled in the polygamic region, bring themselves to adopt polygamy. The primæval custom of the race could not be unlearnt. We see, too, from the sculptures that the affectionate relation between husband and wife was rather of the European than of the Asiatic pattern. The wife places her hand on the shoulder, or round the arm of the husband, to symbolize unitedness, attachment, and dependence. This is done in a manner one feels is not quite in harmony with oriental sentiment.

The last questions are—Where did they come from? and, How did they get into Egypt? I have at times thought that they came from the mouth of the Indus, or from the Persian Gulf, and entered Egypt by the way of the Red Sea. If Abydos was the first centre of Egyptian power, and the balance of historical argument inclines towards it, there seems to be no other way of accounting for its having been so than by supposing a landing at Myos Hormos, or Berenice, as they were afterwards called. In one of those harbours I can imagine the May Flowers of that old, old world, hauled up upon the beach, and the stout hearts, that had crossed in them the Indian Ocean, preparing for their inland march across the desert hills to the wondrous river. The distance is not great. On the third day they will drink its water. The natives they are to encounter are gentle, and industrious. They will dispossess them of their land, and enslave them. They will take their daughters for wives. They will increase rapidly in their happy valley. The language they brought with them will be lost, and a new language formed by their descendants, which will be mainly that of the people they subdued, and with whom they intermarried. The religion, however, and the arts they brought with them, they will never forget; and as the centuries roll on, and they have increased greatly in numbers, and come to have many goodly cities, and much wealth, they will add largely both to their religion, and to their arts. But by the time they have added to their other arts that one which will enable them to perpetuate the memory of events, so long a time will have passed, that they will have lost all tradition of how their first fathers came into the valley, and how they possessed themselves of it. For them, therefore, the history of Egypt will commence with the discovery of letters; but for us, who are able to recover something of the history of words, of races, and of mythologies, it will reach back into far more distant tracts of time.

There is no reason which should lead us peremptorily to decide against their having come by sea. There is no antecedent improbability. The distant voyages and settlements both of the Phœnicians, and of the Normans, show what can be achieved in very small vessels. Evidence to the same point was again supplied by the insignificant capacity of many of the vessels employed by some of our early trans-Atlantic explorers, and circumnavigators. And in the spirit-stirring and invigorating era of the Aryan migrations we may believe that some enterprises of this kind were undertaken. At all events, there is nothing to preclude our believing that, in the prehistoric period, Indian and Arabian vessels were wafted by the reciprocating monsoons, to and fro, across the Indian Ocean. Nor, indeed, are we at all obliged to suppose that those vessels were of insignificant capacity.

But this entrance into Egypt must have taken place at so remote a date that the physical features of that part of the world might then have been somewhat different from what they are now. The Dead Sea might not then have been thirteen hundred feet below the level of the Mediterranean, and the isthmus we have just seen canalized might then have been navigable water.

But it will make the point in question more distinct if I endeavour to speak more precisely about it. The immigration into Egypt could not possibly have been an offset of the Aryan immigration into India, which resulted in the formation of the Hindoo, or of its westward outflow, which resulted in the formation of the Greeks, Romans, and Teutons. These dispersions must, we know, speaking broadly, have been contemporaneous. Their date, however, as has been already observed, was so remote that no one branch of the race retained the slightest trace of a tradition of its original seat, or of the way in which they themselves came to their new home, or of any particulars of the occurrence. We will suppose, then, that the event to which they all belong, and of which each is a part, occurred 10,000 years ago. I merely use these figures to make myself intelligible. But the Aryan immigration into Egypt belongs to a still more remote epoch, and to another order of events. In the stratifications of history its place is far lower down. It is a part of what forms a distinct and more primitive stratum. Again, for the purpose of making my meaning distinct, I will say that it belonged to a series of events which took place 15,000 years ago. The peoples and civilization of Europe, as they now exist, are to be traced back to the first-mentioned of these two world-movements. To that which preceded it may possibly be referred some fragments of a previous condition of things in Europe which have been enigmas to historians and ethnologists, as the Etruscans, the Finns, the Laps, and the Basques. The Egyptians may have been a part of that first original wave coming down freely of their own accord into Egypt. Or they may have been driven out of Persia, or from the banks of the Indus, at the epoch of the rise and outflow of the second wave. At all events, this is clear, that they were no part of the second wave itself; because their language was older than the Aryan tongue of that epoch. And if, as appears probable, it was also older than that of the Semitic peoples, they, too, must have come into being after the Egyptians.[2]

CHAPTER IV. EGYPT THE JAPAN OF THE OLD WORLD.

Egypt was the Japan of the old world. While nature had separated it from other countries, she had given it within its own borders the means for satisfying all the wants felt by its inhabitants. They acted on the hint. Their general policy was to seclude themselves, to which, however, their history contains some conspicuous exceptions; and to exclude foreigners; which policy, however, they, ultimately, completely reversed in the reign of Psammetichus, as the Japanese have done in our own day; and from the same motives. They carried the mechanical arts, and all that ministers to material well-being, to a high degree of perfection. Like the Japanese, they did this with what they could win from nature within the boundaries of their own country, and under what we are disposed to regard as very crippling disadvantages. Though, indeed, in respect of absolute independence in the origination of characteristic trains of thought, and of inventions, Japan, on account of the connexion of its early civilization with that of China, is estopped from entering the lists against Egypt. The moral sentiments of the Egyptians, and their social and domestic life, were entirely their own: the results of the working of their own ideas. It is this originality that makes them so interesting and instructive a study of human development. All their customs, and all that they did, were devised by themselves to meet their own especial wants. They were self-contained, and confident in themselves that they would always be able to find out both what would be best for them to do, and what would be the best way of doing it.

Their success justified this self-reliance. All the ordinary, and many of the more refined wants of man, were supplied so abundantly, and in so regular and well-ordered a fashion among them, that a modern traveller would find no discomfort, and much to wonder at and admire, in a year or two spent in such a country as was the Egypt of Rameses the Great. He would, indeed, be a very great gainer if he could find the Egypt of to-day just what Egypt was three thousand years ago.

There are no other moderately-sized countries in the world so well prepared by nature for a system of isolation, and self-dependence, as Japan and Egypt. On a large scale China and the United States possess the same advantage.

The action of free trade is to place all countries—even those that may be able to produce but one commodity the world wants, be it wool or labour, gold or iron, or even the power of becoming carriers for others—on the same footing of abundance as the most bountifully supplied, but at the cost of self-dependence, which, in its highest degree, means complete isolation. Free trade equalizes advantages, making the advantage of each the advantage of all. It does for the world on a large scale what the free interchange of no inconsiderable variety of domestic products did on a small scale for old Japan of the modern, and for old Egypt of the ancient, world.

With respect to the common arts of everyday life, I think general opinion is somewhat in error, in the direction of being unduly disparaging, as to the state in which they were throughout the East, and on the northern shores of the Mediterranean, at the period which precedes the first glimmerings of history. I believe that the knowledge of these arts was throughout that large area spread very generally. Man has no real tradition of the discovery of these arts any more than he has of the acquisition of the domestic animals, and of the most useful of the kinds of grain[3] and of fruits he cultivates. What is to the credit of the Egyptians is, that they carried the practice of them to a high degree of perfection, and rendered them singularly fruitful, and that they added to them much which circumstances made it impossible they could have borrowed from any other people. Everything done in Egypt was invested with an Egyptian, just as everything done in Japan has been with a Japanese, character.

CHAPTER V. BACKSHEESH.—THE GIRL OF BETHANY.

One meets few travellers in Egypt who do not speak of the incessant demands for backsheesh as an annoyance, and a nuisance. The word has become as irritating to their temper as a mosquito-bite is to their skin; and it is quite as inevitable. You engage a boat, a porter, a donkey: in each case you pay two, or three times as much as you ought; and in each case the hand that has received your overpayment is again instantly held out for backsheesh. While on the Nile I gave one morning a cigar to the reis of the boat. On walking away I heard his step behind me. I turned back, and found that he was following me to ask for backsheesh. I suppose what passed in his mind was, either that I had discovered in him some merit that entitled him to backsheesh, or that one who was rich enough, and weak enough, to give a cigar, without any provocation, would give even money to one who asked for it. A friend of mine rode over a little boy. The urchin, as he lay upon the ground writhing with pain, and incapable of rising, held up his hand, crying out, “I die now, give backsheesh!” An English surgeon sees a man fall, and break his arm. He goes to his assistance, and sets the broken limb. The man asks for backsheesh. If the wayfarer who, as he was journeying from Jerusalem to Jericho, had fallen among thieves, had been an Egyptian, he would, while the good Samaritan was taking leave of him, have addressed to him the same request. An Arab helps you up to the top of the Pyramid. You pay him handsomely, and he is satisfied. You enter into conversation with him, and he tells you that he is the Hakem of his village; that he possesses so many sheep, so many goats, so many asses, so many camels; that the wife he married last, now two years ago, is thirteen years old. You look upon him as a rich man, but, while the thought is forming itself in your mind, he holds out his hand, and asks for backsheesh.

There is, however, nothing in such requests that need cause annoyance, or irritation. These children—whether, or not, grown up, for they never arrive at mental manhood—have nothing in their minds corresponding to our ideas of pride, whether aristocratic, or republican, of a kind that might dispose them to regard such petitions as humiliating. What pride they have is that of race and of religion, which suggests to them the thought that to get money in this way is only a justifiable spoiling of the unbelieving stranger. They look, too, upon you as quite inexhaustibly rich, while they are themselves, generally, very poor. And if you are satisfied with their services—and they certainly always endeavour to do their best; or if you have any good-will towards them, with which they credit you; how is this satisfaction, or good-will, to be shown? It is ridiculous to suppose that words will suffice. There is but one thing to do, that is to give a little backsheesh. This rational way of settling the matter is the way of the East. And of old, too, we know that “the little present” figured largely in the manners and customs of that part of the world.

In Egypt, then, to blaze up with indignation at the sight of a hand held out towards you, is to misunderstand the people you are among. Moreover, indignation, whatever may be the prompting cause, is very un-Egyptian. I never met with one who had seen a native lose his temper, under any circumstances, or under any amount of provocation. You may abuse him; you may even beat him; but he still smiles, and is still ready to serve you. In this way he soon makes you feel that you are in the wrong. One cannot be angry with such people.

This ever-present idea of backsheesh may be turned to some account. I found that the only way in which I could extract a smile, or a word, from the native women was to hold out my hand to them, and ask for backsheesh. That the Howaji, as he rode by, should turn the tables on them in this way, and invert the natural order of things, by constituting himself the petitioner, and elevating them to the position of the dispensers of fortune, was enough to upset their gravity, and loosen their tongues.

I had gone from Jerusalem to Bethany with a young friend late from Harrow, great in athletics, and full of fun and good spirits. We were on foot—for who would care to go to, or return from, Bethany otherwise? and, having arrived at the village, were inquiring for what is shown as the tomb of Lazarus. The women of the place soon collected round us. One of them, in the first bloom of youth, looked like a visitant to Earth, come to enable hapless mortals to dream of the perfectness of Paradise. Her figure would have given Praxiteles new ideas. Her face was slightly oval; her features fine and regular; and her complexion such as must be rare in an Arab girl, for her lips were of a rich, if of a dusky, coral, and the rose envermeiled her nut-brown cheeks. Her eyes thought. Her beauty was about her as a halo of light. To look upon her was fascination. My admiration was speechless. Not so, however, my young friend’s; for, turning to our dragoman, he said, ‘Ask that young lady if she is married?’ My breath went from me at the sudden indignation with which she fired up.

As she walked away, giving utterance, as she went, to some angry Arabic, I looked into the faces of the women about us. It was evident that they were impressed with, and approved of, the propriety of her conduct. It will, I thought, be long remembered, and quoted, in the village as an example of the promptitude, and decision, with which an Arab girl should guard her reputation.

And now, I said to myself, we are in for it. She will go and fetch her father, or a brother, or some relative assumed for the occasion, and there will be a row. I suggested, therefore, to my young friend, ‘that the tomb was a transparent imposture; that it could only be an excavation in the rock, made by some mediæval monk; and that we should do better to go on, and look at something else.’ And so we got away.

As we left the party of women, I gave them a little more backsheesh than usual; and then told the dragoman that we would leave the place at once, but not by the road by which we had come.

We had just cleared the village, and I was congratulating myself on our having got off so speedily, when we encountered a flight of locusts. I soon became absorbed in observing their ‘numbers numberless.’ They gave me, I thought, a new idea of multitude. They blurred the sunlight almost like a cloud. I began to capture some of them, which I now have preserved in spirits.

While thus occupied, and with a feeling of wonder, at the infinitude of living things around us, growing upon me, the apprehensions I had lately felt, dropped entirely out of my mind. In this way we went on. When we had got about three-quarters of a mile from the village we came to a turn in the mountain path, far removed from any dwelling, and where all was solitude and quiet. As we approached the corner, a young woman stepped forward from behind a projecting rock, and with a gracious look, and most engaging smile, presented my young friend with a carefully-arranged and beautiful bouquet.

Could my eyes be deceiving me? No. It was no other than the exemplary young creature, who, only half-an-hour back, had shown so much and such becoming indignation.

My apprehensions, then, and precautions had been unnecessary. But, in American phrase, ‘How dreffle smart’ to combine, in so prompt and graceful a manner, the credit of being good with the pleasure of being good-natured. Could anything have been better imagined in London, or Paris?

So it seemed. But honi soit qui mal y pense. True, few can be as beautiful, few as keen-witted as the girl of Bethany. But also true that none could have been more free from thought of evil. ’Twas all for backsheesh.

And where two rupees are a marriage portion—so much to them, and so little to us—whose heart would condemn the bare-footed young tactician?

That day, as she returned to the village, her step, I can think, was lighter than usual. Perhaps she did not observe the mischief the locusts were doing to her father’s little plot of wheat.

A few days afterwards, we were riding across the hills from Bethlehem to Solomon’s Pools. Our path lay by the side of the rude old aqueduct. This is merely a trough of undressed stone, sunk to the level of the surface of the ground, on the sides of the hills it winds its way among, for about five miles, from the Pools to the town. The sinking of the aqueduct just to the level of the surface, was a way of saving it from the risks of being knocked over, or of falling to pieces, that was as wise as it was simple. If it had been raised above the ground, or buried in it, whenever it got out of order, the repair of damages would have been difficult and costly. Originally it was carried on, five miles further, to Jerusalem. We had, in our ride, reached the spot where the large-hearted king (who, like Aristotle, Bacon, and Humboldt, had seen that all knowledge was connected) had, probably, his Botanical Gardens, in which he cultivated some of the plants he wrote about; and the genius loci had just brought into my mind, his request, suggested to him, perhaps, by the interest he took in the fruit he was growing up here, ‘To be comforted with apples, for that he was sick of love,’ when we came suddenly on a party of women washing clothes. If the daughters of Bethlehem were as good-looking in Solomon’s time as they are in ours, it, we can imagine, must have strengthened his favourable disposition towards the place; and may go some way towards accounting for the aqueduct. Though, indeed, this seems a little inconsistent with his preference for apples. That, however, may have been only a temporary feeling, or, it may have been the expression of his latest and more matured experience.

But, as to those daughters of Bethlehem now in the flesh, whom we had come upon, while so usefully and creditably employed. They were much amused, as it appeared, at having been caught in such an occupation, and were laughing merrily. My young friend, as might have been expected of him, endeavoured to increase the merriment; this he did by leaning over his saddle, and saying, ‘Ateeni bosa.’ Had he spoken in English—though, of course, nothing of the kind could ever have been said by him in our downright tongue—the words would have been ‘Give me a kiss.’ The one, to whom he appeared more particularly to address himself, blazed up with instantaneous indignation, just like the girl of Bethany. With angry glance, and fierce tone, she exclaimed, ‘May your lips be withered first.’ But now I felt no apprehensions. My only thought was, that if we came back the same way, and should, by accident, find her alone, she would then, perhaps, hold out her hand, and say, ‘Your lips are a garden of roses: give backsheesh.’

CHAPTER VI. ANTIQUITY AND CHARACTER OF THE PYRAMID CIVILIZATION.

That the three great Pyramids of Gizeh were erected by Chufu, Schafra, and Menkeres, the Cheops, Chephren, and Mycerinus of Herodotus, we now know with as much certainty as that we owe the Pantheon to Agrippa, and the Coliseum to the Flavian Emperors. We also know with equal certainty that they were built between five and six thousand years ago. From these Pyramids to the Faioum extends along the edge of the desert a region of Pyramids, and of circumjacent Necropoleis. Not far from an hundred Pyramids have been already noted. These were the tombs of royalty. The uncrowned members of the royal family, the ministers of state, the priests, and the other great men of the dynasties of the Old Monarchy, lie buried around. Their tombs, excavated and built in the rock, are innumerable. Some of them reaching seventy feet, or more, back into the mountain (the tombs of the New Monarchy at Thebes were several times as large), are constructed of enormous pieces of polished granite, most exquisitely fitted together. Some are covered with sculptures and paintings, traced with much freedom, and a grand and pleasing simplicity. They describe the offices, occupations, and possessions, and the religious ideas and practices of those for whom they were constructed.

Great was the antiquity of Thebes before European history begins to dawn. It was declining before the foundations of Rome were laid. Its palmy days ante-dated that event by as long a period as separates us from the first Crusade. But the building of the great Pyramids of Gizeh preceded the earliest traditions of Thebes by a thousand years.

In this Pyramid region, and its Necropoleis, we have a chapter in the history of our race, the importance of which every one can comprehend. It is a history which, while in the main it omits events, gives us fuller, and more genuine and authentic materials than any written history could give, for a complete understanding of the everyday life, and arts of the people. And the time for which it gives us this information is so remote, that there is no contemporary history of any other people, which we can compare with it, or with which we can in any way bring it into connexion. It has nowhere any points of contact. It is a rich stream of history that runs through a barren waste of early time, like the Nile itself through the Libyan Desert, with a complete absence of affluents.

Having, then, made out the position of this epoch with respect to general history, the next point is to ascertain as distinctly as we can what were the arts, the knowledge, the manners, the customs of the period, that is of those who were buried in these Pyramids and Necropoleis. When they lived, and what they were, give to them their historic interest and importance.

The mere naked fact that the Great Pyramid was built implies that at that, time, agriculture was so advanced, and, in consequence, so productive, and that society was so thoroughly organized, as to enable the country to maintain for thirty years 100,000 men while occupied in the unproductive labour of cutting and moving the stones employed in its construction. To which we must add the 100,000 men engaged for the ten previous years upon the great causeway which crossed the western plain, from the river to the site of the Pyramid, and over which all the materials for the Pyramid were brought. Modern Egypt could not do this. We should find it an enormous tax even upon our resources.

There is also implied in the cutting and dressing of this vast amount of stone, the supply of a corresponding amount of tools; and as granite was at that time used largely in the construction of some of the tombs and Pyramids, it implies that those tools were of the best temper.

It must also be remembered that some of these Pyramids had crossed the Nile. The unwieldy and ponderous stones of which they were constructed had been quarried in the Arabian range, and brought across the river to the African range on which the Pyramids stand. What granite had been required had been brought, the whole length of the valley, from Syené. How much mechanical contrivance does this imply! All these great blocks had to be lifted out of the quarry, to be brought down to the river, carried across, some even between five and six hundred miles down the river, and then again across the cultivated western plain to the first stage of the Libyan hills. They had to be lowered into the boats and lifted out of them. The inclined causeway was made of dressed and polished blocks of black basalt, a kind of stone extremely difficult to work. It was a mile in length. And when the blocks for the Pyramid had at last reached the further end of the causeway, they had to be lifted into their place in a building that was carried to a height of 480 feet. Herodotus mentions the succession of machines by which they were elevated from the bottom to the top. The mechanical arrangements, then, must have been well planned and executed.

In these great works we see that nothing was overlooked, or neglected. Everything that could happen was anticipated, and calculated with the utmost nicety, and completely and successfully provided for. This would, in itself alone, imply much accumulated knowledge, and habits of mind which nothing but long ages of civilization can give. No rude people can make nice calculations, can summon before themselves for consideration all the conditions of a problem, or take precautions against what may happen thousands of years after their time.

If, then, we look at these structures, such as we have them now before our eyes, and work out in our minds the conditions, both contemporary and precedent, involved in the single fact of their having been built, we see distinctly that we are not contemplating one of the earlier stages, but a very advanced stage, of civilization. All traces of the inception of the useful arts, and of social organization, are utterly wanting. We have before us a great community which, when seen for the first time, appears, Minerva-like, full-grown and completely equipped.

This is seen with equal distinctness in the representations of the common arts, and of the ordinary occurrences and practices of life, as we find them on the tombs. They are such as belong to a civilized people. Among the former we may instance the manufacture of glass, and the enamelling of earthenware with coloured glazes; and among the latter the making of inventories of the property of deceased persons.

The religion, too, we see, had already attained its full development. Its doctrines were matured, all its symbols had been decided upon, and an order of men had been set apart for the maintenance of the knowledge of it, and for the celebration of its services.

The hierarchy also of society was now completely established, and had been long unhesitatingly acquiesced in. There are no indications here either of growth, or of decay, or of any disposition to unsettle anything. The order of society is received as the order of Nature, is administered by a regular form of government, and crowned by a splendid court.

But—and this is as surprising as anything we meet with belonging to those times—they were already in possession of their hieroglyphical method of writing, and were using it regularly and largely in their monumental records; and, which is still more significant, had discovered how to form papyrus-rolls, that is to say paper, for its reception. Nor is there any indication of a time when their ancestors have been without it. In this, as in the other matters I have mentioned, there is no substantial difference between the primæval monarchy, before the invasion of the Hyksos, and the revived monarchy, which flourished after the expulsion of the Hyksos.

From whence, then, did this remote civilization come? Was it indigenous, or was it from abroad? or, if derived from these two sources, in what degree did each contribute? Is there any possibility of recovering any of the early dates, or of at all measuring roughly any of the periods of the early history? I have already said something on these questions, and shall return to them, whenever we shall have reached any point, from which there may appear to be emitted some ray of light which falls upon them.

CHAPTER VII. LABOUR WAS SQUANDERED ON PYRAMIDS, BECAUSE IT COULD NOT BE BOTTLED UP.

It is essential to the right understanding of any age that we have a general knowledge of its monetary and economical condition. This, which in ordinary histories is passed over with little or no notice, does, in truth, largely affect the character of men’s works and deeds, their manners and customs, and even their thoughts and feelings. It had much influence on the history of the old world: we see it distinctly at work in that of the Roman Empire. And we are now beginning to understand how largely it is influencing the course of events amongst ourselves at the present moment. With respect to the Pyramids, who was to build them, the means by which they were to be built, and that they were to be built at all, depended on the monetary and economical condition of the Egypt of that day. To elucidate this is to advance a step in the reconstruction and revivifying of the period.

Herodotus tells us that he saw inscribed on the Great Pyramid how many talents of silver (1,600 was the number) had been expended in supplying the hands employed on the work with radishes, onions, and garlic. He says he had a distinct recollection of what the interpreter told him on the subject. We believe this, because he was no inventor of fables, but an accurate and veracious recorder of what he saw and heard. The idea of history—that is, of what is properly called history, which is exclusive of intentional deception and misrepresentation—was the uppermost idea in his mind. The internal evidence of his great, varied, and precious work demonstrates this.

There is, however, another reason for our believing this particular piece of information he gives us about the Great Pyramid, which is, that it is in strict accord with what we know of the period to which his statement belongs. Silver was at that time not coined but weighed, and therefore, necessarily, the inscription would speak of such a weight of silver, and not of so many coins of a certain denomination. At that time there were not in existence any coins of any denomination. In the history of Joseph we have frequent mention of money without any qualifying terms; but on the one occasion in the narrative, where it becomes necessary to speak precisely on the subject, Joseph’s brethren do so by saying that their money was in full weight. Money then, we may suppose, as late as the time of the Pentateuch, was silver that was weighed, and not coined. This is in accordance with another statement of Herodotus, that the Lydians, the most mercantile neighbours of the Greeks, were the people who first coined money.

Now that the Egyptians had at this time no coined money, proves that their taxes—as is very much the case at this day with their chief tax, that on land—were paid in kind. In an age when silver was so scarce that the idea of coining it, for the purpose of giving to it easy and general circulation, had not occurred, and it was passing from hand to hand of the few who possessed it by weight, the actual tillers of the soil, always in the East, and not less so in Egypt than elsewhere, a poor and oppressed class, could not have had silver to pay their rents and taxes. The wealth, therefore, of Pharaoh must have consisted mainly of produce.

The next point is, that no profitable investments for what silver, or precious things, a few might have possessed, were known, or possible then. It was not only that there were no Government stocks, and no shares paying dividends, but that there was nothing at all that could be resorted to for such purposes. If a man had invested money in anything he would have stood out before the world as a rich man, and so as a man to be squeezed. Doubtless there was less of this in Egypt than elsewhere in the East, but in those early and arbitrary days there must have been, at times, even in Egypt, somewhat of it. People, therefore, would not, as a general rule, have invested had it been possible. But it was utterly impossible, for the double reason that there was nothing to invest, and nothing to invest in.

What people invest is capital. Capital is bottled-up labour, convertible again, at pleasure, into labour, or the produce of labour. But in those days labour could not be bottled up, except by a very few in the form of silver ingots. In these days every kitchen-maid can bottle up labour in the shape of coin, which is barren bottling-up, and invest it in a saving’s bank account, or in some other way, which is fruitful bottling-up. I ask permission to use these incongruous metaphors, one on the top of the other. Every grown-up person in the kingdom can bottle up labour, and invest it; and, as a matter of fact, there are few who, at one time or other of their lives, do not. Some have succeeded in doing it to such an enormous amount that they might with the accumulated store build a Pyramid greater than that of Cheops. It is, indeed, with the labour that has been bottled up by private individuals that we have constructed all our railways, docks, and gas works, and with which we carry out all our undertakings, great and small, in this country. There is no limit to our capacity for bottling up labour. It is one of our greatest exports; we send it all over the world, to Russia, to America, to India, and to Egypt itself. It is estimated that we store up somewhere about 150,000,000 pounds worth every year.

But in the time of Cheops nothing of this kind was done, nor could it have been. It is true that the nation could then produce a great deal more food than it needed for consumption, but, at the end of the year, it was none the richer. Its surplus labour had not been fixed and preserved in a reconvertible form for future needs. Its surplus production had not been thus stored up for future uses. To repeat ourselves there were, speaking generally, no ways open to them for bottling up this surplusage either in the temporarily barren, or in the continuously fruitful fashion. But there were ways open to them by which they might squander, or consume, their imperfect chances. They might, for instance, throw away their surplus food, and capacity for surplus labour, by doing no productive work for a portion of the year. They were engaged in this way in the long and numerous festivals of their gods, in their funeral processions, and other matters of this kind. The effect was the same when they made military raids on their neighbours. To this method also of using up their surplus labour and food they had frequent recourse. To these matters they were disposed more than ourselves, because, unlike ourselves, they could not save what they were thus squandering. Or they might spend much of it in excavating, sculpturing, and painting acres of tombs; or in piling up Pyramids; or in building incredible numbers of magnificent temples. This explains the magnitude and costliness of many of the works, and undertakings, of the old world elsewhere, as well as in Egypt. The point which it is essential to see is, that they could not bottle up their surplus labour of any kind in the time of Cheops; while with us every form of surplus labour, even every odd half-hour of every form of it, may be bottled up, and the interest on what has been secured in this way may itself also be secured in like manner. The only approach to this among them was made by the king when he built a treasury, which we know was sometimes done by the Pharaohs, and locked up in it his ingots of silver, and what gold, precious stones, and costly stuffs he had acquired.

But this form of bottling up labour, and which only one man in the kingdom could practise, had two objections. It was of the utterly barren sort: it paid no dividends. He had no enjoyment of any kind from it. This was the first objection; and the other was, that if it was continued too long—and this might be the result at any moment—the man who was thus hoarding up his treasures would prove to have been hoarding them up for others, and not for himself; and so he would get no particle of advantage from them.

What, then, was he to do? How was what he had to be spent in such a manner as that he might himself get something from it? How was he to have himself the spending of it? A Pyramid is utterly unproductive, and all but utterly useless. It is a building that does not give shelter to any living thing, in which nothing can be stored up, excepting a corpse, and that cannot even be entered. Still it was of as much benefit to the man who built it as leaving the surplus labour, and food he had at his disposal, and the valuables he had in his treasury, unused would be. And those who built Pyramids had at their absolute command any amount of labour, and any amount of food. Here, then, was a great temptation to raise monuments of this kind to themselves. What treasure they had might as well be sunk in stones, as remain bottled up barrenly. They would, at all events, spend it themselves, and get for it an eternal monument. They would have the pleasure of raising themselves their own monuments. They would have the satisfaction of providing a safe and magnificent abode for their own mummies.

If they had had at home Egyptian Three per Cent. Government Consols, or could have bought Chinese, Hindoo, or Assyrian Five per Cent. Stocks; or if the thought had occurred to them, which not long afterwards did occur to their successors, of reclaiming from the Desert, by irrigation, the district of the Faioum; or if they had foreseen that in times to come the Hyksos and the Persians might invade Egypt, and that possibly a rampart from Pelusium to the metropolis, such as was afterwards constructed, might assist in keeping them in check in the Desert, where there would be a chance of their perishing from thirst; or if Egypt had been, like Ceylon, a country in which mountain streams could be dammed up in the wet season for irrigating the land in the dry; or, like Yucatan, where enormous tanks for the storage of the rainfall are indispensable; then it is evident that the surplus labour and food, and the silver ingots in the King’s treasury, would have been spent in some one or other of these ways. But some of these things were not possible in Egypt, and the time for thinking of the others had not yet come. There was, therefore, no alternative. It must be something as unproductive as a Pyramid, or a temple. The intense selfishness of man, such as he was in those early days, prevented his having any repugnance to the idea of a Pyramid all for himself: it rather, on the contrary, commended the idea to his mind. And so it came about that the Pyramids were built. The whole process is as clear to us as it would be, had we ourselves, in some well-remembered stage of a previous existence, been the builders, and not Cheops and Chephren. We see the conditions under which they acted, and the mental process by which they were brought to the only conclusion possible to them.

The question may be propounded—Why was there given to these structures that particular form which from them has been called the pyramidal? Mathematics and astronomy have been summoned to answer the question; and lately the Astronomer Royal for Scotland has, in a large and learned work, endeavoured to prove that the Great Pyramid of Gizeh was intended to perpetuate for ever a knowledge of scientifically-ascertained natural standards of weight, measure, and capacity. If this was the purpose of the Great Pyramid, will he allow an old friend to ask him—what, then, was the purpose of each one of those scores of other Pyramids that were constructed before and after it? No two, probably, of the whole series were precisely of the same dimensions, except, perhaps, accidentally. All suppositions of this kind have their origin in the unhistorical, or rather anti-historical practice of attributing to early ages the ideas of our own times. The first requirement for enabling one to answer this question rightly is the power of, in some degree, thinking with the thoughts of the men who themselves built the Pyramids. Though, of course, there is no more reason for doubting that every Pyramid in Egypt was intended for a tomb and sepulchral monument, just for that and for nothing else, than there is for doubting that the Coliseum was built for the spectacles of the amphitheatre, and London Bridge for enabling people to cross the Thames.

Sir John Mandeville, the greatest English traveller of the Middle Ages, and who, during his thirty-three years of wandering in the East, had served in the armies both of the Sultan of Egypt and of the Emperor of China, writing between 1360-70, of what he had seen about twenty-five years previously, tells us the Pyramids were the granaries Joseph built for the storage of the corn of the years of plenty. This is instructive: it shows how readily in ages of ignorance—the same cause still has, where it remains, the same effect—men connect old traditions, particularly if there be anything of religion about them, with existing objects: being prompted to do this by a craving to give distinctness, and a local habitation, to such traditions.

He anticipates and bars the objection that neither he, nor anyone else, had inspected the interior of the Pyramids, for the purpose of ascertaining whether they were adapted for granaries, by telling us that they were full of serpents. This is set down apparently without any other design than that of recording a curious fact, which it would be as well to mention. And, doubtless, as far as the knight knew himself, he had no other object. But in matters of this kind, experience teaches us that such people do not know themselves.

Here, then, we have an instance of the way in which extremes meet. The old knight accepts his theory without one jot or tittle of evidence in its favour, and directly in the teeth of all that had ever been recorded of the Pyramids. It is a theory which allows at most seven years for their construction; and which supposes them to have been designed for a purpose which is flatly contradicted by their form, and by all that is seen of their exterior, and known of their interior; and, too, by the history itself. One grain of science of any kind in the old knight would have lost us the lesson to be drawn from his theory.

What he did was to yield to what was to him a temptation. And this, and I say it with all due deference, is precisely what the Astronomer Royal for Scotland appears to have done. He, too, has yielded to a temptation. The old knight, five centuries and an half back, was tempted to find in these mighty monuments the Biblical narrative; and he found it. The modern Astronomer is tempted to find in them most unexpected and surprising indications, facts, and conclusions of profoundest science; and he finds them. Each was tempted after his kind.

History, which had only an embryonic and potential existence in the time of the old knight, and which even now is only beginning to assume its proper form and lineaments, and to become a living thing with power to teach, to guide, and to save from error—formerly what was taken for history often only misled—would readily have enabled each of them to have escaped the temptation that was besetting him.

It is worth noticing, by the way, that Mandeville was one of the last who saw the original inscriptions on the Great Pyramid. The construction of Sultan Hassan’s Mosk, the materials for which were supplied by the outer flakes of this Pyramid, was completed about the middle of the fourteenth century. Mandeville was in Egypt immediately before its commencement, and mentions the inscriptions. Notices of them are also to be found in several Arabian and other writers of earlier date. These were what Herodotus saw, and refers to. Some others, both in Greek and Latin, had been added during the period of Ptolemaic and Cæsarian domination. When the Father of History saw, and had them interpreted to him, they were more than 2,000 years old. The knight of St. Albans, 1,700 years later, looked upon them in blank ignorance. Here we have brought together, as it were, in a single canvas, the primæval Egyptian, the inquisitive Greek, and the adventurous Englishman. What would not one now give to behold such inscriptions, on such a building, and with such a history? They had stood for nearly 4,000 years; and were capable, probably, of standing 4,000 years more: at all events, at this day, we might, certainly, be reading what Cheops had inscribed, and Herodotus and Mandeville had seen, if (we need not say anything about Sultan Hassan) Mohamed had been less of an ignorant barbarian. What destroyed these inscriptions, just as it had overthrown a civilization it was incapable of reconstructing, was the grand and luminous formula that ‘God is God, and Mohamed his Prophet.’ This, which the true believer takes for a summary of all knowledge, is, in fact, nothing but the profession and apotheosis of all ignorance. It does excellently well for Mecca, and still better for Timbuctoo. But, however, as it is the summary of all knowledge, those who utter it have attained (how easy then is the achievement) the highest point man can reach. They can have on intellectual sympathy, or moral connexion with the ages that preceded its announcement. So also the ages that are to come (why there should be such ages does not appear) can never be, in anything, one step in advance of them. God can never be anything but God, and he never can have any prophet but Mohamed: that is to say, men must never conceive the idea of God otherwise than as Mohamed conceived it. This was what destroyed the inscriptions Cheops had placed on the Great Pyramid, and turned it into a quarry for Mosks and palaces at Cairo.

Religion, however, sooner or later, has its revenge on the theology which endeavours to confine it within narrow and inexpansive limits of this kind. The day comes when ‘the engineer is hoist with his own petard,’ that is, when the theology is strangled with its own formularies. History, too, which theologies generally ignore, has its revenge in pointing, as a warning, to the indications, scattered throughout all lands, of their former existence, and of the causes of their decay and extinction. Religion is a living thing that, from time to time, advances into a higher form. Theologies are often only fossils of forms of religion that have passed away.

But to return to our question: why was this particular form given to these tombs and sepulchral monuments? Of course, it was because this was the form which presented itself to the minds of the men of those times as the natural and proper form. But why did a thought, which does not appear obvious and appropriate to us, appear to them natural and proper? It was because in the ages that had preceded the times of the Pyramid builders, and which had left some of the ideas that had belonged to them still impressed on men’s minds, tools for quarrying and squaring stones had been scarce; and it had resulted from this scarcity of tools (sometimes it was an entire absence of them) and from the corresponding embryonic condition of the primitive ideas of art, that the tombs and sepulchral monuments of those ages had consisted merely of a shallow grave covered over with a pile of inartificially heaped-up stones, or earth. That was all that the natural desire in the survivors to perpetuate the memory of the dead had found possible. Such was, with the Aryan race, the primæval idea of a tomb and sepulchral monument, throughout the whole Aryan world. Cheops and Chephren, and their predecessors for many generations on the throne of Egypt, had acquired tools, and an unlimited supply of labour; but they had not acquired new ideas about tombs and sepulchral monuments. So when, with the vigour of thought, and boldness of conception, that belonged to a young world, conscious of its strength, they resolved to construct such tombs and sepulchral monuments as should endure while the world endured, no other form occurred to them, excepting that of the simple antique Aryan cairn. They wanted a tomb, and a sepulchral monument, and nothing but a cairn could be that. And so they built the cairns of Gizeh.

Solomon’s Temple indicated that it had been preceded by a time during which the House of God had been a tent; the marble Parthenon that it had been preceded by a time during which the ancestors of its architects had built with wood.

Suppose that it were discovered that in the language of old Egypt the word for a sepulchral monument meant literally a heap of stones, should we not be justified by the known history of the power words have over thought, in feeling certain that in those early times there could not have been a man in Egypt capable of forming any other conception of a sepulchral monument? We have some little ground for presuming that something of the kind was at work in the minds of the builders of the Pyramids. The force, that is to say, of words, as well as the force of tradition, may have constrained them to adopt the pyramidal form. At all events, we know that the word pyramid may mean the mountain, perhaps the mound, perhaps really the cairn, the heap of stones.

CHAPTER VIII. THE GREAT PYRAMID LOOKS DOWN ON THE CATARACT OF PHILÆ.

There is some interest in the comparison contained in the following figures. The Great Pyramid was originally 480 feet high. In consequence of the sacrilegious removal of its outer courses by the Caliphs to provide materials for the construction of the Mosk of Hassan, and other buildings at Cairo, its height has been reduced twenty feet, that is to 460 feet. It stands at the northern extremity of the valley of Egypt. The First Cataract is at the other, or southern extremity. These two extreme points of the valley are separated by a distance, following the windings of the river, of 580 miles. Throughout this distance the river falls on an average five inches a mile. This gives an uniformly rapid stream. To ascend this distance in a steamboat, such as are used on the Nile, requires seven days of continuous work; no time having been allowed for stoppages, except of course during the night. I need hardly say that the voyage is never accomplished in so short a time. But supposing a week has been spent in the ascent of the river, when, at the end of it, you land at the Cataract, you are at very little more than half the height you had reached when you were standing, at the beginning of the week, on the top of the Pyramid. So it would be supposing the Pyramid stood on the level of the river-bank, instead of standing, as it does, on a spur of the limestone ridge that overlooks the valley. To think, when you are entering Nubia, that a building in the neighbourhood of Cairo, so many hundred miles away, is still towering nearly 240 feet above your head, and that it has been there from an antiquity so remote that, in comparison with it, the most ancient monuments of Europe are affairs of yesterday, an antiquity that is separated from our own day by more than 5,000 years, makes one feel that those old Egyptians understood very well what they were about, when they undertook to set for themselves a mark upon the world, which should stand as long as the world endured. Judging from what we still see of the casing at the top of the Second Pyramid, we feel certain that, if the destroying hand of man had not stripped off its polished outer casing from the Great Pyramid, the modern traveller would behold it precisely as it was seen fifty centuries ago, when the architect reported to Cheops the completion of the work.

I have been speaking of the relation, in respect of height, of the Great Pyramid to the Cataract of Philæ only; it may, however, be noticed, for the sake of enabling the fireside traveller to picture more readily to his mind the peculiarity of the hypsometrical features of this unique country, that this Pyramid looks down, and always from a relatively greater height, on every part of the cultivated soil of the whole land of Egypt.

CHAPTER IX. THE WOODEN STATUE IN THE BOULAK MUSEUM.

In the museum of Egyptian antiquities at Boulak, the harbour of Cairo, is a wooden statue of an old Egyptian. It was found in a tomb at Sakkara, and belongs to one of the early dynasties of the old primæval monarchy. It is absolutely untarnished by the thousands of years it had been reposing in that tomb. There is no stain of time upon it. To say that it is worth its weight in gold is saying nothing: for its value is not commensurable with gold. It is history itself to those who care to interpret such history. The face is neither of the oval, nor of the round type, but as it were, of an intermediate form; the features and their expression are just such as might be seen in Pall Mall, or in a modern drawing-room, with the difference that there is over them the composed cast of thought of the wisdom of old Egypt. As you look at the statue intently—you cannot do otherwise—the soul returns to it. The man is reflected from the wood as he might have been from a mirror.

He is not a genius. His mind is not full of that light which gives insight. He cannot communicate to others unusual powers of seeing and feeling. He cannot send an electric shock through the minds and hearts of a generation. He is no prophet whose lips have been touched with fire, no poet whose words are creations, no master of philosophical construction, no natural leader of men.

And this piece of wood tells you distinctly not only what manner of man he was not, but also exactly what manner of man he was. How this Egyptian of very early days thought, and felt, and lived, are all there. He was accustomed to command. He was a man of great culture. His culture had refined him. He was conscious of, and valued his refinement. He was benevolent on conviction and principle. It would have been unrefined to have been otherwise. He was somewhat scornful. He was very accurate in his knowledge, his ideas, and statements. Very precise in his way of thinking, and in all that he did. He shrunk from doing a wrong, or from using an ill-placed word, as he would have from a soiled hand. He was as clean and neat in his thoughts as in his habits. He was as obstinate as all the mules in Spain. Had there been any other party in those days, he would have belonged to the party of order; and, if things had gone so far, he would not have shrunk from standing by his principles; but he would not unnecessarily have paraded them. If he had been called upon to die for his principles, he would have died with dignity, and with no sign of the thoughts within. In his philosophy nothing so became firmness of mind as composure of manner.

His servants respected him. They had never known him do a wrong thing; and they had known him do considerate things. But they did not like him. They could not tell why, but it was because they could not understand him. He was an aristocrat. He cultivated and valued the advantages his position had given him; and was dissatisfied with those whom circumstances had forbidden should ever be like himself. He saw that this feeling was inconsequential, but he saw no escape from it, and this vexed his preciseness and accuracy; and he combated the disturbing thought with greater benevolence and greater accuracy, and became more precise where preciseness was possible. He was fond of art, of his books, and of his garden. He was not unsocial, still, in a sense, nature attracted him more than man; and he preferred the wisdom of the ancients to that of the moderns.

Such was this Egyptian of between five and six thousand years ago. He was the creation of a high civilization. He could have been understood only by men as civilized as himself. That he was understood is plain, from this piece of wood having been endowed with such a soul.

In the Boulak Museum is also a statue in diorite, one of the hardest kinds of stone, carefully executed and beautifully polished, of Chephren, the builder of the second Pyramid, with his name inscribed upon it. The features are uninjured, and are seen by us at this day just as they were seen by Chephren and his Court 5,000 years ago. It was discovered by M. Mariette at the bottom of the well, which supplied the water used for sacred purposes in the sepulchral temple attached to Chephren’s Pyramid. This statue must have been, originally, erected in the temple; and we can imagine that it was thrown into the well by the barbarous Hyksos, or iconoclastic Persians, where it lay undisturbed till brought again to light by M. Mariette. Probably the well had been filled up with the rubbish of demolitions contemporary with the overthrow of the statue, and, having been thus forthwith obliterated, had been lost to sight and memory to our day.

CHAPTER X. DATE OF BUILDING WITH STONE.

Manetho tells us that in the reign of Sesortosis, a king of the third dynasty, the method of building with hewn stone was introduced. He reigned about 3,600 B.C. It will be observed that this date is about thirteen centuries earlier than that assigned to the flood on Archbishop Ushers authority, and which is placed on the margin of our Bibles; and only between three and four centuries subsequent to the date assigned, on the same authority, to the creation of the world. To examine, however, this date of Manetho’s for the hewing and dressing of building stone, is now our immediate object. A little investigation of the subject will, I am disposed to think, show that it is inadmissible, and that it must be thrown back to a very much more remote antiquity.

Manetho made this statement in the time of the Ptolemies. We are therefore, under the circumstances, justified in supposing that the author of the date, whether Manetho himself, or some earlier chronographer to whom he was indebted for it, meant by it little more than an acknowledgment, that he was not acquainted with any stone buildings earlier than the reign of Sesortosis. A question of this kind was then very much what it is now, one of antiquarian research; it being necessary then, as now, to collect the evidence for its decision from the monuments. But if our acquaintance with the monuments of the primæval period is as extensive and profound as Manetho’s was, or even more so; and if in addition, we have advanced far beyond what was possible in his day in the direction of universal history, we may be able to show that there is some error in his date; or at all events may be able to explain it in such a way, that it may be brought into closer conformity with what is now known, than it would seem to admit of, if taken literally.

It is, then, evident, that he was unacquainted with any buildings of hewn stone earlier than the time of Sesortosis. No surprise need be felt at this. Sesortosis reigned more than 3,000 years before the time of Manetho. Let us recall what is the effect of 3,000 years upon ordinary stone buildings in a country that has, during that period, been growing and prospering.

Our Saxon forefathers used stone largely in building. One thousand years only have passed: and now there is not a building in the country we can point to, and say with certainty, that it was raised by their hands. There are a few doubtful exceptions in the form of church towers. But these, if authentic, are exceptions of the kind which prove the rule: for when everything else disappeared, they could have been preserved only by a combination of chances so rare that it did not occur in one out of ten thousand cases. It was much the same after five hundred years had passed.

The Roman world was covered, in the time of Constantine, with magnificent cities and villas. But how many of the houses that were then inhabited are now standing?

The reasons of this are evident. First, there is the ever-acting disintegration of natural causes. Whatever man erects upon the surface of the earth, nature is ever afterwards busy in reducing to the common level. Then comes fire, the best of servants, but the worst of masters, which no dwelling-house can be expected to escape for a thousand years. Earthquakes, too, and war have, in any long series of years, to be credited with much destructive work. These are all in the end complete undoers of man’s handiwork. But I am disposed to assign the greatest amount of obliteration to the ever-changing fashions and wants of man himself. The houses of one generation are not suited to the tastes and requirements of the generations that succeed. They must therefore be pulled down to make way for what men wish to have. Perhaps, they become quarries to supply the materials needed for the new buildings. Those who act in this way are only doing what their predecessors did, and what their successors will do. Palaces, and the chief public buildings, in a city are, from a variety of causes, transferred to new sites; and the cities, of which they must be the centres, must correlate themselves to the sites of the new buildings. Or the capital, or city, itself, may, from, again, a variety of causes, be transferred to an entirely new site. In either case more or less of the old city is no longer inhabited. Sometimes the old materials are wanted, sometimes the ground upon which the deserted buildings are standing is needed for cultivation.

If we sum up the effects of these causes, we cannot expect that the contemporaries of the Ptolemies should have found in Egypt any buildings dating from the first period of the Old Monarchy, that is nearly four thousand years old. They had before them the Pyramids, which were then certainly more than three thousand years old, and which, it is evident, had defied all the destructive causes we have enumerated, simply on account of their exceptional form and mass, and because the enormous stones of which they were constructed had been so nicely fitted together as to exclude moisture and air; and so, because they found no earlier buildings, and because the stones of these had been so carefully and truly wrought, they assigned, as the commencement of the practice of building with wrought-stone, the reign of Sesortosis, that is, they carried it back two hundred years beyond the date of the commencement of the Great Pyramid.

This is altogether inadmissible. Men could not pass in two hundred years from the first essays in cutting stone to the grandest stone structure, and, in nicety of workmanship, one of the most perfect instances of stone joinery that has ever been erected. There were great builders long anterior to this date of two hundred years before the commencement of the Great Pyramid. Some of the Pyramids themselves, and many of the tombs, are older than the Pyramids of Gizeh, and even than the time of Sesortosis. A Pyramid had been built in the Faioum as far back as the first dynasty of all, that of Menes himself. Their system of religion, and their system of writing, had both arrived at their perfected condition in the time of Menes; and each of these two facts imply considerable advance in the art of building, of course building with stone, of which there were such ample materials everywhere throughout the valley of Egypt. They could not have had a perfected religion, such as was theirs, without temples. Nor is it possible that they could have advanced to the art of writing without having advanced previously as far as the art of cutting and dressing stone. And this is more obvious when we consider that the very peculiarity of Egyptian writing grew partly out of the idea that its characters were to be sculptured and incised on stone: this is what is implied in its very name of hieroglyphics.

I do not imagine that the date we are considering was a mere fiction. To invent history was not an Egyptian custom. What might have been rightfully assigned to the time of Sesortosis might not have been rightly understood, and so came to be wrongly described. They had hewn and built with stone centuries before his time. But there was an architectural improvement which must have commenced somewhere about his reign, which we see perfected in the Pyramids, and which the Egyptians ever afterwards retained, and that was the practice of building with enormous blocks of stone, cut and fitted together with the utmost care and precision. We can accept Manetho’s statement, when interpreted to mean this.

The Egyptians had already had a long national existence. They were a very observant and thoughtful people. Of all people of whom we know anything, they had the strongest craving to leave behind them grand, and, if possible, everlasting historical monuments. But they observed that all buildings constructed with small stones, sooner or later, but at all events, in a few centuries, passed away without leaving a record. They fell to the ground, or they were taken down to supply materials for new buildings, or the stone they were built of was burnt for lime. The consumption of lime has always been great in Egypt; and although the limestone mountains are not far from the river, and throughout the greater part of the country seldom more than two or three miles from it, old buildings have always been made to supply much material for this purpose. Mehemet Ali, notwithstanding that the limestone ridges of Thebes were close by, threw down one of the magnificent propylæa of Karnak to get lime for some paltry nitre-works he was setting up in the neighbourhood. To secure, then, as far as possible, their great monuments and tombs against these causes of decay and overthrow, they, at about the time of the date we are discussing, changed their method of building, and began to use such large stones, that it would generally be less troublesome and costly to get new stone at the quarries for building and for lime, than to overthrow an enormous structure, which could not be done without some machinery, and much tackle and labour. But their ideas, and the knowledge and the skill shown in these great buildings agree with other considerations in obliging us to carry back the art of building with hewn stone to a very remote epoch, far beyond any contemporary monuments, and far beyond Menes, whose name is the first to appear in the annals of Egypt, and who must have reigned not far from six thousand years ago. At this period, we cannot now entertain any doubts on the subject, civilization in Egypt was in a very advanced state; not very different, indeed, from what we find it at the date of the oldest of the still existing monuments. Upon the earliest of these we see the public and private life of the Egyptians sculptured and painted by their own hands. This, of course, must have required long antecedent periods of slow advance, for in this matter it is the first, and not the later, steps which require most time.

No inference, in respect of the point before us, can be drawn from the preservation of buildings standing on such sites as those of Pæstum and Palmyra. As soon as those cities began to decay, all temptation to use the stones of old structures in the erection of new ones, or to burn them for lime, completely ceased. They became useless and valueless, and this it was that saved them. During the four thousand years that had elapsed between Menes and Manetho, Egypt had been a populous country, generally in a state of prosperity, and, during the whole of the time, building, which often implies pulling down, had been actively going on: every stone, therefore, in every old disused building of the early dynasties was likely, in one way or another, to have been reused. No one can suppose that in such a country as ancient Egypt the pressure of this temptation would be long resisted.

The object of these pages is to present to the reader the thoughts on Egypt, as it was and as it is, which arose in the author’s mind during a tour he made last winter through the country. Among these thoughts, as I intimated at the beginning of this chapter, a prominent place is occupied by chronological questions, for the dates of early Egyptian history do not accord with those of the popularly-received system. It therefore becomes necessary to revert to the grounds of that system, as well as to examine and ascertain the particulars of the chronology of Egypt.

In this indispensable department of primæval history it is possible that we may have been misled by a very natural misapprehension as to the character of the earlier portions of the Hebrew Scriptures. We read them as if they were addressed to ourselves, and as if their object was historical. These are, both of them, erroneous and misleading ideas. It is evident, on the face of the documents, that their writers had in view no readers excepting those for whose immediate behoof they were composed, and no objects excepting religion and patriotism. Their aim was to form the Israelites into a people by the instrumentality of a Code, sanctioned and enforced by religion. The writings, therefore, necessarily lay a foundation for the religion, give an exposition of it, and set forth the motives for its observance. The Code is the point of view from which the religion, and the formation of the people that from which the Code, is to be regarded. History is no more their object than science. They do, of course, contain a part, and that a most important part, of the history of mankind; for, in carrying out their aim, they give much of the history of a people that was destined to have a great, and permanent, and ever-growing effect on the world. But it is important to observe that even this they contain only incidentally. To us both their religious aims, and their incidental history, give them a value which cannot be over-estimated. We shall, however, only fall into mistakes if we lose sight of their primary, limited, Hebrew, religious purpose, and regard them as universal history.

This is a question of broad as well as of minute criticism—of the interpretation of the whole as well as of particulars. Are these Scriptures to be regarded as containing the religion and the history, limited to the point of view of the religion, of one of the smallest of all people, or as containing the whole primæval history of man, in such a sense that nothing but what appears to be in harmony with what has come to be their popular interpretation, can be taken into consideration? It was for many ages an unavoidable mistake to entertain respecting them the latter assumption. (That some of the elements of Hebrew religious thought were subsequently taken up into the religious thought of a very considerable portion of mankind does not affect the question immediately before us.) It maybe, precisely, the attempt to maintain this misconception of their nature which is now causing so much confusion of thought and ill-feeling. If regarded in their true light, no documents of the old world are more precious to us historically (I am not speaking of them in any other sense now); for, to refer to that which is the chief concern of man, if the great lesson of history is to teach us that it has itself no meaning, purpose, or value, excepting so far as it is the story of the intellectual and moral growth of the race, and that this double growth is the paramount object of national and of individual life, then how precious and how luminous a portion of history do these documents become!

But this value is very much lessened, and this light obscured, by the determination to find in them, not a part, but the whole of primæval history. The civilization of Egypt, which reaches back into so remote a past that the Pyramids were monuments of hoar antiquity when Abraham saw them, and the civilization—perhaps contemporary with the date of the Pyramids—which existed on the banks of the Euphrates, the Ganges, and the Yankse Kiang, must be made harmoniously to find a place by the side of what is recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures. So must the mythology, and the moral and intellectual aptitudes of the Aryan race of man. So must also the knowledge to which we have attained of the history of our globe itself, and of the succession of life upon it. This process has already been passed through with respect to the discoveries of astronomy. Against them there was a long and fierce struggle. At last everybody admitted both that what astronomers taught might be believed, and that the Hebrew Scriptures did not teach astronomy. There is no reason for confining to astronomy the rule that was established in its favour. It must be extended so as to include our knowledge of the greatness and the remoteness of Egyptian civilization, and every other kind of knowledge. We need not, and we must not, so interpret the Hebrew Scriptures as to reject on their authority, or even to feel repugnance to accept, any clearly-established facts. To make this use of them is to wrest them to a purpose for which it is clear they were never intended.

Their historical value to ourselves is only an incident and accident of their designed purpose: that was to teach to the Israelites their code, and to give them motives for observing it (which has come to be to us a part of history), and not to teach history to us. The idea of history, taking the word in the meaning it has for us, did not exist then. It could not, indeed, have existed then, for everything has its own place and time, and the time for history had not come then. First, the seed is deposited in the ground, then comes the tender shoot, next the stem and blades, after that the plant flowers; last of all comes the full corn in the ripe ear. Those early days were the time when the materials were in many places being collected, out of which we have to construct human history. It is fortunate for us that in those first times men did not forestall the idea of history: that would have prevented their attending singly to what they were themselves doing, and to the thoughts that were at work in their own minds.

CHAPTER XI. GOING UP TO THE TOP OF THE GREAT PYRAMID.

Of course you listen to anything people have to say on a subject about which you are at the moment interested. Here are some specimens of what I heard about the Pyramids, when I was on the point of visiting them. A gentleman, who had that day returned from making the ascent, was, as he sat at the table d’hôte, overflowing with his impressions. His complexion and voice were somewhat womanly. As might have been expected, he strongly advised that everyone should attempt what he had himself just accomplished. There was, however, some novelty in the advantage, he thought, would result from the ascent, as well as in the logical process by which it was to be attained. ‘Go up,’ his words were, ‘go up by all means. The religious effects are very good. Elevated to so enormous a height above the earth, on so vast and imperishable a structure, you feel deeply and profitably the littleness, the feebleness of man.’

I asked the owner of a New York dry-goods store, who was rushing over the world for the purpose of adding to the stock of his ideas—a very creditable effort in a man of his antecedents and occupation, and who was now half-gray—what he thought of the Pyramids? ‘Well,’ was his reply, ‘they are a matter biggish. But I don’t think them much, for we can have just as good Pyramids in Central Park, New York, if we choose to spend the money to have them. A Pyramid is nothing but dollars. How many dollars do you say one would cost? Well, we have got all these, and many more, to spare. We have got the Pyramids in our pockets, and can set them up any day we please.’

These are specimens (and additional instances might be given) of the ideas of people who are eminently estimable, and perfectly contented with themselves and with the world. Indeed, in holding and expressing them, they must think that their eyes are not quite as other men’s; that they can penetrate a little further beyond the surface of things. Yet one meets with many a man quite as estimable, though perhaps not quite so contented with himself and with the world, who would be disposed to ask what good would his life do him, if told that he must swop ideas with them. The prospect would be as little attractive to him as that of the exchange of his religion for the creed of an ancient Briton, or Cherokee Indian. But variety is pleasant; and the world is a big place with plenty of room for honest folk of all sorts.

An acquaintance (I trust he will allow me to quote him here), in whose mind at the moment artistic must have preponderated over historical associations, standing unawed, and even unmoved, in front of the Great Pyramid, relieved his mind to me, by giving utterance to the following piece of honest profanity:—

‘I can’t bring myself to take the slightest interest in these Pyramids. They don’t possess one principle, one element, one feature of architecture. They are nothing at all but heaps of stones.’

On my first visit to the Pyramids of Gizeh it was too windy for anyone but an Arab to think of making the ascent. On my second visit the day was all one could wish, and so four of our party went up to the top of the Great Pyramid. It was my fifty-fourth birthday. This seemed to myself rather a reason for not making the effort. My climbing-days were done. But my young friend, late from Harrow, and great in athletics, thought differently. ‘You mustn’t give in yet,’ he urged. ‘You must go up. It is what everyone ought to do. What is the use of having come all this way if you don’t go up? You will be sorry afterwards if you don’t. One would come a long way to have a chance of doing it.’ As this was very much like what one used to think oneself some thirty, or so, years since, the exhortation seemed reasonable and good. We ought to endeavour to keep ourselves young in body as well as in mind. We ought not to give in by anticipation. It will be time enough when we can’t help ourselves. And so I went to the top.

By the way a party for travel in Egypt, if pleasure, not work, is the first object, may be a large one, and need not be composed entirely of historians and philosophers. All liberal pursuits and reasonable ways of looking at things may be represented advantageously. A naturalist and a geologist are almost indispensable. A member of the Ethnological Society might, at times, turn up worth his salt. A Liverpool, or Manchester, man whose ideas are of commerce, manufactures, and machinery; of the value of things, and how to do things, would often serviceably recall speculation to the standard of present utility. But by all means have a young fellow late from Harrow, and still great in athletics. He is always to the front, like a cork to the surface of the water. He is never afraid of work, or of roughing it. He is always good-tempered and merry. Always glad to hear what has anything in it; is impatient of twaddle, and can’t stand assumption. Some day he will himself be an Egyptologer, or geologist, or something of the kind. At present he is tolerant, and allows these things to those who like them. What he likes is a rousing gallop on the Sheik’s horse, a girl that has no nonsense in her, a champagne luncheon, a good cigar. Some things, and some chaps he thinks slow, but the general rule is ‘all right.’ A Nile party is the better for this ingredient. We mediævalists must not be over-reasonable. He will help us a little to keep this tendency in check. Besides, we were once young ourselves, while our friend was never, though we all hope he may live to be, an old fogie.

Four of us went to the top together. But place aux dames, and no young lady, from the days of Cheops, better deserved the first place than she who, on an early day in January, 1871, ascended his Pyramid with eye as bright, and foot as sure, as a gazelle’s. If he still haunts the mighty monument in which he was laid, after having bent his people to its erection for fifty years, he must have thought, as the Lily of the North stood on its summit, that he was well repaid.

My young friend, late from Harrow, and great in athletics, was, of course, one of the four.

And so was an older friend of mine, with whom and another lad, in the year 1836, each of the three being then seventeen years old, I had gone, I believe, the first open-boat cruise on our home rivers. We started from Bedford and went to York and Hull, and back again, 700 miles in an open boat, pulling it all the way ourselves, and lying down in it at night to sleep, accoutred as we were in Jersey frock and canvas. During the whole expedition we cooked our meals ourselves. From that boat we had looked forward into the unknown world before us: I can still recall the anticipations, visions, and resolves of that time. Now, from the top of the Pyramid of Cheops, we looked back on our course, so far, through the world. Well, just like other people, we had had each of us to make some discoveries for himself, and to pay for his experience. But the fight had not been always against either of us. On the whole we had not found it a bad world. We were glad, after thirty years of the chanceful life-battle, to meet again, on the summit of the Great Pyramid, if not quite unscathed, yet not crippled. I suppose we each thought that the time to come could not be as pleasant as the interval had been that separated our two excursions.

The Great Pyramid is built of extremely hard and compact nummulitic limestone. The third was cased, at all events, to half its height, perhaps completely, with enormous blocks of granite. A few are still in their places, but most of them have been thrown to the ground. A small portion of the external casing at the top of the Second Pyramid is still uninjured. It is of so pale and fine a limestone that it looks as if it were of polished white marble.

I found the best way of getting an impressive idea of the enormous magnitude of these Pyramids was to place myself in the centre of one side, and to look up. The eye then travels over all the courses of stone from the very bottom to the apex, which appears to pierce and penetrate the blue arch above. This way of looking at the Great Pyramid—perhaps it is a way which exaggerates to the eye its magnitude unfairly—makes it look Alpine in height, while it produces the strange effect just noticed.

While making the ascent, the Hakem of the Arab tribe, which supplies guides and assistance to travellers, took the opportunity of a pause for breath to press upon me the purchase of some old coins. I told him I would look at them when we had done with the Pyramid. ‘I am satisfied:’ he replied; ‘an Englishman’s word is as good as his money.’

Many people shrink from ascending the Pyramid from a fear of becoming dizzy and confused on seeing, as they fancy they must, that they are up so high without anything to hold on by. This sight need never be seen. You are going up against the face of the mountain; attend then to what you are doing. Look where you are putting your feet, which you must do, each step being three feet high, more or less and you will never see once, from the bottom to the top, how high you are above the earth, or that you have no supports, except when you turn round on sitting down to get breath, and when you reach the summit. The same is true to a great extent even of the descent, although your back is then turned to the mountain. Attend to what you are about—that is, to the place where you are going to set your foot—and there will be nothing at all to make you dizzy.

One of the exhibitions of the place is that of an Arab climbing from the bottom to the top and coming down again, in what appears to the spectators, an incredibly short space of time. The charge for the performance is a few francs. As they are slim, long-legged, active fellows, they are well-adapted for this kind of thing. One who was proud of what he could do in this way was challenged by my young friend to a foot-race for half-a-crown. There was not an Arab present but thought it would be a hollow thing. It was not a hollow thing at all. But their man it was who came in second, Harrow winning by a few yards.

CHAPTER XII. LUNCHEON AT THE PYRAMIDS—KÊF.

On our first visit to the Pyramids we had our luncheon in the large granite tomb a little below, and to the south-east of the Sphinx. One feels that there is an incongruity, a kind almost of profanation, in using a tomb, particularly such a tomb, for such a purpose. Its massiveness, at all events, makes you conscious of a kind of degeneracy in the present day. A sense of unworthiness and littleness comes over you. What business have we, who send our dead to heaven, and have done with them, to disturb the repose of those on whose sepulchres a fortune was spent, if not by their relatives, at all events by themselves? But on this occasion there was little choice. Outside the sun was scorching, and the wind was high, and the only alternative was the hotel. But that was impossible: to be shut up in a hideous, plastered, naked room of yesterday, within a few yards of the Great Pyramid. One would rather go without one’s luncheon for six months together than have to bear the stings of conscience for having so outraged the memory of Cheops and Chephren. And so we took our luncheon that day in the tomb of one of the great officers of the court of those old times.

It was formed entirely of enormous blocks and monolithic piers of polished granite. I do not know of how many chambers it consisted, for being considerably below the level of the surrounding sand-drift, and the roof having been entirely removed, a few hours’ wind must always completely fill and obliterate it. The Arabs then have to clear it out again. When we were there four chambers were open. These are all long narrow apartments. The one by which we entered runs from west to east. At right angles to this are two other apartments, their axes being from north to south. The fourth we saw was at right angles to the north end of these two parallel chambers. It was in the southern extremity of the westernmost of the two parallel chambers that our party took their places. The comestibles were laid on a cloth spread on the sand, with which the floor, to the depth of some inches, was covered; the party reclined on the sand around, or sat on blocks of granite arranged for seats. The hungry Arabs perched themselves on the brink of the tomb, waiting for the fragments of the feast, like vultures. The pert popping of the champagne corks again disturbed ones sense of the fitness of things.

How was it possible to be there, and not feel the genius loci? The whole of this edge of the desert, from Gizeh to the Faioum, is one vast Necropolis. The old primæval monarchy lies buried here; at Gizeh, Sakkara, Dashour, Abusseir, and throughout all the spaces between and beyond, to the Faioum. No other empire has been so buried.

In this wide field of the dead how much of early thought and feeling, and life is storied. How much contemporary history in wood and stone, in earthenware, and glass, and paint. Contemporary history—not history composed, heaven save the mark! centuries after the events, often by authors (sometimes truly the authors of all they tell) who did not understand their own time, often merely for bread and cheese;—not composed twentieth-hand from writings which, even at their original source and fountain-head, were the work of men who were not agents in what they endeavoured to record, and who, not knowing truly the events, their causes, or their consequences, were but ill qualified to write the record;—not composed when the feelings and ways of thinking of the time were no longer living things, but had died out, and other thoughts and feelings come in their place, and when what the writer had to construct had become obscure by party prejudice in politics and religion, and by social misunderstandings. Nothing of this kind is here. What is here is contemporary history, presented in such a form that it is the actual pressure and embodiment of the heart and mind of each individual. Here are the occupations he delighted in, the sentiments that stirred him, the business that was the business of his life, the clothes he wore, the furniture he used, the forms religious thought had assumed in his mind, the forms social arrangements had assumed around him. No people have ever so written their history. Here is a biography of each man as he knew himself. Here every man is a Boswell to himself. It is a nation’s life individually photographed in granite.

We sat after luncheon taking our kêf, apparently absorbed in the contemplation of the little fantastic wreaths of cloud formed by our cigars. But the few remarks that were made showed that the thoughts of most of us were occupied in resuscitating the past, and repeopling the sacred terrain around with the grand impressive ceremonies and funeral processions of five thousand years back. What a scene must this have been then. The mountains—for that is the meaning of the Pyramids—not rugged and dilapidated as now, but cased with polished stone, each with its temple in front of it. The many smaller Pyramids that have now disappeared, or are only seen as mounds of rubbish, then acting as foils to their giant brethren. Great Pyramids reaching all along the foot of the hills as far as the eye could see towards the south: some of these still figure in the landscape. The Sphinx was standing clear of sand with a temple between his paws. Everything was orderly, bright, and splendid. The dark red granite portals of the thousand houses of those, who slept in the city of the dead, were standing out conspicuous upon the sober limestone area, unchequered by a plant, unstained by a lichen. The black basalt causeways traversed the green plain from the silver river to the Pyramid plateau. The whole scene was alive with those, who were visiting, and honouring, the dead, and preparing their own last, earthly resting-places. Above all was spread out the azure field of the Egyptian sky.

The word kêf is used everywhere throughout the East, from Constantinople to Cairo, to convey an idea, that is not European. It is the idea of sensational comfort combined with mental repose, produced by the narcotic leaf, when used under circumstances, where the comfort and the repose are felt. There is no kêf in its use as you walk or drive, or even talk with the usual effort and purpose. You must be seated, and in a kiosk, or garden, or some pleasant place, where the entourage feeds the fancy through the eye, spontaneously, with delightful, and soothing images. You must not be urging the mind to exert itself. Conscious mental exertion, equally with bodily, is destructive of kêf. The thoughts must be pleasant, and they must come, too, of themselves, from surrounding objects. Bodily sensations must be so lulled, and yet, at the same time, so stimulated, as to be in perfect accord with the stream of thought, that is languidly, and dreamily, floating through the mind.

CHAPTER XIII. ABYDOS.

In descending the river we stopped at Bellianéh to visit Abydos. It was from Abydos, the primæval This, that Menes came, whose name stands first on the list of Egyptian kings. From it also came the dynasty that succeeded that of Menes. The great extent of cultivable land—the valley here opening out to double its usual width—gave space enough for a rich and populous state, the rulers of which appeared to have overpowered their neighbours, and, by consolidating their conquests, to have formed an enduring monarchy. As the great preponderance of population and wealth was thenceforth in the Delta and Lower Egypt, the head of the Delta became the centre of gravity, and so, by natural causes, the centre of affairs, and the site of the capital.

Was This, in Upper Egypt, the first seat of Egyptian power, and if so, how came it to be so? These are questions of much interest, the important bearing of which on early Egyptian history has been indicated already.

The landing-place at Bellianéh is overshadowed by a grove of palms, the crowns of which are tenanted by turtle-doves. Among the palms we saw that the ground was covered with crude bricks, lately moulded, and going through their first stage of desiccation. We were soon surrounded by a crowd of bare-legged idlers from the town, most of whom were boys.

We had the day before despatched a telegram to the Governor of Bellianéh to request him to have donkeys in readiness for our party. The telegram, however, had not arrived; we, therefore, sent into the town to collect the beasts our party would require. Before long they came; but most of them were ill able to carry even their own wasted weight. Few had bridles, or anything that could have been mistaken for a saddle: a piece of ragged cloth or matting, merely intended to hide their distressing sores, was all that was on most of them. The first I mounted sank to the ground under the weight of ten stone ten. At last, the three most impetuous of our party selected the three least emaciated, and started for Abydos. Later in the day our telegram arrived, and the Governor immediately sent down to the landing a dozen fairly-conditioned animals; but it was then too late in the day for the rest of the party to undertake so long a ride.

It was the 3rd of January. The wheat was about two feet high, and the beans were in flower. The word field would mislead. As we rode on, mile after mile, there appeared to be no divisions of the land, except the limits of the different kinds of grain growing upon it. We crossed two or three large canals by earthen bars, which had been thrown across them. The use of these bars is, as soon as the river begins to sink, to retain the water with which the canals are then full. We also passed several villages. At the first of these our dragoman engaged the services of a stout young fellow, who came to accompany us, provided with a heavy staff, about two inches or a little more in diameter, and five feet in length. The villagers about Abydos have a bad character, and are occasionally troublesome, and this young fellow was to be our escort and guide. We did not ride through any of the villages on our way, for the road was always made to skirt the outside of the walls. At the gate of one we passed, we saw a woman and a lad seated on the ground, playing at a game resembling draughts. The board was marked out on the road, which had also supplied the men, in the form of pieces of camel dirt. The sight gave one a little shock. These poor women, however, spend no small portion of their lives in converting the raw material of this natural product into manufactured fuel, and the whole of their lives in the odour of its smoke.

In the open, by the roadside, we saw some rectangular enclosures of about six yards by four. In each of them a family was residing. I supposed they were engaged in watching the crops. As these enclosures consist of nothing but four thin screens, about seven feet high, of wattled reeds, their inmates, if that is an appropriate term, must sleep, wrapped in their burnouses, beneath the stars. The reed fence can only be intended to keep out the wind, the jackals, and the eyes of curious passers-by; but Arabs do not mind exposure at night as long as their heads are wrapped up. I saw, at Assouan and Miniéh, several sleeping in this way, in the open market-place, on their goods. At Suez, being out at dawn, I saw in the Arab town the men sleeping outside their huts on a morning when the mercury had sunk to freezing point. With us Europeans, the first thought is to keep the feet warm. About this extremity of his personal domain the Arab is heedless. His care, like the nigger’s, is for his head—-just as the Esquimaux dog, when sleeping, covers his nostrils with his bushy tail, or the pig buries his snout in the straw, so does the Arab, when he makes himself up for the night, envelope his whole head in some thick wrapper. Is this a consequence of his practice of never having his head uncovered during the day? I suppose they are none the worse for breathing and rebreathing the same air all night, with the exception of the little that may filter through the wrapper.

The rubbish mounds of Abydos are, by their height, and the extent of ground they cover, infallible witnesses to the importance of the old primæval city. From among these mounds two grand structures of the days of Sethos and Rameses have been disinterred. One is a palace, the joint work of father and son. That the genius of Egypt was, as might have been expected at this culminating era of its glory, advancing, and full of invention, is seen in the ceilings of the halls of this palace: they are vaulted. These vaulted roofs, however, are not arches of construction, but formed by placing the enormous slabs of sandstone, of which the roof is made, not with their broad, but with their narrow, faces on the plane of the ceiling. This gave a roof of vast thickness, from which the vault of the roof was excavated. The colouring of these roofs, as of all the decorations of these two grand buildings at Abydos, is remarkably good and well preserved.

The other building, which was dedicated to Osiris, who was supposed to have been buried here, was once his most sacred and frequented temple. It was much enlarged and embellished by the great Rameses. The inner walls of the sanctuary were encrusted with alabaster, which still remains. I saw nowhere else Egyptian work in purer taste, nor sculptures so well preserved, both in form and colour. One might have supposed that some of them had been chiselled and coloured last week. I observed a figure of the great king so absolutely untouched by time, that the colour of every bead in his necklace, or collar, is quite fresh.

It was here that was found the celebrated tablet of Abydos, which Rameses put up in the temple of Osiris, inscribed with the names of all the kings who had preceded him. This and its fellow tablet, placed at Karnak by Tuthmosis III., about two hundred years before the time of Rameses, are invaluable, as they show that the records preserved by the priests in writing, of which we have transcripts in the dynasties of the priest Manetho, and in the Turin papyrus, are in accord with the monuments. The monumental evidence, it may be observed, is of two kinds. Speaking generally, it is absolutely contemporary—the record having been sculptured in the lifetime of the man, the memory of whose actions, possessions, and thoughts it preserved. There are, however, in these two tablets of Karnak and Abydos, most precious exceptions to the contemporaneousness of the monumental history. How strong and clear was the historical sentiment in the mind of these old Egyptians! We not only find each generation endeavouring to perpetuate a knowledge of its own day, but, in the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries before the Christian era, we find Egyptian kings endeavouring to transmit to posterity the names, and the order of their predecessors. This tablet of Abydos is one of the glories of our National Museum.

The cemeteries of Abydos were very extensive. Their extent grew out of the wish, very generally felt among well-to-do and educated Egyptians, to be laid themselves where Osiris, the judge of all, had once been laid.

As I have intimated, the site of This may, perhaps, cast some faint ray of light on the question of how, and where, the first ancestors of the Egyptians had entered Egypt. It throws, however, a flood of light on the question of the antiquity of Egyptian civilization. We have seen that in Egypt, in consequence of the absence, or scantiness of rain, there are no springs, and that another consequence of this want of rain is that the nitre, which the soil collects from the air, is not dissolved and washed away, but accumulates to such a degree as to render the water of the wells, which has percolated from the river through the soil, brackish, and unfit for drinking. Now the distance of This, in a direct line from the river, is seven miles and a half; if, then, we put these points together, we shall see in them another argument for the extreme antiquity of Egyptian civilization, besides those drawn from the use of writing, the mythology, and from the absence of anything like a beginning in the history of the useful arts, and of their social arrangements. The combined force of these arguments amounts to a demonstration that civilization was not in its infancy six thousand years ago, at the era of the Thinite dynasties.

Here is the form of this contributory to the demonstration. An uncivilized people would undoubtedly have placed their town on the banks of the river, close to the water. But a people among whom labour is organized, and who will be willing because they are civilized, to go to a great deal of trouble and expense for an adequate object, instead of giving up much good land for a large city, and on a site, too, where it would be troubled by inundations, would prefer to build it at a distance from the river, where the land was not suitable for cultivation, and where it would be safe from inundations. But in order to do this they must cut a canal seven and a half miles long at the least, and so bring the water of the river to the city. These thoughts the Egyptians had, and this work they accomplished, in the ages which preceded Menes. No savage, or semi-savage people would have entertained this scheme of the canal, or would have carried it out. The site of This is thus alone strong evidence of a very advanced contemporary civilization, no one can tell how many centuries before the time of Menes; but at least for a sufficient tract of time to allow of the growth of a powerful state, capable at last in his time of imposing a dynasty on Egypt. The first cities in Egypt must have been on the banks of the river; or in places where the háger was near the bank. The first comers did not cut canals seven and a half miles long at least; and none but a people already powerful could protect such a canal, upon which their existence depended. The people, then, were already civilized and powerful who placed their city on such a site as that of This.

There were kings in Egypt, we may be sure, before Menes. The Egyptians themselves spoke of his predecessors as ‘the deceased,’ that is, those human rulers whose names had been lost. It was in the time of these prehistoric, we may even say premythical kings, that this This Canal, and indeed, probably, that the great Bahr Jusuf Canal itself, which is throughout Egypt a second Nile, were constructed. There were, therefore, at that day, men who were as great in hydraulic engineering as any who came after them, but who yet lived at so remote a time, that no trace of them could be found even in the far-reaching and tenacious traditions of Egypt. If the Bahr Jusuf, which passed by This, was older than the city, so much the better for our argument.

CHAPTER XIV. THE FAIOUM.

The history of the reclamation of the Arsinoite nome, or department, now the Faioum, would, if it had been preserved, or could be recovered, throw much precious light on the antiquity and power of the civilization of the primæval monarchy. But the simple fact that its details had been lost, even in the remote days of Theban learning and magnificence, when Egypt was at the summit of its greatness and glory, possesses of itself much historical value, for it shows at how much earlier a day the great undertaking had been carried out; and that, as we know, by such a system of hydraulic works, the newly-won district, too, having been adorned with such cities and buildings, as leave no doubt about the high character of its (were it not for the remains of these works and structures) prehistoric civilization.

The Faioum is, geographically, a basin formed by a depression in the Libyan range, about sixty miles to the south of the Pyramids of Gizeh. The basin is about the size of Oxfordshire, or Surrey, that is to say, it contains about 750 square, miles. More than 100 of these may be occupied by the Birket el Keiroon, a natural lake, which forms its northern and western boundary. This large piece of water resembles a rude crescent, with its convex side to the north and north-west, and its concave side to the south and south-east. On the former side the contiguous desert rises into a hilly ridge; this boundary being in fact an offset of the African range. The other side of the lake looks upon the dry and shelving descent of the basin, which, from its southern summit down to the edge of the water, has a fall of about 100 feet, being about fifteen miles across. There are considerable discrepancies as to the precise amount of this fall; some measurements making it more, and some less than the 100 feet here given.

When things were in their natural state, undisturbed by man, the Birket el Keiroon was a lake, as it is now. In those days, as in our own, it was supplied with water, just as the pool within the enclosure of Karnak, and other pools, and all the wells in Egypt, by natural infiltration; for the water of the river percolates readily through the porous strata, and flows into any sufficiently deep depressions, or excavations. The existence of the oases also in the desert must be accounted for in this way.

The Bahr Jusuf Canal had, at some unrecorded date, been brought along the foot of the Libyan range. Starting from Diospolis Parva, by the air-line forty miles below Thebes, it had traversed the whole of the rest of the valley; then, passing through the Delta, it had reached the sea, somewhere in the neighbourhood of modern Alexandria; a distance, again, in the air-line of 400 miles; though, of course, this falls very far short of giving the measure of its ceaseless sinuosities. This Grand Canal of old Egypt now carries off about a twenty-eighth part of the water that passes over the cataract of Philæ. In its course it flows along the depressed range that forms the eastern boundary of the Faioum. In this depressed range there is a ravine through which in early days, at the season of the inundation, some of the overflow of the Bahr Jusuf found its way to the top level of the Faioum. It is not easy now, to decide whether it got through naturally at first, or whether the ravine was canalized to enable it to pass through. At all events it is evident that, if there had originally been a natural passage, it was levelled and enlarged by man availing himself of natural fissures and depressions. But however this might have been, the inundation having found its way on to the upper level of the Faioum, appears to have formed there an immense morass.

The first condition, then, of the district had been a dry desert, precisely resembling any other part of the desert, except that it slanted from what may be spoken of as the rim of its mussel-shell-like depression down to the spring-fed Birket el Keiroon. Its second condition, that now before us, is what was brought about by the water of the inundation, that had in some way or other been let into the district: it formed wherever it was retained, and chiefly on the upper plateau, a vast extent of morasses. We have the evidence of geology for the former—for we see that the original surface of the district consisted of thin layers of limestone, alternating with layers of clay—and of tradition for the latter.

We now come to the third, which is the historical, stage. By a series of enormous dykes, some of them several miles in length, the enclosed space having a breadth also of some miles, the inflowing water was confined to certain portions of the upper plateau; perhaps the whole of the upper plateau was by these means formed into a lake. The water thus retained and secured, was amply sufficient for the perennial irrigation of the whole of the descent reaching from the upper southern plateau down to the Birket el Keiroon, and for a district to the west and south, and, when the effects of the inundation began to be exhausted in the valley of Egypt, for the contiguous departments of Memphis and Heracleopolis. In this way the creation of the Faioum, the most fertile province in Egypt, was far from being the whole of the benefit derived from these vast waterworks.

The lake, or series of connected lakes, formed on the summit of the plateau may have been twenty miles long, and two or three wide. This was the famous Lake Mœris. The water was made to enter the lake by a channel, which probably commenced at the modern Howarah, and was drawn off for irrigation outside the Faioum by a channel which appears to have passed out at Illahoun. In each of these a sluice was constructed. The extreme costliness of opening and shutting these sluices shows that they must have been enormous structures: but this was only in proportion to the vast volume of water that passed through them. To fill such lakes during the time of the high water of the inundation nothing less than a considerable river would have sufficed. We can only think it very much to the credit of these primæval engineers that they managed such sluices at all. Nothing like either the slatts, or the locks, on some of our rivers for holding back the water, would have answered their purpose. They wisely made the channel for letting out the water quite distinct from that for letting it in; for, if one of the sluices got out of order, then the other might be used while the damages of the injured one were being repaired. In a matter of life and death to so many it would not have done at all to have had only one string to their bow.

But to revert to the gains of these vast hydraulic constructions. An entirely new department had been added to Egypt. It was called the Arsinoite, or Crocodilopolite nome, from Arsinöe or Crocodilopolis, its capital; and turned out, from its more thorough exposure to air than was possible in the valley of Egypt, the richest and most productive part of the kingdom. Its produce was better and more varied. For the six low-water months also during which the stored-up treasure of its great lake flowed back into the valley, it maintained the irrigation of the contiguous river-side departments. Some of the canals of India may have done as much, but no work of man was ever grander in its conception, more completely successful in all it aimed at achieving, or of greater and more undoubted utility. It must have brought into being, and kept in existence, more than 500,000 souls in the department it created, and in those whose productiveness it increased; for we are speaking of land which, we must remember, was not cultivated as our farms, or even as our gardens are, and which produced never less than two crops a year; and which not being inundated, as the land in the valley, but irrigated, and warped, regularly, and at will, all the year round, was capable of yielding three crops annually. Every square foot of ground in the Faioum, all the conditions of warmth, fertility, and moisture being always present, was kept working, at the highest power, through every hour of the twelve months.

In Lake Mœris the crocodile abounded, having come in with the water. It thus became to the inhabitants of the nome the symbol of the life-giving water; and, having become to their minds the representative of that upon which everything depended, as had been the case with other symbols, it was held sacred, and eventually worshipped. Just so in the lower departments outside, where they had once had too much water, and which had not become inhabitable till the water had been drained, and dyked off, and regulated, not the crocodile, but the ichneumon, the enemy of the crocodile, had, by an analogous process, become an object of worship. They had suffered from water, and could only with difficulty keep it from overwhelming their lowlands; and so they made a symbol, for the idea of regulating water that encroached and was destructive, of that which was supposed to destroy what their neighbours had made a symbol of water itself. Here was a symbol upon a symbol. But these were people who thought in hieroglyphics; and to get to an understanding of what they meant we must translate their hieroglyphical modes of thought and expression into our own direct modes.

This lake so abounded in fish—more than twenty species were found in it—that the daily take, during the six months the water was flowing out, was sold for a talent of silver, about two hundred pounds of our money. During the time the water was flowing in the average of the amounts of the daily sales was the third of a talent. The king gave these proceeds of the lake fisheries to the queen for pin-money. The quantity of fish taken was so great that there was at times a difficulty in pickling and drying it.

Herodotus describes Lake Mœris as 450 miles in circumference. These figures are probably not those of an ignorant copyist, but what the historian himself set down in his original manuscript, for he gives the measurement in schœni as well as in stadia. The statement, of course, is an impossibility, for the true Lake Mœris could not have been more than twenty miles in length, or more than four in width. No one can suppose that Herodotus is here drawing a long bow to astonish his countrymen with a traveller’s tale. If he had been at all capable of doing anything of this kind, he never could have written a book of such value as all competent judges have ever assigned to his great work; and whatever he might have written would soon have fallen into deserved contempt. It has occurred to me that we may explain his figures by supposing that he meant them to give the circumference of the whole water-system of the Faioum. On the southern ridge of the mussel-shell he saw the great Lake Mœris; along its northern side he saw what we distinguish by the name of Birket el Keiroon; he saw the eastern extremities of the two connected by a broad canal, and in like manner their western extremities; and throughout the intervening descent he found a complete network of irrigating canals. As he makes no separate mention of the Birket el Keiroon, the probability is that he considered it to be a part of Lake Mœris. Regarding, then, the two lakes as part of the same plan, and as equally the work of man, and finding them so intimately connected with canals, he looked upon the whole as one lake enclosing the cultivated Faioum, and so he speaks of the whole under a single name, and gives a measurement of the circumference of the whole as that of Lake Mœris. What he says of the difficulty he had in understanding what had become of the earth raised in excavating the lake would apply to Birket el Keiroon, supposing it to have been artificially formed. This is almost a demonstration of his having regarded it as a part of Lake Mœris. Of course there could have been no difficulty of this kind with respect to the true Lake Mœris, for that had not been formed at all by excavation, but by dykes: it was a great dam, or series of dams, and the earth required for the construction of the dykes was all the earth that had been moved. The difficulty, therefore, here must have been just the very opposite to that which occurred to Herodotus, because, before the water of the inundation had deposited any or much mud in the district, the problem the engineer had to solve was, where he was to get sufficient earth from to make the dykes.

Some travellers have spoken of the broad belt of shingly gravel on the south side of Birket el Keiroon, as a phenomenon that needs explanation. They ask—Where is the fertile soil that ought to be there? The answer, I suppose, is—That it may be found precisely where it ought to be, that is, at the bottom of the Birket el Keiroon. At times a great deal of water has passed through the canals, as formerly from Lake Mœris itself, into the Birket el Keiroon. This must have been very great on the occasion of such a mishap as a break in the dykes, which doubtless occurred at times, especially when things were going out of order. The beach, therefore, of the Birket el Keiroon has been very variable, having often been very considerably advanced. To whatever point the water rose, so far the wash of the waves, breaking on the beach, would float off the light particles of soil, and transport them to the quiet bottom of deep water. What there would be a difficulty in explaining would be, not the absence of, but the finding of Nile-mud soil in this belt that margins the Birket el Keiroon.

In some parts of the old bed of the now dry Lake Mœris we find deposits of Nile-mud sixty feet thick. Again, this is what might have been expected. The water of the inundation flowed into the lake heavily charged with mud. The lake was still water. The sediment, therefore, was speedily deposited at the bottom. This process was repeated every year. Say that a film of the fourth of an inch was deposited each year from Amenemha to Strabo, the whole of the sixty feet will be accounted for. But this deposition of mud must also have been going on during the antecedent unrecorded centuries of the morass-period.

This will also account for something more, that is, for the disuse and obliteration of the lake. The mud had at last taken the place of the water. The dykes had not been made of any great height at first, but, as the soil rose both within and on the outside, they had, in the course of two thousand years, been frequently raised correspondingly. Of course, the bed of the Nile, like that of the Po, gradually rises, but the amount of this rise is not great, and would bear but a small proportion to the rise of the bottom of the lake. Lake Mœris, therefore, contained in itself, as so many natural lakes have done, a suicidal element. What made it a lake was destined to make it one day, what it has long been, dry land. This was, from the first, only a question of time. Water could, of course, again at this day be dammed up upon the site of the old lake, but only by taking it from the river at a higher point than of old; higher, that is to say, than the inlet of the Bahr Jusuf Canal at the old Diospolis Parva; for instance, it might be necessary to take it now from above the Cataract of Philæ, though, indeed, if that could be engineered, we cannot suppose that it would pay, for the Faioum, including the bed of the old lake, is pretty well irrigated now, though, of course, it has no storage of water for the needs of the adjacent river-side lands.

It is obvious that we must connect with these vast and scientifically-carried-out hydraulic works of the Faioum, the registration of the height of the annual inundation Herodotus mentions, and of which we have still existing evidence in the rock-cut records at Semnéh, we referred to in our first chapter. He says this registration was commenced in the time of Mœris. Now Mœris was that Amenemha III., who constructed these great reservoirs of the Faioum, and after whom they were ever afterwards called. The connexion between the yearly marking of the height of the rising at Semnéh, in Nubia, and the reservoirs of the Faioum might have been that the register at Semnéh was a detective apparatus for showing how much water ought each year to have been brought into the reservoirs; it would also indicate what was the need for irrigation in the contiguous departments outside the Faioum; and thus be a guide for the regulation of the amount of water that ought to be let out each year.

In the waterworks of the Faioum there was a grand utility with which our thought is more than satisfied: in the Labyrinth was seen the architectural glory of the newly-created province; it was the greatest construction of the old Monarchy: the Pyramids had been a rude introduction to it; and it suggested to the younger monarchy the chief structures of Karnak. If we could now behold it, as it stood at the time when the Hyksos broke into Egypt to become its masters for between four and five centuries, we should regard it as one of the most historically interesting and instructive buildings ever erected in the world.

Its primary conception had been that of a place of assembly for the Parliaments of old Egypt. At that time one court, to which were attached 250 chambers, half being above, and half below ground, appears to have been assigned to each of the twenty-seven departments of the kingdom. Each of these chambers was roofed with a single stone slab. No material but stone had been used throughout the structure. Its pillars were monoliths of red granite, and of a limestone so white as to have been mistaken for Parian marble, and of so compact a texture as to receive a good polish. The sculptures of the courts and chambers were singularly bold and good. Those of each court, and its connected chambers, had reference to the history, the peculiarities, and the religion of the department to which it had been assigned. Besides the chambers were numerous halls, porticoes, and passages. The area of the roof, composed of the enormous slabs just mentioned, may have formed the actual place of assembly for the collected deputies of the departments. On the north side stood the Pyramid in which was buried Amenemha III., who, if he had not originally designed the Labyrinth, had, at all events, been its chief constructor, for his scutcheon is frequently found in the existing remains. This Pyramid was cased with the white limestone used in the Labyrinth itself. The dimensions of the figures sculptured upon it were unusually large. This form having been incorporated into the general design, for it was placed in front of the north, which was the open side, must have gone some way towards breaking the monotony of the horizontal and perpendicular lines of the Labyrinth itself.

Herodotus saw it after its partial restoration by the Dodecarchs. They had restored twelve of its courts, one for each of themselves. Those were days of decadence, when what would contribute to the greatness, not of the kingdom, but of the individual ruler, was the governing idea in royal minds. It had first fallen into decay, because into disuse, during the long period of Hyksos occupation; and on the rise of the new monarchy the place of assembly had been removed to Thebes, where Sethos had constructed his grand hypostyle hall for that very purpose. It had, therefore, at the time when the twelve kings took it in hand, been disused and dilapidated for a period of between fifteen and twenty centuries, probably for as long a time as has elapsed from the days of Augustus to our own day. In that long period we can imagine to what an extent it had been resorted to as a quarry for limestone, and building materials. This will account for the restorations of the twelve kings having been so considerable, that Herodotus speaks of them as having been the builders of the structure he saw.

Above two thousand years more have since elapsed, the whole of which have been years of neglect, and wilful dilapidation; and sad, indeed, is now the state of the grand building, once the grandest in all the world, upon which men had bestowed so much labour and thought, and of which those, to whom it belonged, had been so proud. An Arab canal has been carried through the centre of it. What remains is buried in the rubbish-heaps formed by its own overthrow and destruction. Still, there must be much within and beneath those heaps that might be disinterred. The whole ought to be carefully and critically examined. It is evident that these remains, from their extent and their connexion with the old monarchy, of which the original structure was the chief and most historical monument, are the most promising of all fields for Egyptological investigation.

CHAPTER XV. HELIOPOLIS.

In going to Heliopolis I turned out of the way a few steps to look at the old sycamore many a pilgrim visits in the belief that Joseph and Mary, and the young Child, during their flight into Egypt, rested in its shade. There is no intimation that the Holy Family went beyond Pelusium, or Bubastis. To have gone so far would satisfy the requirements of the sacred narrative. As they were poor, probably they did not go far into the land, except that it might have been in the exercise of Joseph’s trade: though indeed I cannot imagine any one in Egypt, except a Jew, employing a Jewish carpenter. Of course, of the Jews who went down into Egypt there would be some who would be desirous of visiting Heliopolis, the On of Genesis, which was very interestingly connected with Jewish history; and, therefore, it is just possible the Holy Family may have gone so far.

But as to this tree. If one of its kind could possibly have lived so many centuries in Egypt, which is highly improbable, even under all the circumstances most favourable for the supply of water and protection from the wind, it would have required an oft-repeated miracle to have saved it from the axe during the many long periods of disorder Egypt has passed through since Joseph’s sojourn. The wood of a large tree is, in Egypt, too tempting at such times to be long spared.

I do not know the date of the first mention of this tree, but I think two hundred and fifty years would amply satisfy all the appearance of age it presents. Pococke, from whom I may observe in passing, that a great deal of the information, and many of the learned references contained in several modern works on Egypt, have been borrowed without acknowledgment, and in some cases taken verbatim, tells us that at the date of his visit, which was in 1737, a tree, I conclude the one still standing, was shown by the Copts as the one that afforded shelter to the Holy Family; but that the Latins denied its genuineness, affirming that they had cut down the true tree, that is to say, the one that had previously done duty in supplying a visible object for the legend, and had carried it to Jerusalem. This was probably false. Supposing it, however, to be true, it was a discreditable act, such as you might have expected from such monks.

But we have arrived at the tree. It at once appears that the feelings of some of the party are too deep for utterance. On these occasions knowledge and reason have to fight, against something or other, a battle that is lost often before it is begun. Belief is so much more natural and pleasant than iconoclasm. If you would but let yourself alone—of course you say nothing that would disillusion other people—their devout and heart-contenting imaginations would be reflected in yourself. As it is, you cannot help feeling the contagion. The upshot of the matter is, you are not altogether satisfied with your own unbelief, nor at all benefited by your half disposition to participate in the belief of your friends. As to the believer, his emotions are every way pleasant and satisfactory to himself.

But what took me to On was not to see the tree, but that I might stand before the Obelisk of Osirtasen, the oldest obelisk in Egypt, which has been pointing to the sky now for more than four thousand years—from the days of the old monarchy, previous to the invasion of the Hyksos. To them we may feel thankful for having allowed it to stand; and there was no International in those days. It had been erected for some centuries, when Abraham came down into Egypt. Joseph and Moses, who had both been admitted to the Priest Caste, and were learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, stood before it, and read the inscription, word for word, as the erudite Egyptologer reads it this day. Thales, Solon, Pythagoras, and Plato all studied here. Heliopolis was then the most celebrated university in the world for philosophy and science. Strabo was shown the house in which Plato had resided. Herodotus found the priests here in better repute for their learning than any elsewhere in Egypt. All these, and a host of other well-known Greeks, Romans, and Jews resided and studied here, during the many centuries of its renown. They all visited again and again, and walked round and deciphered, or had deciphered to them, the inscription on each side of this spit of granite. In those days it seemed to them a wonderful monument of hoar antiquity—far beyond anything that could be seen in their own countries. Everything they then saw at Heliopolis has been reduced to mounds of rubbish now, excepting this single stone. What a halo of interest invests it! Who would not wish to see it? Who can be unmoved as he looks upon it? Fifty centuries of history, and all the wisdom of Egypt are buried in the dust under his feet. You shift your position, and then smile at yourself—a sort of feeling had come upon you that you were obstructing the view of Joseph, or of Herodotus; that you were standing in the way of Plato, or of Moses.

But though the carking tooth of time has in no way set its mark on the monument of Osirtasen, a small fly has for the present obliterated, on three sides of it, the record he placed upon them. It has done this by filling up the incised hieroglyphics with its mud-cells. Whether it be a mason-wasp, or a bee, I was unable to discover, the cells being out of reach. I saw the same temporary eclipse of the sculptures and hieroglyphics going on at Dendera and elsewhere. The venom of this little insect is, I was told, equal to what I saw of its impudence.

The drive to Heliopolis is well worth taking on its own account. I found by the wayside a greater variety of culture, and of plants, than elsewhere in Egypt; oranges, lemons, ricinus, (which, with its spikes of red flowers and broad leaves, is, here, a handsome plant,) cactuses, vineyards, olive-trees, Australian eucalyptuses, and many other trees and plants.

Before I went to Heliopolis I asked a Scotchman I found myself seated next to at dinner one day at the table d’hôte, whether it was worth one’s while to go? ‘I will tell you just how it is,’ he replied. ‘I have been there. There is nothing to see; but it will give you a pleasant afternoon. It is like going out a fishing. The day is fine. The country looks well. You have a pleasant friend, and a good luncheon, with cigars and whisky. You come home without having seen a fish; but you are not dissatisfied with yourself for having gone.’ Having again met this gentleman after I had been there, he asked me how I had liked Heliopolis? He seemed so thoroughly satisfied with his own matter-of-fact, and very intelligible, way of regarding the world, and all it contains, that I refrained from telling him what I had thought. In his presence I almost doubted whether any pearls, excepting his, were not counterfeits: at all events, I was sure they would appear so to him. This, however, was but a momentary misgiving. There are some other sorts which, though not so common, are quite as genuine as his; perhaps, too, (but when one writes in English this must not be said without expressions of humility, and of readiness to receive correction,) they may have been formed by animals, the ingredients of whose food were somewhat more varied than is the case with the ordinary mollusk. But, be this as it may, those that are of the rarer sort have the advantage that, while they do not in the least interfere with the enjoyment of the sunshine, the pleasant scene, the friend, the good cigar, and the old whisky (perhaps rather giving depth to the enjoyment, because refining it), they are in themselves, and even without these agreeable adjuncts, a source of never-failing enjoyment. They are, as was said of such things long ago, as good for the night as for the day. They go with us into the country, and accompany us on our travels. It may, however, be objected to them that, in this country, they generally make their possessor unpractical, and leave him poorer, except in ideas, than they found him. There is no denying that it is so here, very often. Is the reason of this that our governing class, whether we interpret those words to mean the class from which our legislators, and administrators, have hitherto very generally been taken, or the class that put them in their places, that is, the shopocracy (can we hope anything better from our new governing class, that of the British artizan?) have cared but little for these things? Influences of this kind have made us a money-worshipping people—not that we have loved money more than other people, but that money has had too much power amongst us—so that too many of us, like my Scotch acquaintance, have learnt to pooh-pooh everything which does not fetch money—that is to say, nature and history, which are the materials out of which truth is constructed; and art, poetry, philosophy, and science, which are the construction itself: everything but money, and what will bring money in the market. And so, too, it came about that our highest education was merely a form of classicism accommodated to a narrow and shortsighted theology: what both nature and history might have taught would have been inconvenient, or, be that as it may, was not needed.

We know that in certain exceptional cases (they ought not to be so very exceptional) a man may possess the world that is to come, as well as the world my Scotch acquaintance had so tight a grip of. This is a difficult thing to do: on our system, and with our ideas, a very difficult thing; still one that may be done. The difficulty, however, appears to be very considerably increased, when the attempt is made to add to these two the possession of the world that has been. It is hard to keep two balls up in the air, and going, at the same time; but, to add a third, and to attend to all three properly, to give each its own due space and time, and to get them all to work harmoniously together, is a feat that reveals a very un-English mind, but still it is the master-mind. What were the performances of Egyptian Proteus to this? By turns he was many things, but here is a man who, at one and the same time, has three souls, and lives three lives. It is so, however, only in appearance: the interpretation of the Parable is that the man has passed mentally out of the flat-fish stage of being, in which sight is possible only in one direction; and has reached the higher stage in which it is possible to look in every direction; and so to connect all that is seen all around, as that the different objects shall not reciprocally obscure, but illumine each other.

CHAPTER XVI. THEBES—LUXOR AND KARNAK.

Luxor, Karnak, and Thebes, are three fragments of the hundred-gated city of Homer. The landing, to which you moor your boat, is about two hundred yards from the great temple of Luxor. The open space, between the landing and the temple, is a slight acclivity, and is completely covered with sand. To the right and left of the open space are the mean buildings of the modern town. Those on the right cluster round and conceal the greater part of the temple, leaving only a grand colonnade visible from the water, at the further side of the open sandy acclivity. As you enter this colonnade, and stand in the roofed hall among the mighty pillars that support the roof, a feeling comes over you that you have shrunk to the dimensions and feebleness of a fly. The oldest sanctuary, of which there are any remains still standing here, was built by Amenophis III., who belonged to the dynasty that expelled the Hyksos. It was now seen that Thebes would be a safer capital than Memphis, which was too near the Semitic border. The close connexion also that had now been formed with Ethiopia, sometimes being that of its complete subjection, made a more southern capital desirable. The erection of the splendid temple of Amenophis indicates the complete triumph of the new policy. This took place about four thousand years ago. Rameses the Great, the most magnificent and prolific architect the world has ever seen, was not satisfied with the original structure. Following the example of his father, Sethos, he conceived a plan for investing Thebes with a grandeur and a glory that none of the Empires, that have grown to greatness during the thousands of years that have passed since his day, have done anything to rival, or approach. And this plan he carried out to a successful completion. Part of it was the architectural connexion of Luxor and Karnak. For this purpose it was necessary to give additional height and massiveness to Luxor. This he did by attaching to the extremity of the temple of Amenophis, nearest to Karnak, a grand court, enriched externally with colossal statues of himself and two obelisks; one of which is now standing where he placed it; the other is in the Place de la Concorde at Paris. Having made the Temples of Luxor and Karnak, by their height and massiveness, their lofty courts, propylæa and obelisks, reciprocally conspicuous and imposing from each other, the direct connexion was effected by a broad straight road, or street, nearly two miles in length, guarded on either side by a row of sphinxes. Some of these, at the Karnak end of the connecting street, still remain; they are ram-headed. Fragments of others are found in the débris nearer Luxor.

Along the line of this old street, which, however, except at its northern end, is quite obliterated by rubbish mounds, cultivation, and palm-groves, you ride to Karnak. As you pass no houses by the way the distance seems great. Here was for many centuries the splendid centre of the most splendid city in the world. On nothing like it did the sun shine. The dwelling-houses, many of them Diodorus tells us four, some even five, stories high, were, we may be sure, not allowed to approach so near as to interfere with the solemnizing effect of the long dromos of sphinxes. This effect was the very object of these avenues of sphinxes and colossi, which were prefixed to the temples. They shut out the world as the worshipper approached the temple, and prepared his mind for the services and the influences of the house of God.

The area of the sacred enclosure at Karnak was a square of about 2,000 feet each way. The enclosing wall is still everywhere traceable. In some parts it is but little injured by time. There were twenty-six temples within the enclosure. It was a city of temples. The axis of the main series points across the river to the gorge of the valley, in the Libyan hills, at the head of which were placed the tombs of the kings. Another series of temples reached down to the south-west entrance of the enclosure, where was the termination of the Luxor-Karnak street. These two series of temples may be roughly described as close and parallel to the north-eastern and north-western sides of the enclosure. The rest of the space was filled with more or less detached structures.

Here was, if not the sublimest—for the mass and simplicity of the Great Pyramid may contest that—yet certainly the most magnificent architectural effort ever made by man. What prompted it? At what did it aim? Of course it was the embodiment of an idea, and that idea was, in its simplest expression, the same as the idea contained in the Greek temple, and the Christian cathedral. It was the glorification of the builders conception of the Deity. The difference in the structures, in their fashion and effect, arose out of the differences in the conceptions these people had respectively formed of the Deity. In the conception of the Egyptian awe was the predominant feature. Whatever else Deity might be, awfulness was its first attribute. Beauty, if at all, came in a comparatively low degree. With the Greeks and the Christians it was very different. The gods of the Greeks were connected with and took delight in Nature. The God of the Christians was the author of Nature. With them, therefore, the recognition, the creation, and the exhibition of what was beautiful, formed a part of the service of God. They felt that in religion a sense of, and the sight of, the beautiful dispose to love. The Egyptian beholder and worshipper was not to be attracted and charmed, but overwhelmed. His own nothingness, and the terribleness of the power and will of God, was what he was to feel. The soul of the Greek, and of the Christian, was to be elevated, not crushed; to be calmed, to be harmonized. One was the work of minds in which the instinct of freedom was operative; the other of minds which felt the powerlessness, the helplessness of man in the face of an unchangeable iron order alike of Nature and of society.

Moreover, as we have already seen, in Egypt Nature herself did not originate and nurture the thought of beauty. In Egypt were no rocky, moss-margined streams, no hanging woods, no shady groves, no lovely valleys. The two paramount objects in Nature, as they presented themselves to the eye and the thought of the Egyptian, suggested to him absolute power on the part of Nature, and absolute dependence on the part of man. These two objects were a singularly dull and monotonous river, but without which the Egyptian world would be a desert, and the scorching sun, but without which all would be darkness and death. They did everything. Without them everything was nothing.

These stupendous structures, then, expressed the feebleness of the worshipper by magnifying the power of the object of his worship. They awed him, as was intended, into a sense of personal nothingness, while they called into being and fed a sense of irresistible power, external to man, the idea of which the peculiarities of everything Egyptian gave rise to. Moral ideas, engendered by the structure and working of Egyptian society, and ideas of the physical forces which were ever before them, and to which they felt their subjection, were entangled in their minds in an inextricable knot, and that knot was their religion.

On the walls of these stupendous structures is written and sculptured the history, as well as the religion, of Egypt, from Osirtasen I., who reigned four thousand five hundred years ago, down to the Roman Augustus: these are the earliest and the latest names inscribed on the lithotomes of Karnak. The included space of time embraces the two last dynasties of the primæval monarchy; the Hyksos period; the whole of the new monarchy, when Egypt rose to its zenith of power, glory, art, wealth, and wisdom; the domination of Persia; the Ptolemaic sovereignty; and a part of the Roman rule. None inscribed so much history on these walls as the two mightiest of Egyptian conquerors and builders, Sethos, and the stronger son of a strong father, his successor, Rameses the Great. These two Pharaohs themselves made more history than all who had gone before them; and none who followed them attained to their eminence. The buildings they erected are history, as much as their conquests.

The Coliseum is a part of Roman history. Its magnitude and its purpose are history. It tells us that Cæsar could issue a decree that all the world should be taxed; that Cæsar found it necessary to dazzle and amuse the populace; that the amusements of the populace were brutal; that amusement, not religion, was the order of the day. So in the stones of Karnak we see the plunder and the tribute of Asia and Ethiopia. Many a city had been made a desolate heap, and many a fair region had been ravaged, and the silver and the gold collected, and the surviving inhabitants swept into the Egyptian net, and carried away captive into Egypt, to assist in building the grand hypostyle Court of Karnak, the grandest hall ever constructed by man. In the direction of the axis of the connected series of temples this hall is 170 ft. long. Its width is 329 ft. It is supported by one hundred and thirty-four columns. The central twelve are 62 ft. high in the shaft, and 36 ft. in circumference. The remaining one hundred and twenty-two columns are 42 ft. in height, and 28 ft. in circumference. The lintel stone of the great doorway is within 2 in. of 41 ft. in length. Every part of the walls, the pillars, and the roof is covered with coloured sculptures cut by the chisel of history, and of religion, which, however, as far as we are concerned, belongs to history. The purpose of this hall was to provide a fitting place for the great religious diets of the nation. It must have appeared to the thoughts of those times that the gods had assisted the king—who was already becoming their associate—in designing and erecting such a structure. We, however, are aware that no people can imagine, or undertake such structures, unless they are inspired with the sentiment that they are the greatest among the nations, and at the head of the world. Great things—it is more true of literature than of architecture, but it is true of everything—are not done by imitation but by inspiration, and nothing inspires great things but greatness itself.

To the north-west of this stupendous and overpowering hall is an hypæthral court 100 ft. longer, and of the same width of 329 ft. A double row of columns traverses its central avenue. It has corridors on each side. It was left incomplete. This is plain from the enormous pyramidal propylons, by which it is entered, never having been sculptured. None who came after the Great Rameses were able to rise to the height of his conceptions. In the unsculptured walls of these propylons are the sockets, drilled, horizontally, through their whole thickness, for holding the beams which supported the lofty staffs for the flags which were used on great occasions. These lofty towers and these far-seen flags connected the temples of Karnak with the temples on the western bank of the river, and with the funeral processions to the catacombs of the kings in the opposite valley of the Libyan range, just as the south-western propylons, and the dromos of sphinxes, connected them with Luxor.

Though the name of Sesortosen, or Ositarsen I., is the first that appears on this series of temples, it would be a mistake to suppose that the date of the greatness of the city must be taken from his reign. This is impossible, for he was the founder of the dynasty which came from Thebes. Thebes, therefore, in his time—4,500 years ago—had become sufficiently powerful to give a dynasty to Egypt. And when we look at its site, the island in the river, the great extent of fertile land on the east bank, with no inconsiderable extent also on the west, and the convenient approach of the Libyan Hills to the river side, we see that this was a spot designed by nature for one of the great cities of old Egypt. It was great under the old monarchy, and gave to the country the two last dynasties of that first monumentally-known period of its history. During the succeeding 400 years of the Hyksos domination, a cloud of almost impenetrable darkness settled down upon it, as upon everything else Egyptian. It rose under, and with the new monarchy. The disadvantages of the site of Memphis, and the conveniences of that of Thebes, had been discovered. It, therefore, now became unreservedly the repository of all the glories, and the chief shrine of the religion of the country. The spoils of war, the tribute of subject nations, the rent of the royal demesne, which comprised one-third of the land of Egypt, were spent here. Next to the court came the numerous and wealthy body of the priests; and they, too, were chiefly—though they had also other sources of income—supported by the rents of their estates. Besides these there was the official class, which again we know was numerous and wealthy. Trade also must have largely contributed to the wealth of Thebes; for it was the emporium for the camel-borne produce of the interior of the continent, and for the water-borne commerce with Egypt of the East Coast of Africa, of Arabia, and of India. We may form an estimate of the extent of this trade from the magnificence of the Temples, which, of old times, in the East was generally proportionate to the amount and value of the commerce carried on under their protection. From these sources the growth and splendour of the new capital were fed for many centuries. We see from the tombs that in its best days the wealthy were not afraid to use, and to display, their wealth. The arts that embellish life, and which had been inherited from the old monarchy, made great advances. Society developed tastes and arrangements not altogether unlike those of our own time.

At last the thunder-cloud, which had long been gathering in the north-east, drifted down to Egypt, and the storm burst upon it. The Persian had come. And the grand old ship went to pieces. In Asia the days of Sethos and of Rameses had never been forgotten. The gods, that had in their arks gone up with them to battle and to victory, were now defaced and dishonoured. The temples which had been built by the captives, and with the spoils brought out of Asia, were now sought for at Karnak, and dilapidated. The ruthless work the Egyptians had done was repaid ruthlessly. It was delightful to the soul of the Persian, now that his opportunity had come, to job the iron into the soul of the Egyptian.

But such a civilization as that of old Egypt takes a great deal of killing. It is the working of a thoroughly organized community in which every man is born to his work, has natural instructors in his parents and class, and so knows his work by a self-acting law of Society, which possesses the regularity and precision of a law of Nature. It survived the Persians. It Egyptianized the Greeks. It was not stamped out by the Romans. Christianity gradually enfeebled, absorbed, and metamorphosed it. At last came the Mahomedan flood, and swept away whatever germs might have even then remained of a capacity for the maintenance of a well-ordered and fruitful commonwealth.

CHAPTER XVII. THEBES—THE NECROPOLIS.

Hitherto we have been on the eastern bank: we now pass to the western. Here we find an historical museum, unequalled by anything of the kind to be seen elsewhere, in variety of interest, and in completeness. Nothing in the world, except the Pyramid region, approaches to it. There the old primæval monarchy lies entombed; here, in the western quarter of the capital of the younger monarchy, and which has now appropriated to itself the name of Thebes, we have the catacombs of the kings, the tombs of the queens, the tombs of the priests, of the official class, and of private persons; the wonderful temple-palace of Medinet Haboo; the Memnonium, or rather Rameseum, again, temple and palace; the old but well-preserved Temple-palace of Cornéh, together with the remains of several temples; the vocal Memnon, and its twin Colossus. These form a gallery of historical objects, and of records of the arts, of the manners and customs, and of the daily life of one of the grandest epochs of Egypt. How can a few indications and touches convey to those who have not seen them, any true or useful conception of the objects themselves, or of the thoughts they give rise to in the mind of the traveller who stands before them, and allows them to interpret to him the mind of those old times? They are contemporary records in which he sees written, with accompanying illustrations, chapter after chapter of old world history, anterior to the days of Rome, Greece, and Israel.

The tomb of the great Sethos, Joseph’s Pharaoh, of his greater son, Rameses II., and of Menophres, in whose reign the Exodus took place, are all here. The tomb of Sethos reaches back 470 feet into the limestone Mountain, with a descent of 180 feet. Coloured sculptures cover 320 feet of the excavation. The exact point to which the sculptures had been carried on the day of his death, is indicated by the unfinished condition of the work in the last chamber. The walls had been prepared for the chisel of the sculptor, but the death of the king interrupted the work. The draughtsman had sketched upon them, in red colour, the designs that were to be executed. His sketch had been revised by a superintendent of such works, who had corrected the red outlines with black ink, wherever they appeared to him out of proportion, or in any way defective. The freedom and decision with which the outlines were drawn exceed probably the power of any modern artist’s or designer’s hand. These sketches are quite as fresh as they were the day they were made. You see them just as they were outlined, and corrected for the sculptor, more than 3,000 years ago. It would be worth while going to Egypt to see them, if they were the only sight in Egypt.

In this, and several others among the royal tombs, we find symbolical representations of the human race. The Egyptians, the people of the North, of the East, and of the South, are indicated by typical figures. This is meant to convey the idea that Pharaoh was virtually the universal monarch. If he had not felt this, Karnak would never have been built, nor, I will add, for the sake of the contrast, as well as the concatenation, would a humble East Anglian Vicar have spent last winter on the Nile.

The sculptures in these tombs may be divided under three heads. First, there are those which describe events in the life of the occupant of the tomb. Then there are scenes from common daily Egyptian life, in which he took such interest as to desire to have representations of them in his tomb. Lastly, there are scenes which illustrate what was supposed would occur in the future life of the deceased.

In the tomb which bears the name of Rameses III., there are several chambers right and left of the main gallery, in each of which is represented, on the walls, some department of the royal establishment. The king’s kitchen, the king’s boats, his armoury, his musical instruments, the operations carried on upon his farms, the birds, and the fruits of Egypt, and the sacred emblems; the three last symbolizing fowling, gardening, and religion. It is possible that the king may have buried here those of his household who presided over these departments; each in the chamber designated for him by the representations, on the walls, of what belonged to his office. If it were not so, of what use were the chambers? they could hardly have been excavated merely to place such pictures upon them.

As this Rameses III. was one of the warlike Pharaohs, and had, like his great namesake, led successfully large armies into Asia, we cannot suppose that he had these scenes of home-life sculptured and painted in his tomb, either because he had nothing else to put there, or because the subjects they referred to were more congenial to his tastes than the pomp and circumstance of glorious war. He must, therefore, as far as we can see, either have been acting under the motive just mentioned, which, however, I cannot regard as a perfectly satisfactory suggestion; or he must have been influenced by some thought of what he would require in the intermediate state while lying in the tomb. Was there an idea that the mummy would, for a time, take delight in contemplating those scenes and objects, the fruition of which had contributed to its happiness during the earthly life?

What we see in the tombs of the priests and officials almost leads us to the conclusion that these representations had not, necessarily, a direct and special reference to what had once been the occupations of the inmates of the tomb, but were placed on the walls merely as pictures, precisely as we hang upon the walls of our houses such pictures as please us. There was nothing in the aspects of the country which could have led the old Egyptians to wish to depict scenery. There were no charming bits of Nature, no world of changeful cloud-scapes, no suggestive winter, spring, or summer scenes. Nor, again, was the turn of their minds dramatic, or such as might have led them to desire to reproduce in pictures those human scenes which would recall the workings of passion or the poetry of life; and, indeed, their style of art would hardly have enabled them to deal with such subjects. They thus appear to have been confined to hard literal matter of fact representations of the arts of ordinary life, of Egyptian objects, of funeral processions, and of what, according to their ideas, would take place in the next world. With these they decorated their walls. It was Hobson’s choice. They had nothing else for the purpose. They may have had a special inducement to represent the common arts of life, such as cabinet-making, glass-blowing, weaving, pottery, etc., because they took a very intelligible pride in contemplating their superiority to the rest of the world in these matters, which, at that time, when an acquaintance with them was regarded as a distinction, were thought much more of than was the case afterwards, when all the world had attained to proficiency in them.

That these kinds of representations were sometimes looked upon merely as ornamental, or as such as any deceased Egyptian might contemplate, while in the mummy state, with satisfaction, may be inferred from the fact, that it eventually became a common practice for an Egyptian to purchase, or to take possession of a tomb that had been sculptured and painted for others, and even used by them, with the intention of having it prepared for himself: though, probably, this would not have been done in the early period of Egyptianism, when it was proud and pure. He merely erased the name of the original occupant, and substituted for it his own. He did not feel that there was anything to render the pictures that had been designed by, and for, another, inappropriate to himself. We know, too, that the pictures were often those of trades it was impossible the deceased could have practised; still they were pictures of Egyptian life it would be pleasing to contemplate. We had rather contemplate an historical picture, a tableau de genre, or a landscape, but as they had no idea of such things, and as civilization was then young, and the simplest trade was regarded with pleasure for its utility, and as a proof of what is called progress, everybody was at that time of day pleased with its representation. Though we have entirely lost this feeling, I believe uneducated people would still, at the present day prefer, because it would be more intelligible to them, a picture representing the work of some trade to a landscape, or historical piece. Of course the delight an Egyptian felt in such representations did not in the least arise from his being uneducated, but from a difference in his way of thinking and feeling; and in a difference in what art could then achieve. In short, these representations were meant either for the living, or for the dead. In either case, to give pleasure, either to the beholder, or to the supposed beholder, must have been their object.

The valley, which contains the tombs of which I have been speaking, was devoted to the sepulture of the kings of the nineteenth and twentieth dynasties. The greater part of them were found open, and had, in the times of the Ptolemies, been already rifled. Their desecration, and the injuries they received, ought probably to be attributed to the Persians. I have already said something about the extent and the sculptures of the catacomb of Sethos. The chamber, containing the sarcophagus of this great Pharaoh, had been so carefully concealed, that it fortunately escaped discovery down to our own time. Belzoni, in his investigation of this tomb, finding that a spot which a happy inspiration led him to strike, returned a hollow sound, had the trunk of a palm-tree brought into the gallery, and using it as a ram, battered down the disguised wall. This, at once revealed the chamber which, for more than four thousand years, had escaped Persian, Greek, Roman, and Arab intrusion. In the midst of this chamber stood the royal sarcophagus. This sarcophagus, one of the most splendid monuments of Egypt in its best days, was of the finest alabaster, covered with the most beautiful and instructive sculptures. Who can adequately imagine the emotions of Belzoni at that moment? It had been reserved for him to be the first to behold, to be the discoverer, of what had escaped the keen search of so many races of spoilers and destroyers, the finest monument of the greatest period of Egyptian history. That monument is now in Sir John Soane’s Museum, in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

In the valley to the west of this are some of the tombs of the preceding, the eighteenth, dynasty, that which drove the Hyksos out of Egypt. They have, however, been so dilapidated that not much is to be learnt from them.

Behind the great temple-palace of Medinet Haboo are the tombs of the queens and princesses. These, too, have been much injured; and have, at some period, subsequent to that of their original appropriation, been used for the sepulture of private persons.

Along the foot of the hills, from the tombs of the queens to the entrance of the Valley of the Kings, is one vast Necropolis for the priests, the official class, and wealthy private individuals. All these fall within the New Empire. Among them, however, are found some instances of royal interments, but they belong to the Old Empire. When we talk of the New Empire we must not forget its date: its palmiest days belong to the time of the Exodus and of Abraham’s visit to Egypt.

As I rode through this city of the dead, visiting the tombs which possessed the greatest interest, I endeavoured, as I had done in the Necropolis of the Pyramids, to recall its pristine state; to see it as it was seen by those who constructed and peopled it. The tombs were then everywhere along the Háger, that is, on the first rise or stage of the desert, above the cultivated land. Here, as generally throughout Egypt, vegetable life, and the soil which supports it, do not extend one inch beyond the height of the inundation, which brings the soil as well as the water. The stony desert, and the plant-clothed plain touch with sharp definition, each maintaining its own character to the last, just as the land and sea do along the beach. From this line of contact to the precipitous rise of the hills there is a belt of irregular ground. In some places this belt is a rocky level or incline, in others it is broken into rocky valleys, but always above the cultivated plain. The whole of it is thoroughly desert, and all of it ascends towards the contiguous range. It is everywhere limestone, and generally covered with débris from the excavations, and from the hill-side. Such is the site of this great Necropolis.

In the days when Thebes was the capital, the whole of this space was covered with the entrances to the tombs. Some of these entrances were actual temples. Some resembled the propylons of temples. Some were gateways, less massive and lofty, but still conspicuous objects. In every tomb were its mummied inmates. They were surrounded by representations in stone, and colour, of the objects and scenes they had delighted in during life. Their property, their pursuits, what they had thought and felt, what they had taken an interest in, and what they had believed, were all around them. Objects of Nature, objects of art, objects of thought, had each assumed its form in stone. Each was there for the mummy to contemplate. These were true houses for the dead. Houses built, decorated, and furnished for the dead. In which, however, the dead were not dead; but were living in the mummied state. We have rock-tombs elsewhere; but where, out of Egypt, could we find another such city? It is a city excavated in the rocky plain, and in the mountain valleys. It consists of thousands of apartments, spacious halls, long galleries, steps ascending and descending, and chambers innumerable. It is more extensive, more costly, more decorated, than many a famous city on which the sun shines. It is peopled everywhere with its own inhabitants; but among them is no fear, or hope—no love or hatred—no pleasure or pain—no heart is beating—no brain is busy.

As we wander about these mansions of the dead we feel as Zobeide did when she found herself in the spell-bound city. The inhabitants are present. Everything they used in life is present. Life itself only is wanting. Everything has become stone.

The largest of the tombs now accessible is that of Petamenap, a Royal Scribe. It is entered by a sunken court, 103 feet in length by 76. This was once surrounded by a wall, in which was a lofty gateway, the two sides of which are still standing. This court leads to a large hall, which is the commencement of a long series of galleries, apartments, and side chambers—all excavated in the solid rock. Omitting the side chambers, and measuring only the galleries and apartments they passed through, the excavations of this single tomb extend to a length of 862 feet. The area excavated amounts to nearly 24,000 square feet, or an acre and a quarter. These are Sir Gardiner Wilkinson’s measurements, which have been accepted by Lepsius, who also himself carefully inspected the tomb. The whole of the wall-space gained by these excavations, which are actually more than one-third of a mile in length, is covered throughout with most carefully-executed sculptures, in the most elaborate style of Egyptian art. It is worth noticing that this tomb of a private individual exceeds in dimensions, costliness, and magnificence all the royal tombs—of course, excepting the Great Pyramids—with which we are acquainted.

We may infer, from the costliness of these tombs, and from the length of time it must have taken to excavate and adorn them, that the Egypt of the time to which they belong, was a wisely-ordered kingdom, in which, to a very considerable extent, not the arbitrary caprice of kings and governors, but law was supreme. At that time the scene of such a history as that of Naboth could not have been in Egypt. It must for long ages have been, in the very important matter of a man’s doing what he pleased with his own, in a very unoriental condition. This tomb of Petamenap, and thousands of others, more or less like it, could only have been constructed where, and when, subjects may acquire great wealth, and display it with safety.

We may also infer, from the size of the city under the new monarchy, and the wealth of its inhabitants, from their mode of living, their tastes and pursuits, and from the state of the arts which ministered to the convenience and adornment of their lives—upon all of which points this Necropolis gives inexhaustible, and absolutely truthful evidence; that a great part of the wealth of Thebes was drawn from precisely the same source as that of Belgravia—that is, from the rent of the land.

An abundance of minor matters, but full of historical interest and instruction, may be gleaned from the same source. We find, for instance, that 3,350 years ago the principle and the use of the arch were familiar to the Egyptians; for there are several arches of that date in the tombs. Glass-blowing was practised. The syphon was understood, and used. In their entertainments the presence of both sexes was usual; and perfumes and flowers were on these occasions regarded as indispensable. The shadoof, the simplest and most effective application of a small amount of power to produce a considerable result, was as universally at work on the banks of the river, and of the canals, as at the present day; indeed, we cannot doubt but that it was much more so. But it is unnecessary to add here to these particulars.

CHAPTER XVIII. THEBES—THE TEMPLE-PALACES.

We will now, having left the tombs, turn our attention to the temples. Some we find upon the edge of the Háger, others a little way back upon it. The greater number of those that were once here have been completely razed to the ground, nothing now remaining of them except fragments of statues, the foundations of walls, and the bases of pillars; all of which are buried in rubbish heaps. There are, however, some singularly interesting exceptions which demand particular notice. Fortunately, though it hardly looks like chance, the temple-palaces of Sethos, of the great Rameses, and of Rameses III., are still standing. These were built by the two great conquerors of the nineteenth, and the great conqueror of the twentieth dynasties. Why did not other Pharaohs erect similar structures? The reason is not far to seek. It is here present in the case of these three kings, and is absent from the cases of other kings. The funds necessary for such structures had to be procured by looting Asia, and a great part of the work had to be done by captives taken in war. And we know that at this time it was the custom for those kings of Egypt, who contemplated great works, to begin their reigns with raids into Asia, for the express purpose of collecting the gold and the slaves that would enable them to carry out their designs. It was the good old rule, the simple plan, that those should take who had the power. These great and famous expeditions, in truth, were only imperial slave hunts, and imperial brigandage, in which not petty tribes of African negroes, but the (for those times) civilized nations of Asia, and not a few travellers, but the inhabitants of great cities and kingdoms, were the victims. These great builders, administrators, and soldiers, who believed of themselves that they had already been received into the hierarchy of heaven, could not have understood in what sense they could have done ill in building themselves a wide house, and large chambers, and ceiling it with cedar, and painting it with vermilion; though they doubtless would have thought that it would have been ill, even for an Egyptian Pharaoh, to build his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong, to use his neighbour’s service without wages, and to give him not for his work. But how any question of unrighteousness and wrong could arise between Pharaoh and strangers, people who were not Egyptians, would have been something new and incomprehensible to Pharaoh. I once asked a fisherman’s boy who was unconcernedly breaking up a basketful of live crabs to bait his father’s dab-nets, if it was not cruel work that he was about? ‘No,’ he replied, ‘because it is their business to find us a living.’ Somewhat in the same way did Pharaoh think of the outside world; and in much the same way, too, did he treat it, when he wished to build himself a temple-palace. In these temple-palaces one hears the groans, and sees the blood, of those who were broken up alive to build them.

There are no buildings in the old world so full of actually written and pictured history as these three temple-palaces, for each of them contains records of the achievements and life of the builder, as they were regarded by himself, and of his religion, as it was understood by himself. The grandest of the three is the Memnonium, or, as it ought to be called, the Rameseum. Here lived the great Rameses. He designed it, built it, and made it his home. He built it after his great Asiatic campaigns. How often here must he have fought his battles o’er again.

The Rameseum bears the same relation to all the other buildings of old Egypt that the Parthenon does to all the other remains of Greek architecture. It was built at the culminating point of Egyptian art and greatness. The conception was an inspiration of a consciousness of excellence and power. Everything here is grand, even for Egypt; the lofty propylons, the Osirid court, the great halls, and, above all, the colossal statue of the king seated on his throne, a monolith of red granite, weighing nearly 900 tons, and which is now lying on the ground in stupendous fragments, its overthrow having been probably the work of the vengeful Persians. Nothing can exceed the interest of this grand structure. It included even a spacious library, on the walls of which were sculptured figures of the god of letters, and of the god of memory. Over the door by which it was entered was the famous inscription, ‘The medicine of the mind.’ And this more than three thousand years ago: and yet we may be sure that it did not contain the first collection of books that had been made in Egypt, but only the first of which we have any record. We know that they had been keeping a regular register of the annual rising of the Nile then for nearly a thousand years, and that their written law ante-dated this library by between two and three thousand years. Both of these facts, to some degree, indicate collections of books. By a concurrence of happy chances, which almost make one regret that a grateful offering can no longer be made to good fortune, papyrus-rolls have been found dated from this library, and in the Háger behind have been discovered the tombs of some of the Royal librarians.

The temple-palace, at Cornéh, of Sethos, the father of Rameses, though built with all the solidity of Egyptian architecture in its best days, is a very much smaller structure than the Rameseum. What remains of it is in very good preservation. It stands about a mile to the north-west of the latter building, some little way back in the Háger, and on somewhat higher ground, near the entrance of the Valley of the Kings. On one of the sphinxes belonging to it are inscribed the names of all the towns in the Delta Sethos conquered. This is an important record, as it shows either that the Semites had been able to some extent to re-establish themselves in the Delta, or that they had never been thoroughly subjugated, in that part of the country, before the time of Sethos. The work, however, was now done thoroughly, for from this time we do not hear of any troubles that can be assigned to them. The sculptures on the walls of this palace are in the freest and boldest style. They relate chiefly to religious acts and ceremonies. As Sethos was the designer and builder of the chief part of the stupendous hypostyle Hall of Karnak, it was not because his architectural ideas were less grand than those of his son that his palace was so much smaller. I can imagine that the reason of this was that he was desirous that none of his attention and resources should be diverted from his great work, which was enough of itself to tax to their utmost all the powers both of the king and of the kingdom. It raises him in our estimation to find that his greatest work was not his own palace, but the hall in which the ecclesiastical diets of Egypt (of course the members were priests) were to be held; for though he was a Pharaoh, and a conquering Pharaoh too, he could see that the kingdom was greater than the king, and that to do great things well one thing must be done at a time.

A little to the south of the Rameseum is the third of these temple-places. It is that of the third Rameses. This, though not so grand and pure in style as the Rameseum, has been better preserved. Upon it, and within it, are the ruins of a Coptic town. The crude brick tenements perched on the roof, and adhering to the walls of the mighty structure, reminded me of the disfigurements of the obelisk of Heliopolis, and of the propylons of Dendera, by the mud-cells which insect architecture had plastered over them. So wags the world. Squalid poverty had succeeded to imperial splendour. But the same fate had waited upon both. The towers of kings, and the hovels of the poor, are now equally desolate and untenanted. One of the courts of the palace had been metamorphosed by the Copts of the neighbourhood into their church. From the expense which must have been incurred in effecting this transformation it is evident that they once formed here a numerous body. The community, however, has entirely disappeared from this place, and nothing—absolutely nothing—has come in its stead. They say in the East that where the Turk sets his foot grass will not grow; but this is true of El Islam generally. It is great at pulling down and destroying, but not equally great at reconstructing.

The Christian church and the Egyptian temple are alike deserted. The old Egyptian and the Coptic Christian have both completely vanished from this scene. It is curious as we stand here, with equal evidence before us of the equal fate of both, to observe how little people think about the fate of the latter in comparison with what they think about the fate of the former; and yet there are, at all events, some reasons to dispose us favourably, and sympathizingly, towards our Coptic co-religionists. If the causes of the feeling could be analyzed, would it be found to have arisen from a half-formed thought that there was no gratitude to be felt to the poor Copt for anything he had done, and that the world had no hope of anything from him? Or would it be because there is really little to interest the thought in the fortunes of a community, of which we know little more than that, by having changed the law of liberty into a petrified doctrine, they had gone a long way towards committing moral and intellectual suicide?

In one of the private apartments of this temple-palace of Rameses III. the sculptures represent the king seated on a chair, which would not be out of place at Windsor, or Schönbrunn. His daughters are standing around him, offering him fruit and flowers, and agitating the air with their fans. He amuses himself with a game of drafts, and with their conversation.

Somewhat in advance of these temple-palaces of the two Rameses, stand on the cultivated plain the two great colossi of Thebes. The space between them is sufficient for a road or street. The easternmost of the pair is the celebrated vocal Memnon of antiquity. It is covered with Roman inscriptions placed upon it by travellers, who were desirous of leaving behind them a record of the fact, that they had not been disappointed in hearing the sound. That was an age when the love of the marvellous, combined with ignorance of what nature could, and could not, do, prepared, and predisposed men, for being deceived. There can be no doubt how the sound was produced. There is in the lap of the seated figure an excavation in which a priest was concealed, who, when the moment had arrived, struck a stone in the figure, of a kind which rang like brass. The Arabs now climb into the lap in a few seconds, and will for a piastre produce the sound for you at any hour of the twenty-four you please. The Emperor Hadrian heard three emissions of the sound on the morning he went to listen. This is a compliment we are not surprised to find the statue paid to the ruler of the world.

This colossus was erected by Amunoph III., a name which, by an easy corruption, the Greeks transformed into Memnon, just as they changed Chufu into Cheops, Amenemha into Mœris, and Sethos into Sesostris.

Behind these colossi stood a temple which had been erected by the same Amunoph. Nothing now remains of this temple but its rubbish heap, and its foundations. It was, however, once connected, architecturally, with the temple he had built at Luxor, on the other side of the river. The street that connected them was called Street Royal. This was the line Sethos, and the two Rameses, must always have taken, in going from their palaces on the western bank to Luxor and Karnak on the eastern side. It must have been about three miles in length. The line of this Royal Street is marked by the two still standing colossi. The fragments of a few others have been found. Those that remain are sixty feet in height. This must have been a grand street, with the two temples at its two ends, and part of it, at all events, consisting of a dromos of such figures.

I have already mentioned that a sphinx-guarded street, about two miles long, ran from Luxor to Karnak. I have also pointed out that the north-west angle of the great enclosure of Karnak was connected, to the eye, with the temples of the western Háger. The precise spot upon the Háger where a temple had been made conspicuous to the eye from Karnak, was what is now called Assassef. Of course from Assassef the lofty structures of Karnak were in full view. In order to place the temple at Assassef reciprocally in view to the spectator standing at Karnak, it was necessary to remove a part of the natural rock wall of the eastern side of the valley of Assassef, and this had been done. The distance from Karnak to Assassef is somewhat over three miles. From this point temples and temple-palaces were continuous along the edge of the Háger, in front of the Necropolis, as far as the western extremity of the Royal Street. Thus was completed the grand Theban Parallelogram. The circuit of the four sides measured, I suppose, about ten miles. It included every one of the great structures of Luxor, Karnak, and Thebes. There can be no doubt but that the lofty propylæa, and obelisks of Luxor and Karnak were intended to be seen from a distance. As the site of Thebes was, of itself, somewhat elevated above the sites of Luxor and Karnak, there was no occasion for obelisks at Thebes; as also they would have been backed by the mountains to one looking from the other side of the river, they would have been inconspicuous, and therefore this architectural form was not used at Thebes: though, indeed, I believe no instance remains to show that it was ever used on that side of the valley, on which the sun set.

The structural connexion of all the mighty, magnificent buildings throughout these ten miles was the grand conception of Rameses the Great, of which I spoke some way back. There never were, we may be quite sure, ten such miles, elsewhere, on the surface of this earth. It is rash to prophesy, but we may doubt whether there ever will be ten such miles again. We may, I think, say there will not be, unless time give birth to two conditions. The first of the two is, that communities should become animated with the desire to do for themselves what these mighty Pharaohs did for themselves in the old days of their greatness; and as man is much the same now that he was then, and as private persons are capable of entertaining the same ideas as kings, there is no à priori reason against the possibility of this. The second condition is, that machinery should eventually give us the power of cutting and moving large blocks of stone at a far cheaper rate than is possible, with that already mighty assistant, at present. For, as the world does not go back, we may be sure that myriads of captives, and of helpless subjects, will never again be employed in this way. It is quite conceivable that the mass of some community may come to feel itself great, the feeling being in the community generally, and not only in the individual at its head; and should they at the same time entertain the desire that the magnificence of their architecture should be in proportion to, and express, the greatness of their ideas and sentiments, then the world may again see hypostyle halls as grand as that of Karnak, and magnificence equal to that of the Osirid Court of the Rameseum: with, however, the difference that they will be constructed by, and for, the community. In this there would be no injury in any way to any one, and there would be nothing to regret, for those who had raised such structures, and were in the habit of using them, would perhaps on that account be less likely to be mean, and little, in the ordinary occurrences of life. At all events there would be nothing demoralizing in making machinery the slave to do the heavy drudgery required in their construction.

There is one source of interest which belongs to the study of the antiquities of Egypt in a higher degree than to the study of the antiquities of any other country. Every object on which the eye may rest, whether great or small, from the grandest architectural monument down to a glass bead, is thoroughly, and genuinely Egyptian. Not a tool with which the compact limestone, or intractable granite was cut; not a colour with which the sculptures or walls were decorated; not a form in their architectural details; not a thought, or practice, or scene the sculptures and paintings represent, was, as far as we know, borrowed, or could have been borrowed, from any neighbouring people. The grand whole, and the minutest detail, everything seen, and everything implied, was strictly autochthonous; as completely the product of the Egyptian mind, as Egypt itself is of the Nile.

CHAPTER XIX. RAMESES THE GREAT GOES FORTH FROM EGYPT.

Rameses the Great was the Alexander of Egypt. His lot was cast in the palmiest days of Egyptian history. He was the most magnificent of the Pharaohs. None had such grand ideas, or gave them such grand embodiment. He carried the arms of Egypt to the utmost limits they ever reached. As one stands at Karnak, Thebes, and Abydos, before the sculptures he set up, and reads in them the records of his achievements, and of the thoughts that stirred within him, the mind is transported to a very distant past—but though so distant, we still may, by the aids we now possess, recover much of its form and features. Let us then endeavour to construct for ourselves some conception of his great expedition from the materials with which the monuments and history supply us.

Egypt is very flourishing. Pharaoh has an army of 700,000 men and great resources, and so he becomes dissatisfied at remaining idle in his happy valley. There is a wonderful world up in the north-east. He would like to be to that world what we might describe as an Egyptian Columbus and Cortez in one. He wishes to signalize the commencement of his reign with some achievement that will be for ever famous. But these distant people have never wronged him: they had never burnt his cities, or driven off his cattle. If they have ever heard of the grandeur of Egypt, they can hardly tell whether it belongs to this world of theirs, or to some other world. Considerations, however, of this kind do not affect him.

But there are many difficulties in his way. The very first step of the proposed expedition will carry his army into a desert of some days’ journey. How is this desert to be crossed? That is disposed of by the answer that his father Sethos, and even some of the predecessors of Sethos on the throne of Egypt, had crossed it.—But how is his army to be supported in that unknown world beyond? How are provisions to be procured, for they cannot be supplied from Egypt? The people they will invade can support themselves; what they have must be taken from them, and war must be made to support itself.—But supposing all goes well as they advance, how shall they ever get back, with their arms worn out, and their ranks thinned, and with a vengeful foe barring their return with fortified places, and swarming upon them from every side? They must, on their outward march, raze all these fortified places, and make as clean a sweep as they can of the population of the countries they pass through.—And how shall the Egyptians live when Nature shall assail them with frost and snow? Will their linen robes be then sufficient? They must do what they can. They will be able to take the woollen garments of the enemies they destroy. The difficulties, then, could not deter him. He must see this great and wonderful world outside. He must flaunt his greatness in its face. He must collect the treasures and the slaves that will be required for building the mighty temples and palaces he contemplates. These monuments he must have; and he will record upon them that he did not, in raising them, tax and use up Egyptians.

And so it becomes a settled thing that he and his armies shall go forth from Egypt. It would not have been the East had not the host, with which he was to go forth, been a mighty one—as God’s army, the locusts, for multitude. Everything must be on a grand scale; and everything must be foreseen and provided for, as is the custom of the wise Egyptians.

Then began a gathering of men, of horses, of chariots, of asses, such as had never been seen on the earth before—as much greater than other gatherings as the Pyramids were greater than other buildings. In those mighty structures they had had an example, now for a thousand years, of the style and fashion in which should be carried out whatever Egypt undertook. Day and night were the messengers going to and fro on the bank, and on the river. Many new forges were put in blast, many new anvils set up. Never had the sound of the hammer been so much heard before, never had been seen before so many buyers and lookers-on in the armourers’ bazaars. There were canvas towns outside the gates of Thebes, of This, of Memphis, and of other great cities. Never had so many horses been seen picketed before; men wondered where they all had come from. On the river there were boats full of men, and boats full of grain, to people and to feed the canvas towns. Never had the landing-places been so crowded before. Many a river trader, in those days, had to drop away from his moorings against the bank, to make room for the grain-boats and the troop-boats of the great king. Never had the temples been so full before: never had there been so many processions, and so many offerings. The gods must be propitiated for the great expedition: it must be undertaken in their names. Mightier temples and richer offerings must be promised for the return of the king and of the host, when they shall bring back victory. Many said in those days of preparation, ‘The gods be with the king and with his armies.’ Many said in their hearts, ‘Who can tell? The gods had made Egypt great, but would they go forth from Egypt? The king was as a god, but could he do all things?’ This was an issue that could not be forecast.

Such was the talk of many in the mud-built villages, as well as in hundred-gated Thebes, in old Abydos, in discrowned Memphis, and in all the cities of all the gods—for every god had his own city. Nothing else had much interest, either in the mansions of the rich, or in the hovels of the poor. The wives and daughters of the people—while in the evening they walked down to the river-side with their water-jars, or, when the sun was down, clustered together at the street-corners and at the village-gate, sitting on the ground—had never tarried before so long at those watering-places, those gates, and those street-corners. And all the while the musterings and the preparations went on like the work of a machine, for the king had the whole people well in hand, and he bent all Egypt to the work as if it had been one man.

And everything is now complete. The last processions and offerings have been made. The aid of the gods has been promised. The priests had thought that Egypt, at all events, would be secure, whatever might befall those going forth; that no abiding evil consequences could ever ensue to the country itself. In this they knew not the future. If all should not go well, Egypt, they deemed, could spare some of her soldier caste, and that her priests would in that take no hurt. As to the stranger, no matter what his thirst for vengeance, it never would be slaked in Egypt.

And now the host has reached Pelusium, the place which, under the name of Abaris, had been fortified so strongly on the expulsion of the Hyksos. This was the great rendezvous. In that neighbourhood the several army-corps had been assembling for the last two or three months. And now it is near the end of winter. Water will still be found in the wadies of Mount Cassius; and they will be in time to reap for themselves the harvests of Syria; and, as the season goes on, of the countries further to the north. At last they advance into the desert, and the host is brought together for the first time. Never before had been seen such a host. All the might and all the glory of Egypt are there; all the discipline and all the forethought. These Egyptians, who are so fond of colour and of flags at home, have not gone forth to show themselves to the world without this bravery. The desert cannot be seen for the myriads of men and animals that cover it. It has become as gay as a flower-garden. The bright sun is glinting from untarnished arms.

And so they crossed the desert, and got among the cities which were afterwards known as the cities of the Philistines, the cities of the Plain of Sharon. And now commenced their cruel work. Their two great objects were to provide themselves with supplies; and then to sweep away everything, both fortified places, and men capable of bearing arms, that might impede their return, they knew not when, or how. These people had never troubled Egypt, but most of them were akin to the hated Hyksos. No justification was needed, but that would justify anything. The Egyptian host must take all it wanted, though those from whom they take it perish; and they must leave neither foe, nor pretended friend, behind. And so they went on, clearing off everything, man and beast, fenced city and corn-field. It was done ruthlessly. Their swords and spears were seldom dry. You see on the sculptures the king set up when he returned home, how he treated the people whose countries he passed through, for this was not an expedition against enemies, but against the tribes and nations whose countries he chose to pass through and desolate.

And so they went on. They swept over the Plain of Esdraelon, and they passed up by Lebanon and Damascus into Armenia. They then overran Persia and Media. At last they reached Bactria, the district of which modern Bokhara is now the capital. Here they effected a lodgment, which kept this region in subjection and tributary to them for some generations. It is curious that in this remote and almost inaccessible centre of Asia the Greeks also in after times succeeded in establishing themselves, and were able to maintain the position they had acquired in it for several centuries. This was the Egyptians’ extremest point to the East. They now turned their faces westward, and, having overrun Asia Minor, they crossed into Thrace. From Thrace they appear to have endeavoured to make the circuit of the Euxine. This brought them into collision with the Scythians, whom they defeated. Among those peoples whose cities he destroyed, and whose country he ravaged, Rameses had probably taken no especial notice of the Persians. They, however, were the people who were destined to retaliate the wanton and enormous cruelties of the undertaking, in the success of which he saw only the establishment of the glory and power of Egypt. In the days of their empire they will not only repay Egypt for this expedition, but they will also follow the footsteps of Rameses through Asia Minor, across the Bosphorus into Thrace, and through Thrace, and across the Danube, into Scythia. But from the wide inhospitable steppes they will not bring back the barren victories—no others could be obtained there—which will enable the Egyptians to boast that the achievements of Darius had not equalled those of Rameses.

At the eastern end of the Black Sea, in the district known to the Greeks by the name of Colchis, Rameses left a detachment of his army for the purpose of permanently occupying a position. Those thus left behind established themselves on the spot; and long afterwards, by their practice of the rite of circumcision, their language, complexion, and hair, retained the evidence of their origin. As their hair was woolly and their skin black, they must have been detached from the Ethiopian contingent of the army.[4]

Everywhere throughout this great raid Rameses set up statues and tablets with inscriptions upon them to commemorate his achievements, making many of them insulting to the people he had conquered, and whose countries he had devastated. One of these inscriptions remains to this day on the living rock to the north-west of Damascus, near the mouth of the river the Greeks called Lycus, and which is now known by the name of El Kelb. Upon it are still legible the names of Rameses and of the gods Ra (the sun), and Ammon, whom especially he served, as the gods of his great capital, Thebes.

And so, after nine years of such warfare as we have been describing, he returns to favoured and protected Egypt, to thank Ra and Ammon for the favour and protection they had vouchsafed to him, and for all the mighty deeds they had enabled him to do, and to preserve for ever the memory of those deeds on the walls of their temples. He brings back with him much treasure, the spoils of the nations, and multitudes of captives. Both this treasure and these captives he uses up upon the temples, and upon the monuments, palaces, and cities, he now builds.

Without any possible provocation, and without any advantage to himself, if the wear and tear of his own kingdom be weighed in the balance against the spoil and the slaves he brought home, he had, like a lava torrent, passed over what were then some of the fairest portions of the world. His swarthy, bloodthirsty, destroying host must have appeared to the inhabitants of those countries like the legions of the lower world let loose. This was too dreadful a work even for those times ever to be forgotten.

And it was remembered some centuries afterwards, when the tables were turned, and Egypt was invaded by Cambyses. In the Persian army were contingents from many people who had treasured up the memory of what Rameses the Great had on this expedition done to their forefathers, and of what several of the successors of Rameses on the throne of Egypt had in like manner done to many of the peoples of Asia. The day of reckoning came, and the reckoning was fearfully exacted. We see the marks, remaining on the temples to this day, of the retributive fury of the Persians against the gods of Egypt.

CHAPTER XX. GERMANICUS AT THEBES.

While I was at Thebes the account often recurred to me which Tacitus gives of the visit of Germanicus to the monuments of that city. He was, being then about thirty years of age, the most accomplished and popular prince the family of the Cæsars produced. His many civic and martial virtues had attracted to him the eyes and the hearts of the world. These high expectations, however, his foul murder speedily and cruelly extinguished. The attention he bestowed on the historical monuments of Egypt enhances the regard we feel for him.

How many ingredients of interest would a picture combine which presented to us the young Cæsar standing, as the historian describes him, in the temple-palace of Rameses, by the side of the great kings prostrate granite colossus, attended by his Roman suite, and some of the elders of the Egyptian priests, who are explaining to him the records on the monuments. A pendant to it, which would possess sufficient connecting points and contrasts of interest, would be a picture of his adoptive ancestor, the great Dictator, in the Palace of the Ptolemies, dallying with the Calypso of the Nile.

Here is the passage from Tacitus’s Annals I had in my mind. ‘It was in the Consulate of M. Silanus and L. Norbanus that Germanicus visited Egypt. He gave out that he wished to see to the affairs of the province, but his real object was to make himself acquainted with its antiquities.... Starting from Canopus, and ascending the Nile, he reached the vast remains of Thebes. Enormous structures were still standing, covered with hieroglyphics, which chronicled the bygone grandeur of Egypt. One of the oldest and most distinguished of the priests was ordered to interpret to him the record. He told him that it stated that the population of the country had, at that old time to which it referred, been able to supply an army of 700,000 men of the military age; and that, with that army, King Rameses had conquered Libya, Ethiopia, Media, Persia, Bactria, and Scythia; and the whole of Syria and Armenia, and of the neighbouring Cappadocia. That he had then added to his empire all between the coast of Bithynia on one side, and that of Lycia on the other. They also read the amounts of tribute he had imposed on each nation; the weights of silver and of gold; the number of horses, and of different kinds of arms; the offerings to be made to the temples of ivory and of incense, and the quantity of corn, and of various kinds of vessels. The totals were not less magnificent than those now imposed by Parthian violence, or Roman might.

‘There were also other wonders to which Germanicus directed his attention. Among these were the stone figure of Memnon, which, when struck by the rays of the rising sun, emits a sound resembling the human voice; the Pyramids, which had, in a region of drifting and hardly passable sands, been raised by the rivalry and wealth of kings to the height of mountains; lakes that had been excavated for the storage of the overflow of the Nile; perplexing intricacies and inexplorable recesses, which in no direction could be penetrated by those who might wish to enter them. After he had visited these sights he went to Elephantiné and Syené, the gate formerly of the Roman Empire, which, however, has now been extended to the Red Sea.’

One would much like to know how Tacitus got these particulars of the Prince’s Egyptian tour. Romans were in the habit of keeping diaries, and we cannot doubt but that the practice was followed by one so accomplished and thoughtful as Germanicus. Was it then from the journal of the Prince himself? The family might have allowed the historian to make use of it for the purposes of his forthcoming work. Or was it from the journal of some unconscious Russell of the Prince’s suite? Or had Tacitus himself accompanied the Prince?

It may be worth noticing that the account the priests gave to Germanicus of the conquests of Rameses the Great was substantially the same as that which had been given to Herodotus four centuries and a half earlier. It was the same record, read from the same lithotome. Of course, Herodotus gives to him the name, by which he was known among the Greeks, of Sesostris.

All these monuments of early Egyptian history—for the remains of even the Labyrinth are still sufficient to enable one to make out the plan of the structure—our English Prince had an opportunity, a few years back, of seeing very much in the condition in which the Roman Prince saw them 1,850 years ago. The Empire which the world was expecting would have, under him, its eternal foundations strengthened, is now, like the Egypt he was studying, a thing of the past. We may be permitted to entertain the double hope, that such precious records of mans history may, for other thousands of years yet to come, escape the common fate of man’s works, and still not outlive the empire of their later visitor.

CHAPTER XXI. MOSES’S WIFE.

Whilst at Assouan we received an intimation from the Governor that, if agreeable, he would, at a certain hour in the afternoon, present himself to our party. It was impossible that anything in the world could give us greater pleasure. And so at the appointed time he arrived, attended by a kavass and a pipe-bearer. The former he left on the bank, the latter came on board with him. The Governor turned out to be quite as black as a Guinea negro, but there the resemblance ended. His face was a good, rather long oval, and his features as fine as those of a Greek Apollo. Off a straight forehead he had a straight nose with a thin nostril. There was no trace of coarseness about his mouth. His skin was as smooth, and soft, and thin as that of an Arab girl. He was above six feet in height, and clean-limbed. His build conveyed the idea of strength combined with lithesome, panther-like agility; though, as he sat leisurely smoking his pipe, and sipping his coffee, he did not at all look like a man who was ever in a hurry. His manners were easy and dignified, full of grace and smiles. He was very intelligent, and readily answered any questions that were put to him through the dragoman about the condition of the people, and of the country. He had been born at Assouan, and had never been out of the neighbourhood. I regret now that I did not ask him some questions about his parentage. I suppose his mother, at least, must have been a Nubian, or Abyssinian. The colour of his complexion indicated rather the former, his features perhaps the latter. Possibly there had been much mixture of blood in his family for some generations, perhaps through odalisque channels; for the children of odalisques and of regular wives are treated as equals. An European might have made a companion, or friend, of this man, a footing upon which he never could place himself with a negro.

I have given the above account of our visitor for an historical purpose. We find that some of the queens of Egypt were black. So must have been the wife of Moses. Their physical and mental characteristics, then, I suppose, must have resembled those of the Governor of Assouan.

CHAPTER XXII. EGYPTIAN DONKEY-BOYS.

The donkey-boys, the gamins of Egypt, are a quick-witted and amusing variety of the species. They are never sulky, or stupid. A joke is not lost upon them, and it is pleasing to see their supple features lighting up at its recognition. They often originate something of the kind themselves. The detection of their attempted exactions, and little villanies, is to them a source of merriment that is inexhaustible.

They have picked up some English. What they have acquired they teach each other, and are always on the look-out to add, from the talk they have with their customers, a word or two more to their small store. I was sometimes asked by the bare-legged urchin running by my side to teach him English. At Benihassan, having one of these volunteer scholars who was asking the English for all the objects we passed, I found it was some time before he could pronounce the ns at the end of the word beans, with a single emission of breath. We were passing through a bean-field. He endeavoured to get over his difficulty by the introduction of a vowel, making the word beanis. I had observed that the Arabs at the Pyramids dealt with the word sphinx in precisely the same way, disintegrating the x, and introducing an i, thus making it sphinkis. So the captain of our boat, being unable to utter the letters cl without the intervention of a vowel, changed the name of one of our party from Clark into Kellark. The English expression best known and most used in Egypt is ‘All right.’ With some this represents the whole language, and, with the requisite variations in tone and gesticulation, does duty on all occasions. I heard one evening a sailor on board the boat giving another sailor a lesson in our noble tongue. The whole lesson consisted of the two phrases, ‘All right,’ and ‘D⸺d rogue.’

At Karnak the donkey-boy, who happened one day to be with me, asked me to teach him something. I told him he must first say something himself in English, that I might be able to adjust my instruction to his proficiency. Without a moment’s hesitation he gave the following specimen of his attainments in the language. It may also be taken as a specimen of the progress his youthful wits had made in the civilized art of flattery. ‘English man come see Karnak say, “Very fine! glorious!” French man come see Karnak say, “G— d⸺.”’ Had I been a Frenchman, the national imprecation would have been assigned to its rightful owner.

The following day the youngster whose beast I was riding to the same place, after having endeavoured to palm off upon me some Brummagem scarabs, took from his bosom a half-fledged dove, and holding it up by its wings said with a merry grin, ‘Deso bono antico.’ Italians abound in Egypt, and many of the natives in the towns have picked up these three Italian words. ‘Bono’ and ‘non bono’ are in universal use.

At Thebes, where the rides to the catacombs of the Kings, and in the opposite direction to the tombs of the Queens, are long, and in the hot desert, you will probably be attended, in addition to the donkey-boy, by a girl with a water-jar on her head. The endurance of these little bodies surprises one. The same girl accompanied me two days consecutively, from about 10 A.M. till 4 P.M., running, bare-footed, over the pointed and angular broken stones of the desert, in the blazing sun, keeping up with the donkey, and holding all the time the water-jar on her head with one hand. She had opportunities for resting when we were inspecting tombs, and when we were taking our luncheon. To an European she would have appeared about fourteen years of age, perhaps she was eleven. She would have made a very pretty water-colour figure, with her clear yellow ivory-smooth skin, large liquid black eyes, snow-white teeth, coral lips and necklace of the same; the brown gooleh on her head, and her hand raised to support it. She might have stood for her portrait, either at the moment when, replacing the water-jar on her head with one hand, she was holding out the other, with an imploring smile on her face, for backsheesh; or as, with a grateful and satisfied smile, she was depositing the piastre in her bosom. Her smooth, yellow complexion had in it more of the crocus than of the nut, probably because she had more of old Egyptian than of Arabic blood in her veins, through, perhaps, some sword-converted descendant of those Copts, who had constructed their church in one of the courts of the neighbouring temple-palace of Medinet Habou. As to the water she carried, it had been dipped out of the muddy river, and having been churned all day on her head in the sun, could have possessed no merit beyond that of moistening a parched mouth and throat. As to myself, I had no need of the little body’s water-jar. On these occasions happy is the man whom nature has so compounded, or his manner of life so trained, that he can go a dozen hours together without feeling, or fancying himself, tired, hungry, or thirsty. Those who are always craving for a bottle of beer, and are only made more heated by the draught, are not so much their own masters as they might have been.

I fell in with an amusing specimen of the Arab village girl, at Benihassan. I had been to the tombs that are known by the name of this place. They are cut in the rock of the hill-side, and are as interesting and instructive as any to be found elsewhere in Egypt, both architecturally and pictorially. They contain some arched ceilings, though not of construction, but excavated in that form, and sixteen-sided piers, each face being slightly concaved, and closely resembling the Doric style. The illustrations, on the walls, of Egyptian life in the remote days of the primæval monarchy, to which these paintings belong, are varied and curious. They have unfortunately been somewhat injured, not so much, however, by time, as from the tombs having been used for human habitation. As I was riding back from an inspection of these antique monuments, an Arab girl, not of the crocus, but of the nut-brown tint, attached herself to me, and was very pressing for backsheesh. Having for some time held out against her petition, she suddenly sprang forward a few paces, and threw herself on the ground, exactly in the donkeys path, and became violently convulsed with a storm of uncontrollable agony. In her convulsions she shrieked, and threw dust on her head. I rode on, apparently without taking any notice of the victim of overwhelming disappointment. In a few moments she was up again, and again at my side with the same petition. A few moments later she enacted a second time the scene of distracted agony. But finding that one’s flinty heart was not moved in the way expected by these harrowing performances,

for the remainder of the way she ran alongside, still holding out her hand, but now all open sunshine and winsome smiles. Her whole simple being was so entirely bent to the one point of getting a piastre, that the little exhibition had an interest one was unwilling to terminate.

Those who have hitherto seen only the muddy-red skins, and leathery mulattoes of the western world, will be surprised at finding the soft, smooth browns and yellows of the east so pleasing. They may almost come to think that these are the most natural complexions both for man and woman; and that in this matter the white of our lilies is—but such a heresy is inconceivable—rather the defect than the perfection of colour.

The Cairo donkey-boy shows some sense of fun in the names he keeps in store for his donkey. If the man whose custom he desires to secure appears to be an American, the donkey will, perhaps, be recommended under the name of Yankee Doodle: ‘No donkey, sir, like it in all the world.’ If an Englishman, it may become Madame Rachel: ‘a donkey that is beautiful for ever.’ This will be inappropriate to the gender of the beast; but that is a matter of no consequence. If a Frenchman—the French are very unpopular in Egypt—it will assume the name of Bismarck: ‘a very strong donkey that can go anywhere.’ This must be meant to repel a badly-paying customer, or it may be used to attract a German.

The unmercifulness of these boys to their donkeys—travellers would do well to discourage it—arises partly from a wish that the present engagement should be got through as quickly as possible, in order that the boy and donkey may be ready for another, and partly from a wish that you should think so well of the donkey’s pace as to be induced to hire it again. You see what is passing in their little minds, by their frequently asking you whether the donkey is not a good one. Should they carry their way of making their poor beasts appear good too far for your humanity, it may be allowable to administer to them the means for understanding that you think the donkey ill-used, and the boy bad, and that, for this purpose, it is the stick that is good. Theoretically, they may not disagree with you, for they hear at home a saying that the stick came down from heaven—by which is inculcated on the youthful mind the lesson that it is a great gain to get off a payment that is demanded of one, by submitting, instead, to the bastinado.

With this single exception of unmercifulness, I have nothing to say against these juvenile Mustaphas and Mahommeds. They are always smiling, and never tired. I had one run by my side from Bellianéh to Abydos and back, which, I suppose, must be seventeen miles. They will gladly do you any little service they can, carrying anything for you, or running a long way to get you what you may want—of course, for a few piastres. When we had got on board the steamer at Ismailia, and were on the point of starting for Port Saïd, my companion found that he had left his binocular at the hotel. He told a donkey-boy, who happened to be at hand, to ride off, as fast as he could go, to the hotel, and ask for the instrument. The boy went, and brought it back as quickly as his donkey could carry him. Had he been dishonestly inclined, he might have ridden home with it, for he knew that the steamer was on the point of starting. With this probable piece of honesty in my mind, on the following day, while rowing about the harbour of Port Saïd, I asked the Arab boatman what his father had taught him. Had he taught him to be honest? ‘Yes, he had.’ Had he taught him to speak the truth? ‘No, he had not.’ And small blame to him for the omission, seeing that deception and endurance are the only means the people have for meeting the never-ending exactions of every one in authority.

CHAPTER XXIII. SCARABS.

It would have been strange, indeed, if the Egyptians, who were so sharp-sighted in detecting what, from their point of view, appeared to be the fragments of Deity scattered among the lower animals—bird, beast, fish, reptile, and insect—had failed to observe what we regard as the instincts of the common Egyptian beetle.

Few people visit Egypt without bringing back an antique scarab or two. They are to be found everywhere throughout the country; and yet it must be nearly two thousand years since one of these antiques was carved, or moulded. In what vast numbers, then, must they have been manufactured by the old Egyptians. The scarab is also as common in their hieroglyphics as it is in the rubbish-mounds of their old cities. These facts give us the measure of the impression the habits of the insect made upon them.

It is one of the commonest out-o’-door insects in Egypt. At the season for depositing its eggs it alights upon the bank of the river, where the soil is still moist, about the consistency of tough dough, or clay sufficiently trodden for brick-making. Upon this it lays its eggs, arranging them closely together. It then forms the spot on which it has laid them into a perfect sphere, by adding clay to the top of it, and cutting away the earth around and beneath it. The sphere being thus completed, it thrusts the extremities of its two inward curved hind legs into the opposite sides of it, and by pushing backwards gives to it a revolving motion; the inserted points of its hind legs forming the axis on which it revolves. In this way it pushes and rolls it back to the edge of the desert, often a long way off.

Who could be so dull as not to see in this sphere, full of the seeds of life, a perfect symbol of this terrestrial globe, formed by creative wisdom and energy, and everywhere fraught with the quickening germs of endlessly manifold being? And so the beetle became the symbol of the Creator.

But when the symbol of the Creator, with his burden, the symbol of the life-containing globe, had arrived at the edge of the desert, it there excavated a gallery a foot or two deep—a catacomb, a grave—into which it descended. What divine forethought in thus foreseeing the effects of the damp, and of the inundation! and these primæval observers had not extinguished thought on these subjects by labelling such acts as instincts, and then putting them away on a shelf of the mind. This work, also, of the insect did not escape them. It had, as it seemed, buried itself. It thus, at all events, sanctioned their mode of burial: though, perhaps, it had previously taught them where, and how, to bury—in the dry desert, in excavated galleries. It was in this way the young world learnt. What they thought was what they had seen.

But there was another lesson, or rather series of lessons, which, through its wondrous transformations, this beetle taught the old Egyptians. To begin at the beginning: the first period of its existence it passed in a drear subterranean abode, with feeble senses, narrowly circumscribed powers, unloved and unloving, ungladdened by pleasant sights, only terrified by the unintelligible voices that at times reached it from the sun-lit world above; its best pleasure to eat dirt; its only employment to grow into fitness for future changes.

Having dragged out the time apportioned to that first base condition, it was translated into the second. Nature’s hand swathed it into a chrysalis. Movement now ceased. Food could no longer be taken. The avenues of the senses were closed. The functions of life were put in abeyance. But life itself was not extinguished; it was only suspended while new transformations were being effected to qualify the insect for its perfected existence.

At last, when all was completed, from the swathed-up chrysalis burst forth a marvellously furnished body. What had painfully crawled in the earth, now spurned the earth, and flew to and fro, at its will, in the air. It had passed into another and totally different stage of being; and, too, into a new world where life was bright and free. And, besides, it was now full of Divine sagacity, such as became its new life.

All this was nature’s triptych in illustration of the three stages of man’s being. The earth-born, dirt-fed grub represented the first, the earthly stage, during which man is the slave of toil and suffering, the victim of grovelling cares, the sport of ever-recurring accidents—a knot of troubles and incapacities, in which, however, are concealed the precious germs of eventual glory and blessedness.

The chrysalis was an explanation, which he that ran might read, of the conditions and purpose of the mummy period, that middle stage, without cares, or wants, or enjoyments; the long undreaming sleep, during which the incapacities of the first stage are transforming themselves into the capacities and powers of the last. It was so with the chrysalis: and they believed, and taught, that it would be so with the mummy, the first stage of whose course was now closed; and for that reason it was that they embalmed his body into a human chrysalis.

The winged insect bursting from the cerements of its suspended, into the happy freedom of its new aërial life, was a type, addressed by nature to the eye, and through the eye to the understanding, to prefigure the soul of man, at last emancipated from all earthly and fleshly hindrances, soaring to the empyrean regions of eternal day, for the full enjoyment of its predestined glory, for which—all that had gone before having been the long and troublous discipline—it is now completely equipped. In that last transformation from the chrysalis to the winged insect was an assurance in nature’s handwriting of the resurrection from the mummy condition, in a higher form, and with enlarged endowments.

What volumes of profoundest doctrine, what revelations in this little beetle! For thought was not yet ossified, as in after times, into those rigid forms, with which neither history nor our own experience is unfamiliar, and which oblige men to reject obstinately, and to denounce loudly, everything that does not support the existing settled system; but was still growing vigorously, and assimilating freely what it fed on: and so the eye and heart were still open to the lessons of nature.

The reason, then, why in modern Egypt you give an Arab boy no more than a piastre, or two, for an antique scarab, is that when men began to observe and think, six thousand, perhaps twice six thousand years ago, the Egyptian beetle taught the Egyptians much. Therein was the reason why they loved to have the stones of their rings and seals cut into the form of this beetle. For this reason it was that they used it for amulets: there was much of the divinity in it. This was why it became a favourite object for bearing an inscription that was to commemorate a royal hunt, or a royal marriage. Probably a scarab, with an inscribed record of the event, was sent to all who had been present on the occasion. There are such now in our British Museum. It was for these reasons that the scarab with expanded wings was laid on the mummy. And I can imagine their having been used in many other ways, as New Year’s gifts, as wedding presents, as mourning rings, such as were customary here a generation or two back; as tickets of admission to festivals and funeral processions, and even as tokens of membership in sacred guilds and other associations, each bearing its appropriate inscription, containing, of course, the name of some God; for that was a sanction that was sought for everything that was done in Egypt.

CHAPTER XXIV. EGYPTIAN BELIEF IN A FUTURE LIFE.

The ancestors of the Egyptians, when they entered the valley of the Nile, did not come either empty-handed, or empty-headed. They brought with them their looms, their ploughs and seed-corn, and their sheep and cattle: for what they had been used to in the old home was what they would wish to have in the new. They did this whether they came by land or by sea. None of the first European settlers in the New World found any difficulty in carrying with them their live stock across the broad and stormy Atlantic. They brought with them also, and which was of more importance than all the rest, their belief in an after life. We are as certain of this, whether they came in ten, or twenty thousand years ago, as we are that, at a geological epoch so remote from the present time that the organized life of the Earth has since been changed again and again, there were winds and tides, and sunshine and rain. Every branch of the Aryan family, from the Ganges to the Thames, participated in this belief; it had, therefore, existed among them at a date anterior to their dispersion. It occupied in their organized thought the position the vertebrate skeleton does in the animal organization. It was the governing idea. Everything contributed to it, or was deduced from it: either, went to feed it, or grew out of it. Those races of animals which have not arrived at vertebration are the lowest forms, with the fewest specialized organs: still they appear to have a kind of tendency towards it, or virtual capacity for it. Just so of the mental condition of some portions of our race with respect to this idea of a future life. There are some whose thought is so rudimentary that it has never yet grown into this form; but they are the lowest minds: still, even they have a kind of tendency towards it, and of capacity for it—though, indeed, several such tribes and people have died out without ever having attained to it. And so will it be with many of those who, at the present day, are in this condition. They will be swept away by those who possess the higher form of organized thought, without their ever reaching this point in the progress of moral and intellectual being.

If the question be asked—Why we do ourselves believe in a future life?—the answer is—That we believe in it for the same reason that Homer and Virgil, Cheops and Darius, Porus, Arminius, and Galgacus believed in it—that is to say, because our remote, but common ancestors, had passed out of the state in which thought is chaos, and had reached the state in which thought has begun to organize itself; and because the vertebral column of the form in which it had with them begun to organize itself was belief in a future state. None of all of us, whether dwellers on the banks of the Ganges, the Thames, or the Nile, could any more get rid of, or dispense with, or act independently of, that formative column of thought, than our animal constitution could of its formative column of bone. Belief in God, in moral distinctions, in personal responsibility, in the supremacy of intelligence—that is to say, that it is intelligence which orders, and co-ordinates God, the universe, and man, would all be powerless and unmeaning, were it not for this belief in a future life. These, and others beliefs may feed and support it; but it acts in, and through them, and gives them their chief value. It puts man in permanent relation with God, and the universe. Hitherto with us nothing else has done this. Without it these other beliefs would have been mere chaotic elements of thought.

We must see this in order that we may understand the life, the mind, and even the arts of the ancient Egyptians. Nothing about them is intelligible if their belief in a future life is lost sight of; for this it was that made them what they were, and enabled them to do what they did. The connexion with it of their greatest achievement is close and evident. As an instrument of human progress, language, of course, takes precedence of everything. Nothing would be possible without it. But, if man had stopped short at the acquisition of language, not much would have been gained. Something more was needed, and that something was the art of writing, which is that extension of the uses of language, without which no serviceable amount of knowledge could have been attained, or retained. Without this little could have been done. With it everything became possible. The further we advance by its aid, the longer, and the broader, and the more glorious are the vistas that open before us. Now, of this we are certain, that the ancient Egyptians discovered this art. The idea of the possibility of speaking words to the mind through the eye, and rendering thought fixed, and permanent, and portable, and transmissible from generation to generation, of committing it, not to the air, but to stone, or, still better, to paper, first occurred to the Egyptians. And they were the first to give effect to the idea, which they did in their hieroglyphic form of writing, out of which afterwards grew the hieratic and demotic forms.

It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of this discovery. It contained in its single self the possibility of the whole of science, art, law, religion, history, beyond their merest rudiments, which were all that would have been attainable without it. It contained all this as completely as the acorn contains the oak. Where, and what would any and every one of them now be were it not for that discovery? Indeed, what does it not contain? There are now 31,000,000 souls within the United Kingdom, had it not been for that discovery probably there would not have been 3,000,000. Neither the readers nor the writer of this book would have existed. None of the existing population of Europe would have seen the light. Other combinations would have taken place. Europe would be sparsely tenanted by tribes of rude barbarians—only a little less rude in its favoured southern clime. The New World would be still unknown. On the day some Egyptian priest, perhaps at This, thought out a scheme for representing words and sounds by signs, Christianity, the British Constitution, and the steam-engine became possible. With respect to so great, so all-important a discovery, one on which the destinies of the human race so entirely depended, every particular of its history must be deeply interesting. Of one particular, however, at all events, we are certain: we know where it had its birth. And this is what has made so many in all times desire to visit Egypt. It was that they wished to see the land of those who had conferred this much-containing gift upon mankind—not all of them seeing this distinctly, yet having a kind of intuition that the wisdom of the Egyptians was a mighty wisdom to which civilization, through this discovery, owed itself.

We know, too, another particular, and that is, that this discovery was first used for sacred and religious purposes; and it must have been invented for the purposes for which it was first used. We can imagine what prompted the thought that issued in the discovery. We can trace out what it was that set the discovering mind at work. It must have been some idea in Egypt that was more active, and so more productive than ideas that were stirring in men’s minds elsewhere. It must have been some need in Egypt that spurred men on more than the needs felt elsewhere. And this idea could only have been that of the future life; and this need that which arose out of this idea, the need of recording the laws it prompted, and the ritual which grew out of it; and of aiding, embellishing, and advancing in their general laws, their religious observances, their arts, and what afterwards became their science and their history, the whole life of the people which was struggling to rise into higher conditions, more worthy of their great idea.

But we must give some account of what the Egyptian doctrine of the future life actually was. Fortunately, in the Book of the Dead, we have for its historical reconstruction the identical materials the old Egyptians had for its construction in their own moral being. This Book of the Dead was one of their Sacred Scriptures. Its contents are very various and comprehensive, and are quite sufficient to give us a distinct idea of what we are in want of here. It is divided into 165 sections. Its object is to supply the man, now in the mummy stage of existence, with all the instructions he will require in his passage to, and into, the future world. It contains the primæval hymns that were to be sung, and the prayers that were to be offered, as the mummy was lowered into the pit of the catacomb or grave; and the invocations that were to be used over the mummy, the various amulets appended to it, and the bandages in which it was swathed. These bandages had great mystical importance. Some of them have been unrolled to the length of 1,000 yards; and we are told that there is no form of bandage known to modern surgery of which instances may not be found on the mummies.

What has now been mentioned forms, as it were, the introductory part of the book. The rest is devoted to what is to be done by the mummy himself on his passage to, and entrance into, the unseen world. It taught him what he was to say and do during the days of trying words, and on the occasion of the great and terrible final judgment. An image of the rendering of this awful account had already been presented to the eyes of the surviving friends and neighbours at the funeral. It was a scene in which the mummy had often taken part himself in the days of his own earthly trial. The corpse, on its way to the grave, had to pass the sacred lake of the nome, or department. When it had reached the shore there was a pause in the progress of the procession, and forty-two judges, or jurymen, stood forward to hear any accusations that any one was at liberty to advance against the deceased. If any accusation could be substantiated to the satisfaction of the judges, whether the deceased were the Pharaoh who had sat on the throne, or a poor peasant or artizan, the terrible sentence, to an Egyptian beyond measure terrible, was passed upon him, that his mummy was to be excluded from burial. The awful consequence of this was 3,000 years of wandering in darkness, and in animal forms.

But, supposing that the mummy had passed this earthly ordeal, he was then committed to his earthly resting-place; and this Book of the Dead, either the whole, or what was deemed the most essential part of it, was placed on, or in the mummy case: sometimes it was inscribed on the sarcophagus. These were the instructions which were to guide him on the long, dread, difficult course upon which he was about to enter. He will have to appear in the hall of two-fold Divine Justice—the justice, that is, which rewards as well as punishes. Osiris, the judge of the dead, will look on, as president of the court. He will wear the emblem of truth, and the tablet breast-plate, containing the figure of Divine Justice. The scales of Divine Justice will be produced. The heart of the mummy will be placed in one scale, and the figure of Divine Justice in the other. The mummy will stand by the scale in which his heart is being weighed. Anubis, the Guardian of the Dead, will watch the opposite scale. Thoth, who had been the revealer to man of the divine words, of which the Sacred Books of Egypt were transcripts, will be present to record the sentence.

The book contains, for the use of the mummy, the forty-two denials of sin he will have to make in the presence of this awful court, while his heart is in the balance, and the forty-two avenging demons, all ape-faced, symbolizing man in the extremity of degradation, with reason perverted and without conscience, and each with the pitiless knife in his raised hand, will be standing by, ready to claim him, or some part of him, if the balance indicates that the denial is false. These forty-two denials have reference to the ordinary duties of human life, such as all civilized people have understood them; though, of course, as might have been expected, the forms of some of these duties are Egyptian, as, for instance, that of using the waters of the irrigation fairly, and without prejudice to the rights of others: an application to the circumstances of Egypt, of the universally received ideas of fairness and justice, which the working of human society must, everywhere, give birth to. The denials also include, as again we might be sure they would, the mummy’s observance of Egyptian ceremonial law.

There is still a great deal more in the book. The mummy will have to achieve many difficult passages before he can attain the empyrean gate, through which those who have been found true in the balance, for that is the meaning of the Egyptian word for the justified, are at last admitted to the realms of pure and everlasting light. This gate is the gate of the Sun, and this light is the presence of the Sun-god. There will be many adversaries that will be lying-in-wait for him, seeking to fasten charges of one kind or another upon him, and to destroy him. The book tells him how he is to comport himself, and what he is to do, as each of these occasions arise. There are certain halls, for instance, through which he will have to pass. These halls he will find inhabited by demons, but they are a necessary part of the great journey. And the entrance to them he will find barred and guarded by demon door-keepers. Here mystical names and words must be used, which alone will enable the mummy to get by these demon door-keepers, and through these demon-inhabited halls. These names and words of power he will find in the book. We here have traces of the thought of primitive times, when men regarded with wonder, deepening into awe, the supposed mysterious efficacy of articulate sound.

One demon, in particular, will endeavour to secure the mummy’s head. In a hellish place he must cross, a net will be spread to entangle him. He will have to journey through regions of thick darkness, and to confront the fury of the Great Dragon. He will have to go through places where he may incur pollution; through others where he may become subject to corruption. He will have to submit to a fiery ordeal. He will have to work out a course of carefully and toilsomely conducted husbandry, the harvest of which will be knowledge. He will have to obtain the air that is untainted, the water that is of heaven, and the bread of Ra and Seb. The book will give him all the needful instructions on these, and on all other matters where he will require guidance.

Bunyan’s Pilgrims Progress enables us to understand this Book of the Dead. The aim of both is the same. Each presents a picture of the hindrances and difficulties, both from within and from without, and of the requirements and aids of the soul, in its struggle to attain to the higher life. The Egyptian doctrine places the scene in the passage from this life to the next. The Elstow tinker places it, allegorically, in this life. But this is a difference that is immaterial. The ideas of both are fundamentally the same. The consciousness to which they both appeal is the same. The old Egyptian of 5,000 or 6,000 years ago received the teaching of his book on precisely the same grounds as we ourselves at this day receive the teaching of the Pilgrim. With how much additional authority does this discovery invest these ideas! The mind must be more or less than human that arrays itself against what has, so overwhelmingly, approved itself semper, ubique, et omnibus.

The antiquity of the book is very great. Portions of it are found on the mummy cases of the eleventh dynasty. This shows that it was in use 4,000 years ago. But this was very far from having been the date of its first use; for even then it had become so old as to be unintelligible to royal scribes; and we find that, in consequence, it was at that remote time the custom to give together with the sacred text its interpretation.

All collections of Egyptian antiquities contain copies of this book, or of portions of it. Several are to be seen in our British Museum. Of course this abundance of copies results from the nature of the book, and the use to which it was put. It was literally the viaticum, the itinerary, the guide and hand-book, the route and instructions, for the mummy to and through that world, from which no traveller returns. Each of its sections is accompanied by a rubric, and generally illustrated by a vignette, directing, and showing the mummy, how the section is to be used.

I know nothing more instructive and more touching in human history than one of these old Egyptian Books of the Dead, with its doctrine, its invocations, its hymns, its prayers, its instructions, its rubrics, its illustrations. All its images are of the earth earthy. How could it be otherwise? The soul that has kept all the commandments, that has been tried in the balance and not found wanting, that has fought the good fight to final triumph through all the dangers, and temptations, and pollutions, that beset its path, reaches at last only a purer ether and eternal light.

It is easy to endeavour to dismiss all this with cold indifference, or with a cheap sneer. But those who placed this book by the side of a departed relative had hearts that were still turned towards those they could never any more behold in the flesh. All their care and thought were not for themselves. And, too, they believed in right and truth, in justice and goodness. And because they believed in them, they believed also in a world and in a life of which those principles would be the law.

CHAPTER XXV. WHY THE HEBREW SCRIPTURES IGNORE THE FUTURE LIFE.

It is impossible to become familiar with the monumental, and other, evidences of the position, which the idea of a future life held in the religious system, and in the minds and lives of the Egyptians, without finding one’s self again and again occupied with the inquiry—Why the Mosaic Dispensation rejected it?[5] To pass over a matter of this kind is to reject it. If a code makes no reference whatever to the idea of inheritance, but provides for the appropriation and distribution of the property of deceased persons in such a manner that the idea of inheritance does not at all enter into the arrangement, as, for instance, appropriating it all to the State, or distributing it all among the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, it is clear that the author of the code rejected the ordinary, and natural ideas of inheritance. In this way the Mosaic Dispensation rejects the idea of a future life, an idea which was the backbone of organized thought in Egypt, and among all Aryan people. It does not reject it in the sense of saying that it is false, but in the sense of omitting it as unsuitable for the purposes it has in view. It adjourns the consideration of it to another day, and to other conjunctures of circumstances.

But this is only a part of the wonder. Solomon, one of whose wives was an Egyptian princess, and who possessed so inquiring a mind that it is absolutely impossible he could have been unacquainted with the idea, nowhere in what has survived of his ethical, philosophical, religious, poetical, or practical writings, thinks it worth even a passing reference. On the contrary, like his father David, he emphatically speaks of death as the end. The former had asked whether God shows His wonders among the dead? Or whether the dead shall rise up again and praise Him? Shall His loving kindness be showed in the grave, or His righteousness in the land where all things are forgotten? The wisdom of the latter promised length of these subsolar days only.

Our surprise, already great, is carried to a still higher point on discovering that, for the six centuries which followed the time of Solomon, the Hebrew prophets, men of the profoundest moral insight, and whose very business it was to put before their countrymen’s minds every motive which could have power to induce them to eschew evil, and to do good, pass over in their teaching, just as Moses, David, and Solomon had done before them, this paramountly influential, and to us morally vital idea.

If one had been called upon to give an à priori opinion on the subject, it would have seemed, I think, utterly impossible that such an omission could have been made at the beginning, considering the nature of the work that had to be done; or, if for some exceptional, but decisive, reason it had been made at first, that it could have been maintained throughout. We must remember that the word throughout here applies to the whole course of a national literature, embracing history, legislation, philosophy, poetry, morals, and, above all, religion through a range of a thousand years. The idea was all that time all about the people, and those who contributed to their literature, in Persia, in Egypt, and in Asia Minor. In Europe every tribe of barbarians, and of semi-barbarians, and every civilized people, possessed it. It was the source of their respective religions. It made them all what they were. But in this all-embracing, vigorous, and long-sustained literature of the Hebrews it has no place. It might, for some special reason, have been excluded at one epoch, but why through all? It might, for some special reason, have been ill-adapted to some departments of Hebrew thought, but why to all? And the manner is as singular as the fact of the rejection. It is simply passed over in silence. No reference is made to it. It is not discussed. It is not denounced. It is not ridiculed. It is not insisted on: that is all.

Here, then, is an historical problem than which few can be more curious and interesting. We may not yet be in a position to answer it completely, but it is evident that the first step towards doing this is to set down all the reasons that appear to us possible, and to weigh each with reference to the mind, and the circumstances, of the times. We may not be able to divine all the reasons, or, indeed, the right one, but still this is the course that must be pursued.

The right answer will depend to a considerable extent on dates, that is to say, on the preceding and contemporary history; on ethnological facts; and on a right appreciation of the mental condition of the people. We shall have to ascertain the date of the Exodus; who the Hebrews were, or, to be more precise, who the Israelites were; and what were the popular beliefs, and forms of thought, that bore on the question before us. With respect, then, to the date of the Exodus, we shall, if we confine ourselves to the Hebrew accounts, find the inquiry beset with great difficulties. It is evident, from their character, that those accounts were intended primarily for religious, and not for historical, purposes. Had history been their object, we should have had some Egyptian names; the absence of which, however, from the records, alone throws some light on their purpose. The name, for instance, of the Pharaoh under whom the Exodus took place is not given, nor the name of the Pharaoh, whose minister Joseph was, nor that of the Pharaoh, who reigned when Abraham came down into Egypt, nor, indeed, of one of the kings, who reigned during the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt. Nothing is told us of the internal condition of the country, with the single exception of the success of Joseph’s plan for enabling Pharaoh, in a time of famine, to become the actual proprietor of the whole of the land of Egypt, save what was held by the priests; nor is anything told us of its external history, notwithstanding that that was its most eventful and important period: for Egypt happened, just at that particular time, to be—having recently culminated in the very zenith of its power—the wonder, the terror, and the glory of the Eastern world. It was the period, which had seen the conclusion of the long struggle between the Egyptians and their Semitic invaders; a struggle in which the latter, having at first been victorious, had overthrown the native dynasty, got complete possession of the country, and ruled it for some centuries, but had in the end been expelled. This struggle, which had terminated when the connexion of the Israelites with Egypt commenced, was followed by a period of unexampled greatness and prosperity. To it belong the reigns of Sethos, whose minister Joseph was, and of Rameses II., the son of Sethos, and the oppressor of the children of Israel. These two greatest of Egyptian conquerors, both of them, overran Syria, and the neighbouring countries: the latter carrying his devastations even as far as Persia and Asia Minor. They had permanently occupied positions on the Euphrates; and were keeping open their communications with them through the sea-side plains to the west, and through the countries to the north, of the district the Israelites conquered, and took possession of. Sethos had been a great builder, but Rameses was the greatest builder the world has ever seen. All the chief structures at Karnak, Thebes, Abydos, and in a multitude of other places in the Delta, as well as in Upper Egypt, and even in Nubia, were his work. What he had done in this way was so far in advance of all that had ever been done before, that it must have been the talk of all that part of the world. Of all these great names and great events, no mention whatever is made in the Hebrew Scriptures, although, during the sojourn, Egypt was actually the scene of the sacred history. The omission is very similar to that which is the subject of this chapter, and almost as difficult to explain. If, then, we were confined to the Jewish accounts, it would be impossible for us to assign to the date of the Exodus its place in the history of Egypt. There is, however, one name occurring incidentally in the account of the oppression, which, in conjunction with monumental evidence, enables us to fix precisely this indispensable date—so precisely as that we are sure that it took place in the reign of Menephthah, or Menophres, the son of the great Rameses, and the grandson of Sethos. I shall reserve the demonstration of this till I have occasion to mention the Canal of Rameses.

I said that the date of the Exodus has an important bearing on the inquiry of why the doctrine of a future life was excluded from the Mosaic Dispensation: it has this importance, because it enables us to know what had been going on in that part of the world for some time immediately preceding the promulgation of that Dispensation. Knowing the date, we know that reciprocal barbarities, such as this age can fortunately form but a feeble conception of, had for centuries been the order of the day between the Egyptians and the Semites. At last the Egyptians had got completely the upper hand, and had driven out the main body of the Semites from their country, had devastated in a most sweeping, and ruthless manner neighbouring countries, and most frequently and most completely those parts of Syria which soon afterwards fell into the hands of the Israelites. If we can form but a feeble conception of the barbarities of those times, we can perhaps form only a still less adequate conception of that which prompted them—the gluttonous hatred that animated these two races towards each other. No amount of blood, no form of cruelty on any scale, could satiate it. There is nothing in the practices, the history, the religion, of the modern world which enables us to understand their feelings. We see much evidence of them on the Egyptian monuments, and some indications of them in the Hebrew Scriptures; and these, of course, must be translated, not in accordance with our ideas, but with the ideas of those times. Every shepherd was an abomination to the Egyptians. The Hebrews took the opposite view, and regarded the first tiller of the ground as the first murderer. The Hebrews might not eat with the Egyptians, for that was an abomination to them.

It is the date, which enables us, in some measure, to understand the feelings that underlie these statements.

The next question is, who were the Israelites? We are now regarding the question singly from the historical point of view, just as we should the question of who were the Lydians, the Etruscans, the Dorians, or any other people of antiquity? There is no question but that they were substantially a Semitic people, mainly of the same race, and of the same dispositions and capacities as the other branches of the Semitic stock, as for instance, the Phœnicians, and the Moabites of the old, and the Arabs of the modern world. It is clear, however, and this is a point of some importance, that they were not of unmixed Semitic blood. Abraham came from Ur of the Chaldees, and was therefore a Chaldean, whatever that appellative stood for at that time. The Hebrew Scriptures describe him as a Syrian. He can, therefore hardly be regarded as of pure Semitic descent. Furthermore, when the people left Egypt they must have had in their veins a large infusion of Egyptian, that is old Aryan blood, somewhat mixed with Ethiopian. This must have been the case, because during their sojourn in Egypt there had been no disinclination among them to intermarry with Egyptians. Joseph had had for his wife a high-caste Egyptian woman, Amenath, the daughter of Potipherah, priest of On; and the wife of Moses is called a Cushite, or Ethiopian woman. Besides this, we are told that when the people—their blood being already mixed in this way with that of the semi-Aryan Egyptians—went up out of Egypt, there went out with them a mixed multitude, which can only mean Egyptians, who cast in their lot with them, or a remnant of the Hyksos, who had stayed behind at the time of the expulsion of the main body, or the descendants of the Asiatic captives of Sethos and Rameses, and their predecessors. I need not go to the Egyptian accounts. The above facts will be sufficient for our present purpose. They enable us historically to understand the people. They were of mixed descent, of very composite blood. The preponderant element was Semitic, but that had been enriched by large additions of better blood; still, however, not to such an extent as to efface, or even to any decisive degree alter the Semitic characteristics. The mental capacity and vigour, the apprehensiveness and receptiveness of the people, had been increased, but still they were in the main Semitic; in language, in sentiment, in cast and direction of thought.

At that particular juncture, then, in the history of that part of the world to which our attention has just been recalled, Moses had to deal with the material we are examining. Still limiting our inquiry to historical objects, historically investigated, what he had to do at that time was to make these mixed and unpromising materials into a people—a work that was from first to last entirely a moral one: as hard a task as was ever undertaken, the very idea of which has no place in the minds of us moderns. He was thoroughly aware of the difficulty of his task. Had it ever been heard before, and, after some thousands of years, we may add, has it ever been heard since, of a nation taken out of another nation, and, according even to the Hebrew accounts, the object of which is not historical, taken chiefly from the servile class of another nation, and yet welded into a true people, with the strongest, the most enduring, and the most distinctive characteristics? What material was ever more unlikely? And yet was ever success more complete? A scion, not a vigorous and healthy offset, but a bruised sprout, was so planted, and surrounded with such influences, as that it took good root, grew vigorously, sent forth strong and spreading branches, and bore, and even still bears, its own peculiar fruit. Nowhere in Europe in these days, except it may be to some extent in northern Germany, is any attempt made to fashion in this way the mind, and sentiments, and instincts of a people, which, and not the amount of population, or of wealth, is what truly constitutes a people.

Why, then, did Moses, in this great attempt, omit entirely the one thought we consider the most potent of all? His object was to make a people. It was not primarily to reveal a religion. We come to this conclusion from an observation of the facts, from an analysis of the Dispensation, and from taking into account the principle, that religion is for man, and not man for religion. But a nation, especially such a nation as he contemplated, is made only by moral and intellectual means. The revelation, therefore, of a religion was not at all an accident, or in any sense something which might be, according to circumstances, included in, or excluded from, his plan. It was a necessity—a necessary part of the one means for the one object. These materials could not have been made into a people without a code, nor could there have then been a code without a religion. The question, then, before him was not simply—as is generally supposed—to promulgate a religion, but to make the mass of living integers before him into a nation by a code, sanctioned by a religion. The religious part of the question, therefore, was limited to the consideration of what form of religion would best effect this?

One indispensable requisite was that it must be a religion that would never take them back in thought and heart to Egypt. With Egypt he must break utterly and for ever. This was a most difficult task. The thoughts of the people went back to the flesh-pots of Egypt. They remembered the fish, and the leeks, the onions, the cucumbers, and the melons they had eaten in Egypt; but, more than all this, they remembered the palpable and intelligible religion, the magnificent and touching ceremonies and processions, the awe-inspiring temples—all that had satisfied at once the eye, the heart, and the thought, while they had sojourned in, and served the gods of, Egypt. They even recurred to the worship of the bull Mnevis, the divinity of Heliopolis—Joseph’s On—at the very foot of Sinai. Everything, therefore, that could recall Egypt and its religion, everything that might present a point of contact between the thoughts, the worship, the lives of the new people and of their old masters, was to be studiously avoided. The dividing lines must everywhere be deep and sharp—there must be no bridges from one to the other. So it must be. But the doctrine of the future life was the very kernel—the heart itself—of the religion of Egypt. There was, therefore, no choice; this must be utterly abandoned and excluded: to admit it would be to admit Osiris, the judge of the souls deceased this world, his assessors, and his array of avengers, and the whole apparatus of the lower world. As to Heaven, too, or the place of the blessed, the Egyptians had already appropriated the sun, which, in that material age, must have appeared as the best—indeed, the only suitable—locus in quo. That was already peopled with Egyptians; and it could, therefore, be no heaven for the Hebrews—for Semites. Or, if they were, in the end, to inhabit the same heaven, sympathy for the Egyptians, and for their ideas, would be kept alive; and, if so, then the design of forming a peculiar people, separate and distinct from all other people, must be abandoned. It would be impossible to carry it out.

This view of the reason for the omission of the great doctrine has in it, I think, some truth, though it is far from being the whole truth. Moses may have seen clearly that it would have been impossible to carry out his paramount object if this doctrine was allowed a place in his system; but this view falls short of what is required. It does not account for the whole of the fact. It does not account, for instance, for the doctrine not having been admitted into the system in after times—and no explanation can be complete, or satisfactory, which does not include that. We know, also, that Moses did not reject absolutely everything that was Egyptian. He retained, for instance, circumcision, and the Egyptian division of the lunar month into four weeks of seven days each, etc.

Another conceivable supposition is that, if the doctrine of a future life had been admitted, it was foreseen that the priestly caste, instead of remaining the ministers and servants of the congregation, would have become its masters, as in Egypt; and that the law would then have been wrested into an instrument for giving them undue power and domination. It would have given them the lever for moving this world at their pleasure, and for their own behoof; and so its primary object, which was a moral and political one, would have become only secondary to the maintenance of a dominant privileged class. This supposition, when applied to those early times, is not, as the history of Egypt shows, altogether an anachronism; and it is evident that dangers of this kind were foreseen, and, to some extent, provided against. We see an indication of this in the intentional absence, during the earlier periods of the history of the nation, of monarchical institutions, which, in those times, were, externally and politically, almost necessary, and, consequently, almost universal in the outside world. We trace, also, this thought in the comment made on their adoption, when it had become impossible any longer to dispense with them. And, again, in the fact that the Prophets, who were the authorized expositors and maintainers of the law, were not Priests. But of this supposition, also, we must say that it does not explain the whole of the phenomenon—for there were periods when, notwithstanding the amount of truth and force contained in the reason it suggests, the great doctrine might have been, but was not, introduced.

Or was it, and this I propose as a third conjecture, that the Hebrews were too unimaginative a people to realize in thought the conception of a future life? And, therefore, was this one instance, amongst others, of the progressiveness of the Revelation, which had spoken in one mode to the fathers, and which spoke afterwards—of course, within certain intelligible limitations—in a diverse manner to their descendants? This progressiveness every one is aware of; but I do not think that the Hebrew was quite so unimaginative as the supposition implies. The Semitic race is imaginative in its way. It is, and was, a gross race; which, of course, implies grossness of imagination; but we can hardly suppose that the Hebrew of old would have been less capable of imagining a future Paradise than the modern Arab; though, we may be sure, it would have assumed, like his, very much of an earthly character; and that earthly character would not have been of the highest and most refined kind. Feasting, for instance, would have been an ingredient in the future bliss of a healthy and hungry people, who, in this world, had very little to eat. And here it would be interesting to ascertain what, on this subject, was the belief of the Phœnicians, Canaanites, Moabites, and ancient Arabians. It is to the point, also, to remember that the Hebrew system had a Paradise. It was, however, one which came at the beginning, and not at the end, of all things. It was, also, an earthly Paradise. In this I see implied contradictions to the Egyptian doctrine on this subject. And I believe that there are other similarly implied contradictions without direct references; and that there are such points of allusive protest, and of intended contrast, is of importance. For instance, I am disposed to think that the comment on the Ten Commandments—‘these words ... and no more’ is an implied contradiction of the Divine authority of the Forty-two Commandments, with reference to which the Egyptian believed that he should be tried at the Day of Judgment; an article of Egyptian faith, with which Moses, and the people who were listening to him, must have been quite familiar; and which could hardly, at that moment, have been absent from their minds. But as to the supposition before us, I think, to whatever extent we may be able to allow it to be true in itself, we shall still be unable to accept it, just as was the case with the two others we considered before it, as a sufficient cause for the phenomenon we are now investigating.

But I have not yet exhausted all the light that can be brought to bear on this difficulty. I can see a fourth solution. It occurred to me at Jerusalem. I there said to myself, ‘Let us endeavour to look at it in the form in which it appears to have presented itself to the Divine Master. He “brought life and immortality to light” to His countrymen, and, in the highest sense, to us. He must, while engaged in this work, have seen clearly the very difficulty that is now before us. It was, in fact, the difficulty that directly, or in its logical consequences, stood up before Him on all occasions of His teaching. How, then, did He meet it? How did He deal with it?’ I will now proceed to propound the answer, that this way of contemplating the difficulty evolved in my mind.

I assumed that the first step towards finding the way to the true answer to our question was to ascertain what was precisely the work Moses had been called to do, and what were the conditions under which he had to do it. In order to reach a right understanding of these matters, it was necessary to know the date at which his work was done. Without that we should have been quite unable to reconstruct in our minds the conditions under which he had done his work; the very chief of which were the nature and composition of the human materials, out of which he had to form a people, which was his great task. A similar process must here be repeated with respect to the work of Christ: we must now make out distinctly what it was that He had to accomplish, and what were the obstacles in the way of His accomplishing it.

Hitherto we have been endeavouring to make out what had to be done at the first establishment of, and throughout, the old Dispensation; and we have summoned before us, successively, three reasons, which might be imagined, and alleged, for the omission in that Dispensation of one particular doctrine we might have expected to find in it. This we did with a constant reference to the times, circumstances, and conditions of the work. We saw, however, that not one of those reasons is sufficient and admissible. Not one explains all the phenomena. What, therefore, we are endeavouring to get sight of is still in obscurity. The answer sought has not yet been found. What we now propose to do, still for the purpose of obtaining this answer, is to recall what He taught, and what arguments He used, Who ‘brought life and immortality to light;’ and how in doing this He dealt with what Moses had taught, and with what he had not taught; and how He dealt with the thoughts that were in the minds of the people He was addressing. If this inquiry shall enable us to see that it was, precisely, the doctrine of the future life (what Moses had abstained from teaching) which overturned the old Dispensation (what he had taught); and at the same time to see how, and why, it had this effect, then we shall know why Moses, and the Prophets, had not taught it.

Fifteen hundred years had elapsed since Moses’s day. What we have to set before our minds, now, is the conditions under which the new work had to be done. It was new, because it cancelled, or supplemented, what was old. It did both. How did it do it? What were the difficulties it had to contend with? What were the obstacles that stood in its path, and had to be surmounted? Of course, they must have been the creation of the foregoing state of things. Let us, then, be sure that we understand the antecedent times and events.

The object of Moses had been to form a people, in the ordinary sense of these words; a people, that is to say, who would be well-ordered at home, and able to hold their own among their neighbours. For this purpose a code was the first necessity, and, indeed, it might effect all that was required. But even a somewhat superficial acquaintance with the history of those fifteen centuries shows us that this code must come from God. That was a necessity. A law from man would, at that time, have been useless, and even inconceivable. There was, however, no difficulty about a law from God. In the spontaneous apprehensions of the people, at that time, God was the source of all law, directly and immediately, as distinctly as He is to our apprehensions the source of all law, mediately and ultimately. We must make out the effect of this difference. Theirs was the case in which the intervention of God is not confined to principles, it being left to human legislators to apply those principles; but it was the case in which He gives, necessarily, the letter of the statute. Of this it is the natural, and logical, sequence, that He should be the administrator and executor of His own law, even of what we call civil and criminal law. Human agency, when employed, was employed only mechanically, in the same way as a famine, or pestilence. There was nothing in the mind of the people that could dispose them to reject this conclusion, for they had already accepted the premises. They saw God standing behind the law—which is regulative of society; and dictating its letter; and, because they saw this, they could not, also, but see Him standing behind the course of events, and bringing about the rewards and punishments the law required.

But, furthermore, it is evident that law, civil and criminal, must be executed here in this life. This is a concern of existing human societies that must be attended to. The more instantaneously punishment overtakes the offender the better. The more completely, then, will the very object of the law be carried out, that which is the whole of its raison d’être. It always has been so all over the world. To be effective, to answer its purpose, to do what it aims at doing, its action must be certain, speedy, visible. Punishment has two political objects, to rid society of those who are disturbing it, and to strike terror into, and so deter, those who might be disposed to disturb it. The object of law, therefore, can not be attained without present, immediate punishment. The more immediate the better. It has been so everywhere, and always. Moses’s law, therefore, required the sanction of direct, immediate, mundane rewards and punishments, just like any other code.

We see, then, at once, that there was no absolute need for future rewards and punishments. We can even already imagine that they would have had a weakening and disturbing effect upon the system: at all events, we shall eventually find that they were, precisely, as a matter of fact and history, the very solvent that was used, designedly, for the very purpose of disintegrating and destroying it. As it was a system of statute law, what was needed was that the offender should be punished here at once. Moses had no concern with the world to come, or with the unseen world at all, excepting so far as it could further his great object. No code of civil and criminal law, that ever was heard of, could be maintained, if it relegated the punishment of the offender to a future life. And, furthermore, as God was the primary giver of the law, and the actual source of it, so must He be the actual executor of it: it was His own law. This was intelligible, and logical. And furthermore, it was in perfect harmony both with the physics and the metaphysics of those ages, among the learned and the unlearned alike. To their apprehension everything good in nature, in society, and the mind of man, came direct from God. God’s arm, therefore, was ever bared, and visible. Every offence had its penalty, whether the offence of an individual, or of the nation; and that penalty was visibly exacted at the time, that is to say, in this life. The idea of future rewards and punishments would have been antagonistic to this. It would have been an element of confusion and weakness. There was no place for it. It was practically and logically and philosophically excluded. The one thing that was paramount, and indispensable, was thoroughly attended to. What would have acted injuriously on that imperious necessity was set aside.

All this is clear abstractedly. And in the concrete history it comes out with perfect distinctness. During the fifteen hundred years the law is in force, we have not one syllable about a doctrine of a future life. It was so, because it was absolutely logical, and quite natural, that it should be so. Nothing else could account for the fact. It was just what ought to have been the case. It was excluded not so much designedly as spontaneously. There was no more place for it in the teaching of the Prophets than there had been, originally, in the code itself, because it would have been destructive of the system they were expounding and enforcing. It could not, therefore, have occurred to them to teach it.

But at last, for certain reasons, the time has come for teaching it. What now, therefore, we have to do is to mark the way in which the law was dealt with in order that it might be taught. The object of the Light of the World was not, as that of the code of Moses had been, to form a people, in the ordinary sense of those words, that is, to make and maintain in the world that political organism we call a nation, but to form a peculiar people, that would belong to all nations. His kingdom was not to be as the separate kingdoms of the world, but an universal kingdom, constructed out of all the kingdoms of the world. It would differ from the ordinary kingdoms of the world in the source, in the purview, and in the object of its law. It would reject everything, however necessary for national purposes, which conflicted with the idea of the universal brotherhood of mankind, the only conceivable principle for an universal voluntary society; and its law, for obvious reasons, would not be a written law. It would not require that its members should pay taxes, though it would require that they should tax themselves to satisfy the claims of fraternity. Nor would it require that they should fight. God would not be to them the Lord of hosts, but the universal Father. The working of the community would give no occasion for the use of arms. It would be composed of Jews, Greeks, and Scythians; of bond and free; of all peoples, kindreds, and languages. Nothing could bind together this unlocalized society but their morality. And the only sanction, looking at mankind generally, for the morality of an unlocalized society, would be the rewards and punishments of a future life. The principles, therefore, of an universally applicable system of morality, binding together a people taken out of all nations, must be made the law of this peculiar people, this unworldly, universally-diffused community; and they must believe in the rewards and punishments of a future life. Their law must find both its source, and its sanction, in themselves, that is to say, in what they felt, and believed: whereas both the source and the sanction of the old law had been ab extra.

We can see no way in which this could have been done except by terminating that part of the old system which made the letter of every statute, that is to say, the whole organization of society, and every provision of every kind for the maintenance of that organization, of Divine institution; and which, therefore, required that God should execute His own law Himself, here, in this life. Here were two ideas, distinct, but necessarily connected, and now they must be annulled, both of them. Both the legislation, and the enforcement of it, must be transferred from God to the State. Indeed the State—it had been Greek, and now it was Roman—had already got them absolutely into its own hands. The old law had now no existence, except on sufferance, and that only to a limited extent. Legislation could never again be got out of the hands into which it had fallen; and it was, in itself, far better that it should remain in them. Of course it could not have been so with God’s people of old time: but for the future it ought not to be, and it could not be, otherwise.

Henceforth God would be the source in men’s hearts of the principles only of right. Legislators must, themselves, apply those principles to the varying circumstances and needs of their respective times and countries. They must also themselves provide means for enforcing the observance of their applications of these principles. But, of course, though this might answer roughly the purposes of human societies, it would be altogether imperfect and inadequate as a machinery either for fairly and completely rewarding and punishing individuals, or for making men good, or for keeping the heart pure, and gentle, and loving. All this must still result from the relation in which man feels that he stands towards God. Man could have little to do with these matters in his fellow man. This world, in which ‘some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall,’ was clearly not the place for the perfect adjustment of compensations and retributions. The balance for weighing the things that are seen cannot be exactly trimmed here. How, then, could there be any pretence of weighing the more important things, those that set in motion the whole life, that cannot be seen? This necessitated a future life. The world had passed into a state in which heaven-sent, heaven-administered codes were impossible. But religion itself had not become impossible. It would, however, be obliged henceforth to address itself to what God has willed should be the general conscience of mankind, and to find its sanction in what God has enabled man to anticipate of a life to come. This was a higher form of religion. It belonged to higher conditions of humanity.

What was now required was not that law, or that the principles and foundations of law, should be overthrown; but, on the contrary, that those principles of morality, that are universal, and are commonly recognized among mankind, should be made, with the most searching and binding force, the law of the new society; and that the sanction of this law should be changed from the present to the future life. Much that had necessarily been incorporated in the Mosaic Dispensation, because needed for its limited, national, mundane purpose, must now be held to have answered its purpose, and to be terminated as far as the new, universal, society was concerned. Everything that was special belonged to this head; and, à fortiori, everything that was exclusive, and so conflicted with the universal law, which was, above all things, a law of brotherhood. It could be nothing else. In this view, the mother idea of Christianity is the substitution, as the rule of individual life, of the universal natural law for the positive written, municipal law of the Hebrews, and of every other people. It has no written law of its own. It appeals to the unwritten law, which is inscribed not on tables of stone and brass, but on the fleshly tables of the heart; that is to say, to what is in man. And this, we may observe in passing, it is, which enables it to live and grow, and to develop, and accommodate itself to every increase of knowledge, and to the advancing conditions of society.

Still local mundane governments must be maintained; and this also would require a law. Law was, therefore, henceforth divided into two parts: that which is universal, natural, unwritten, which God reveals to men’s hearts, and for the observance of which they will hereafter be accountable to God; and that which is shaped by the wisdom and the folly, the knowledge and the ignorance, the necessities, the circumstances, and the interests of human legislators, and of separate, often hostile, nations. For this latter men would be accountable, primarily, to the State. The State would enact, and must administer and execute it. Only in cases in which the State was Christian (none such then existed, but the time might come when the kingdoms of the world would be the kingdoms of Christ and of God), would the principles of the municipal law not conflict with the principles of the divine, universal law. But even in cases where they were in conflict, the Christian, as human society is ordained of God, would, as a matter of conscience, even when not of right and reason, submit to it. This, however, would be understood as having its limits, for there would be cases in which we must obey God and not man.

(These ideas, by the way, neither condemn nor commend to us the principle of the establishment of national Churches. That is a question of times, of circumstances, and of expediency. We can imagine conditions under which the advantages of such an arrangement, and others, under which the disadvantages would preponderate. Of course, at the time of the promulgation of the religion, the idea of anything of the kind was impossible. What has been before us has, however, obviously a bearing on the questions of what establishments, where they exist, should teach, and of how they should enforce their teaching.)

As to the law, for which a man would be accountable to God, that would be taught him by God. The knowledge of it and the desire to fulfil it would result from the working of a Divine Spirit within his heart. The teaching of that Spirit would be always in harmony with the knowledge to which man had been enabled to attain, and with the social conditions to which he had been raised. That knowledge and these conditions are progressive. So, therefore, would be the teaching of this Spirit. We know in what mode it spoke, in old times, through prophets and holy men; and what it was, at a later period, in the words of Christ, Whom God sent. Under the Mosaic Dispensation it had promulgated municipal law, which requires in all cases, and had required, in an especial degree, in the case of so rude a people as the Hebrews, immediate rewards and punishments; and this, under the circumstances, the most important particular of these being that God was Himself executing the law, here and now, had excluded the doctrine of a future life. Under the Christian Dispensation it promulgated natural, universal, unlocalized law, and so required the doctrine of a future life; and this necessitated the abrogation of the doctrine that God is Himself executing the law, here and now.

The argumentative position and aims of the Divine Master can not be understood, unless these differences are attended to. He taught that His kingdom was not of this world. It could not have been so taught by them of old time. He taught that men must render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s. Formerly it could only be taught that God was all in all. When these, and many other similar statements of Christ and of His Apostles are interpreted in accordance with the then existing condition of the chosen people and of the world, we see that they involve the entire abandonment to the civil power of the whole domain of positive legislation, and of the entire and unqualified right of maintaining such legislation; of course, without at all exempting legislators or magistrates from obedience, in the exercise of their legislative or executive functions, to the principles of right, and from ultimate accountability to God. The authority of the old civil and criminal code having thus been transferred from God to man, that of the ceremonial code followed the same rule: though, indeed, these are distinctions which were hardly recognised in early times. The law was not hereby absolutely and necessarily abrogated, but only the idea that it is imposed, enforced, and maintained by God in this life. That was the idea which had given its form and character to the old Dispensation, and upon which it had been founded, and to which the multitude, learned and unlearned, clung, because they could not understand either how polity, religion, or morality could be maintained without it, or how, in these matters, there could be any advance. What, therefore, the promulgators of the new Dispensation had to show was that the abandonment of these old ideas about law was not tantamount to the abandonment of law itself. Man did not cease to be accountable, and accountable to God. The old form of law, as a heaven-originated code, and for that reason containing religion, was abolished; but a higher and better form of law was substituted for what had been abolished. The thing intended could now be fulfilled more completely than before. An expansion and elasticity were given to it, which might enable it to keep pace with every enlargement of our moral consciousness, and of our purest and loftiest aspirations. It was exalted, perfected, and made of universal application. What, though necessary in its day, had, all along, been crippling, distorting, and obscuring it, was now annulled. What was abolished was the old letter, and its sanction; the old heaven-sent, heaven-administered, heaven-executed code. Life and immortality could not be preached, nor understood if that were maintained. What was not abolished, but to which a freer and more enlarged course was given, was the living and life-giving Spirit: the consciousness of right that is in man. That had been in bondage under the old letter. It must now be emancipated: otherwise it would die altogether. There was now, in the observance of that old letter, a veil over their hearts. That must be torn away, and then life and immortality would become distinctly visible. True, henceforth, man would not have to give an account here, in this life, to God, receiving his punishment or reward in this life very imperfectly: the perception, however, of this would make visible the necessity of his having to give an account in the world to come, in an after life, when not a few overt acts, which are all that can be attended to in this world, and those few only very inadequately either rewarded or punished, but when even every word and every thought, as well as deed, could be called into judgment; when everything could be fully revealed and known; and exact recompense and retribution assigned.

In this way were things revealed, some of which had been kept secret from the chosen people throughout the whole of their national existence, and some of which had been kept secret from all people from the foundation of the world. In this way would every scribe, who was fully instructed unto the kingdom of heaven, bring forth out of his treasures things new as well as old. This was the connexion and the opposition of the two Dispensations. Divine wisdom was justified in both.

We have now before us the very pith and marrow of His teaching. It is not in this world, as it had been taught by them of old time, that God’s assize is held. It was not because those Galilæans, whose blood Herod had mingled with their sacrifices, had been greater sinners than other Galilæans, that they had suffered those things; nor had those eighteen, on whom the Tower of Siloam had fallen, been sinners above other men that dwelt in Jerusalem. Then follows the Parable of the Unfruitful Fig-tree, which, instead of being destroyed, was spared again and again. God’s arm is not now ever bare, and visible, to execute judgment on the evil-doer. The Parable of the Wheat and the Tares is to the same purpose, only more explicitly. What! does not God punish now as of old? Is the Almighty’s arm shortened? Can He allow the wicked to prosper in the earth? The answer is the end, the day of account and settlement, is not now. The meaning of the prosperity of the wicked is not that they are being set in slippery places, in order that they may be suddenly and fearfully cast down. For the present God does allow the tares to grow together with the wheat. There was more in this than met the ear. Let him whose ears have understanding hear it. For them it had an inner, an historical, and in the religious order, both a destructive and a reconstructive meaning: and so we might go on with other forms of the great lesson. The affliction the poor blind man laboured under was not a judgment—neither he nor his parents had sinned. This is not the life for judgment. And so does God make His rain to fall on the land of the just and of the unjust, and His sun to shine on the good and on the bad indifferently. The rich man, though most undeserving, had possessed, and enjoyed, undisturbed, and to the full, all of good that this world can give; while Lazarus, though most deserving, had suffered, without any mitigation, all of evil this world could inflict. The balance of condition and desert had not been adjusted in any sense, or degree, here, but was completely and thoroughly in the after-life. It had not so been taught by them of old time, nor could it have been. Such teaching was directly subversive of—and, as a matter of historical fact, did subvert—the old doctrine, for the indispensable sanction of that law was its immediate execution here in this world. Then God could only make His rain to fall, and His sun to shine, on the land of the just; and must withhold them from the land of the unjust. It could have been maintained by no other teaching. But now that the complete execution of the law was removed from this world, a foundation was thereby laid for the establishment of the great, but omitted, doctrine; and, together with it, of its corollary of time and motive for repentance being in God the reason, and for man the use, of this forbearance and of this even-handed goodness.

The above statements contain, I submit, the fundamental governing ideas of Christ’s teaching, as it is set before us in the Gospels. No surprise need be felt at finding that these ideas are not presented in the sacred documents categorically. The reasons for their not having been so propounded were quite insurmountable. It is enough that they are the substance of them. That we should clearly apprehend that it is so, is necessary to a right understanding of the documents, of the religion they offer to the world, and of the history of the religion. They will, also, often show, by an easy and sure test, what doctrines of particular Churches are excrescences on the religion of Christ, and what are contradictions to it.

So also was it with the teaching of St. Paul. He made the enlightened moral consciousness of man the source of the law of religion, as distinguished from municipal law; and he taught that the sanction for this heart-inscribed law exists in the rewards and punishments of a future life. For this reason the resurrection was his cardinal doctrine; for, if there be no resurrection, he had but little, in what would be the sentiments and opinions of the mass of mankind on these subjects, to support and enforce his teaching. It is evident that he could not have maintained either of these two points, if he had maintained that the old Dispensation was of perpetual obligation. With respect to it, all he could maintain was, that, morally and practically, it had its legitimate issue in what he was teaching. Logically and implicitly, its requirements had necessitated its contradicting both his two above-mentioned great points. At all events, with respect to both, it had taught something very different from what he was teaching. To the conjoint consideration of what it had formerly taught, and what he had to teach now, he addressed himself; and we find that all that he said upon these subjects was in perfect accord with what had been said, and implied, by his Divine Master.

II. And, now that we have collected our facts, let us proceed to combine them into a regular and synoptical argument. If, in my endeavour to establish them, I may have been too concise, I beg the reader to call to mind the title of this work. These are matters which, here, I can neither pass over altogether, nor yet treat as fully as I might think desirable.

For the purpose, then, of his great work—that of forming a people, the municipal law (this we must endeavour to separate in thought from the religion) had occupied in the mind of Moses the first place. The subordination of the religion to the law is evident, because the object and use of the religion were to sanction and enforce the law. Law is nothing, unless there be force to maintain it. In ordinary cases, the requisite force is found in the majority, or in the strongest class, or in an individual stronger than the community. In this case it was sought ab extra: the religion was to supply it. In the dispensation that was to be the place, and the use, of the religion. It had no ulterior, nor collateral, objects; because it did not include in its purview the future life. These ideas belong to an early stage of knowledge, and of thought, in which municipal law and religion are inextricably entangled. We, at this time, are able to disentangle them; and, while keeping them in thought distinct from each other, to make out, in any case that may be before us, in what relation they are standing towards each other.

But municipal codes have always required, and must, from their very nature and purpose require, immediate rewards and punishments. This is common to them all. Moses, as a legislator, had little, or no, concern with anything else. His code, however, required them in a somewhat greater degree than others, because it was to be applied to a singularly rude and intractable people; and where the code is in advance of the general manners and sentiments of a people, as was his, speediness and severity of punishment are needed especially. So would it have been with his code had it been merely as others are. On that supposition he would probably, just as other legislators have done, and for the same reasons, have abstained from putting forward the sanction of future rewards and punishments. As far as his business and object were concerned, they would have introduced considerations which, while they were irrelevant, would also have been confusing; and must have weakened the appropriate sanction of his law, which was so essentially his main reliance, that he could not afford to risk its being at all weakened. Indeed, we see that it was a great object in the code to intensify the sense of the severity, and of the speediness of its punishments.

So it would have been, if the code he delivered had been as other codes. On that supposition, he would, probably, have confined himself to the rewards and punishments of this world. There was, however, one supreme peculiarity which distinguished his from all the municipal codes of civil and criminal law people in this part of the world have ever had to do with; that was that it came direct from God. And it came in such a manner and sense, that it required that God should see, more or less immediately, to its execution. It was His law in such a sense that He must be its executor. This meant that God did actually superintend the distribution of the rewards and punishments it required.

This was a structural necessity. At all events it was recognized as such, and was logically carried out in the system.

It will enable us to see this more clearly, if we consider in what way, and on what footing, could have been introduced the doctrine of future rewards and punishments, had they been superadded to these immediate ones, the distribution of which was superintended by God, and which Moses was compelled to insist on. It could, as far as we can imagine, have been done only in one or other of the two following ways. Either he, and the Prophets after him, must have said, and this was what they did say: ‘This is God’s law; and God rewards and punishes all violations of it here in this world; so that you get, here and now, the rewards and punishments He Himself assigns to your actions, and which He Himself actually apportions. But,’ they must then have gone on to add, ‘you will have the same process repeated in a future world.’ Had this been announced, it would have been equivalent to saying, that the Omniscient and Omnipotent Judge having, according to His own law, unerringly tried, and adequately compensated, every act, would repeat the process a second time. That is to say, that every case, having been already adjudicated upon, without any possibility of error, or of insufficiency of award, or of miscarriage of any kind, would be adjudicated upon again by the same Judge, who had in the first instance known every particular, and had, in accordance with His own law, thoroughly dealt with it. No man in his right mind could have propounded such a system: and in these matters Orientals, down to the very bottom of society, are far more logical than ourselves. Jesus precisely, because He taught that the transgressor is not tried by God in this world, could teach that he would be tried by God in the world to come. But this was just what Moses, and the prophets, could not say, because their system rested on the opposite assumption.

Or, and this is the only alternative, they must have said, ‘This is God’s law; and He executes it here. But though it is God’s business, and in God’s hands, still, notwithstanding, it is executed in a very incomplete and insufficient way. Many escape punishment; and many do not get rewarded at all. And those who are rewarded and punished here, are rewarded and punished in very inadequate measures. In every instance there may be, indeed there is, more or less of a miscarriage of justice. But there will be future rewards and punishments, which with set all this right.’ Suppose this had been what had been said; and then see what would have been the consequences. It would have suggested to every man the thought, even the hope, that he might escape in part, perhaps altogether, in this life, the punishment of any crime he was contemplating. But what was most vitally needed was, that is should be seen, and felt, by the people, that punishment would be quite unerring, and as severe as unerring. This way of introducing the doctrine would have been thoroughly illogical; and not more illogical than, morally and politically, bad in its effects. It would have been illogical, because it would have been in direct contradiction to the idea, that it was God who was seeing to the execution of His own law: a point that was as clear to the people as that intelligence governs the universe is to us; and which was the very thought that gave authority and force to the law. And it would have been morally, and politically, bad in its effects, because the vicious, and the ill-disposed, and the would-be criminals of all kinds, are not withheld from doing evil so much by the fear of punishment in the world to come as by fear of punishment here in this world. Nothing encourages them so much in their evil courses as the expectation of present impunity. And this was peculiarly applicable to the people for whom Moses legislated. They were, throughout the whole of the earlier part of their history, ever ready to forget and abandon God; and their temper required, in the highest degree, immediate punishments. Neither, therefore, could the doctrine have been introduced by Moses in this fashion.

Looking, then, at the circumstances, I cannot imagine how the two systems, of present and of future rewards and punishments, could have been taught together under the old heaven-given, heaven-administered, heaven-executed law. A choice had to be made between teaching, on the one hand, what was logical and in conformity with the instinctive beliefs of the people, and might prove to be politically sufficient; and, on the other hand, what, equally in whatever way it might have been put, would have been glaringly illogical and full of contradiction, and could only have caused confusion of ideas, and enfeeblement of the system. This brings me to the conclusion that it was the doctrine that God was seeing to the execution of His own law, in this world and in this life; this law being also, at the same time, a code of municipal law; which in the main decided Moses in making his choice, that is, in leading him to restrict the sanction of his law to what was mundane and immediate.

The three other conceivable reasons we at first examined, and rejected as being inadequate to account for all the phenomena, might have had, and perhaps had, some weight in influencing his decision; but that decision was, I believe, arrived at mainly on the ground of the reasons I have just now been pointing out. No legislator could have overlooked them; and they must have presented themselves with peculiar force to the mind of Moses. They were reasons, too, the force of which was never at all abated as long as the Dispensation continued in existence: just as they had affected the teaching of Moses, so did they the teaching of the Prophets.

So was it at the origin of, and so was it throughout, the old Dispensation. It is the object and the character of the Dispensation which explain to us the omission. If, then, we were to conclude our inquiry at this point, we might feel pretty well satisfied that we had discovered what we were in search of. But we will proceed farther, because by so doing we shall find what will confirm our discovery.

At last the time came when the old Dispensation, though still apparently maintained, and in force, had, in reality, through the progress of events, been completely worked out, both in respect of its moral effects and of its sanction. It had been intended for a certain condition of things; the world had advanced into a totally different condition; and the spontaneous teaching of the new condition of the world brought conviction to every enlightened mind, that the old state of things could never be reverted to any more than manhood can revert to childhood.

The old Dispensation had been worked out morally, because it had issued in a narrow and dead formalism. Another reason was, that the human heart had begun to repudiate exclusiveness, which had been one of the requirements of the old Dispensation, and to catch glimpses of, and to yearn for, universal fraternity. A higher form of religion and of morality could now be imagined, indeed was suggested by the condition and the circumstances of the world, and was seen to be within men’s reach—a morality, and a religion, which would take their start from the idea and sentiment of the brotherhood of mankind. And in morality and religion, as soon as anything better begins to appear, that which is not so good, ex rerum naturâ, and ex vi terminorum, begins to lose its hold, to decay, and to cumber the ground.

And as respected its sanction, as well as its morality, had the old Dispensation been worked out. Centuries of foreign domination, and that of Rome was now the apparently immovable order of the world, had rendered impossible the supposition that the law was being executed, here and now, by God. For that supposition national independence was the primary, and one absolutely indispensable, condition. But God was no longer supreme, administratively and executively, among His own people. That position was now occupied by the Roman Governor. Under these circumstances, a new religion, in the old form of statute law, and supported by the old sanction of immediate rewards and punishments, the execution of which was superintended by God, might conceivably have been at that time promulgated, though with certainty of failure, from Imperial Rome, but not from subject and provincial Jerusalem. That was inconceivable. For these reasons, then, it was that the new Dispensation could not be cast, as the old had been, in the mould of, and be made dependent on, statute and municipal law. The same conclusion resulted also from the fact that it was foreseen that it must be of its very nature and essence that it should embrace all people, whatever their statute and municipal law might be. That this feeling was springing up, coupled with the fact that the old Dispensation was evidently worked out, both morally and in respect of its sanction, is the meaning of the statement that the fulness of time had come. It was evident, therefore, that no further use could be made, either at the present, or, as far as could then be seen, for the future, of the sanction of immediate rewards and punishments, which fall entirely within the sphere of statute and municipal law. The only rewards and punishments the new doctrine could resort to, as sanctions, must be those of a future life.

It was to this state of things that the teaching of the Saviour was addressed. And as His teaching grew out of, was founded upon, and was logically deducible from, the existing state of things, to see this will also be to see why what He taught had not been taught fifteen hundred years earlier.

The old Dispensation could not be revivified. It was indeed the very reverse of desirable to revivify it. It could not even be maintained. If it was not dying, it was because it was dead. It had been good for its own day; but it was now an anachronism that was both undesirable and impossible.

The new doctrine, then, not being able to cast itself into the form of municipal law, must appeal to the enlightened consciousness of man. Neither could it have any municipal sanctions. The only sanction at that time, and thenceforth, imaginable was that of future rewards and punishments.

Still the old Dispensation stood in the way. It was, without being at all adapted to existing requirements, occupying the ground, and hindering the erection of the structure that was to take its place. It must, therefore, be got rid of.

Under the conditions of the case, that could be done only argumentatively. But what process of reasoning would serve the purpose? We cannot see any way in which it could have been done, except the one in which it was done. The Author of the new Dispensation addressed Himself to the establishment of the proposition, that God is not, here and now, the Executor either of the municipal law, or even of that which would be the law of the new Dispensation. The end is not yet. It was a corollary to this, which did not escape observation, that the municipal law is Cæsar’s concern, that is to say, that it falls within the sphere of the State.

Everything Jesus said in establishment of His main proposition, and by implication of its corollary, was in direct contradiction to the fundamental ideas of Mosaic Dispensation. In fact, the direct opposites of His proposition, and of its corollary, were the old Dispensation itself in its simplest expression: the whole of that Dispensation, just as it stood at work amongst God’s people, and just as it is presented to us in its authentic documents, being only the concrete enlargement, or organized embodiment of these opposites, with a view to the maintenance, under existing conditions, of the order of society.

The reason why Christ denied and disproved the proposition that God is the Executor, here, in this life, of His own law—the proposition of which the old Dispensation was an expansion—was that it hindered the perception of, and barred Him from teaching the doctrine of future rewards and punishments. Moses had seen precisely the same point, only reversely: for he had seen that the doctrine of future rewards and punishments would have barred him from teaching that God is the Executor here, in this life, of His own law. He, therefore, and the Prophets after him, had not taught it. Christ was restricted to the promulgation of a law which is not directly, but mediately, from God; the mediate stage being the moral consciousness of man; and, therefore, if we may so put it, He had no choice but to insist on the demonstration of the fact that God does not Himself directly execute the moral law here, for His not executing it here is the only logical basis of the doctrine of a future life. And He had no choice but to establish the doctrine of a future life, for the rewards and punishments of that life are the only sanctions of the law written in the heart. And, again, He had no choice but to promulgate that unwritten law, for it alone could be the law of His kingdom—of the kingdom of heaven as distinguished from the kingdoms of the world.

First, then, an examination of the position and aims of Moses, and of the means at his disposal, or, at all events, which he was led to adopt for effecting his work, tells us why he did not teach the doctrine of a future life. And then we see that Christ could not logically teach this doctrine, till He had undone that part of the work of Moses which had been a bar to his teaching it. The work of Moses, when analyzed and questioned, gives, itself and alone, the answer we are in search of. The work of Christ, when similarly analyzed and questioned, confirms the answer the work of Moses had already given. It makes clearer what was clear enough before.

In order that the intellectual, or scientific structure of morality and of religion might stand, instead of collapsing, and be enlarged, and rendered more commodious, and be made suitable to the new conditions and requirements of the world, Christ had to take out a part of the foundations of Moses, and to substitute other foundations for them. The foundations He took out were what had hindered Moses from teaching the great doctrine. Having taken these out He could, as He did, insert the great doctrine in their place as a foundation for the new religion. He abrogated the two ideas, that God does, in this world, give and execute the municipal law. Those two ideas being indispensable for the work Moses had to do, contain the reason why the Hebrew Scriptures ignored the future life.

The supersession of the old by the new Dispensation is, at all events, an historical fact; and if our explanation of that fact is satisfactory in the historical, it cannot be unsatisfactory in the religious, order; because all truth, which is only the ascertained order of the world, or sequence and relation of things and of events, is coherent and beneficent. The following are the particulars of the fact, and all of them appear to be sufficiently intelligible:—The law of the old Dispensation had been regarded as given and executed by God. Under the mental conditions of the times, it could not have been regarded otherwise; and that view of it was true in a general and absolute sense, because everything in the universe and on this earth is a link in the order of things, which is aboriginal and external to man. The existence of the material universe itself, of this world of ours, of all natural phenomena, of man, of the order of society, and, therefore, of law, and of the execution of law, are all, in this sense, from God. It was true also in a relative and particular sense, because the human mind was then, and especially was it so throughout the East, in that state in which no conception has as yet been formed either of the existence and action of general laws in nature and in human society, or of the spontaneity and freedom, within certain limits, of human action. Everything, therefore, is unavoidably and honestly referred to God, and in an especial degree the giving and execution of the law. And so did it continue in after times, so long as the Dispensation stood, with respect to everything that was said or done on its behalf, or that in any way bore upon it. Every word that every prophet uttered in exposition, enlargement, or support of it, was regarded by the congregation, and, too, by the prophet himself, as coming from God; and every event also that occurred in connexion with it was brought about by God. At that epoch—we have in our hands the evidence for the period of the Homeric poems—it was so in Greece. And, doubtless, it was so then in Italy and all over Europe. Such ideas belong to a certain stage in mental progress, the stage in which the world was then. This was the natural philosophy, this was the metaphysics of those times.

But to go on, in chronological order, with the particulars of the general fact: at last advancing knowledge and the progress of events began to give form to the ideas of order in nature, and of spontaneity and freedom, within certain limits, in man. The collapse of their own Theocracy, and their long subjection to Greeks and Romans, had obliged the Hebrews to understand the latter of these ideas. For those, therefore, among them who could understand facts it was an impossibility any longer to suppose that God was the sole, immediate, originator and executor of the law. In the minds of all such, the intellectual supports upon which that idea had rested had been completely cut away from beneath it. Still there was, but now removed back a step, an Originator and Governor of the universe, and of all that it contains, and of the moral sense among its other phenomena. This moral sense, therefore, must henceforth be the ground of religion; for that could not be found any longer in municipal law, which had become to their enlarged experience only a human manifestation of the divinely-ordained working of society. There was a Divine purpose and element in it; but in the results were blended so many elements of human error and wrong, especially when men were legislating, not for, or through inspiration from, the idea of God, but for themselves, and through the inspiration of their own supposed interests, as was the case with the heathen, that those results could not be accepted as the frame of religion. The moral sense must, therefore, be recognized, called forth, instructed, enlightened, purified, strengthened, and appealed to; and all this with a constantly understood reference to the knowledge of the day and to the existing conditions of society. But there could be no sanction for this moral sense excepting that of future rewards and punishments. They, therefore, must be recognized. They must be brought to the front. Belief in them must be laid in men’s minds as a foundation—the only foundation, with the mass of mankind—for the desired structure.

This implied that the idea that God gives and executes here the law must be abandoned. And with it must go the idea of His maintaining by any means of this kind a kingdom of this world, such as the old Jewish polity had been. Thenceforth God’s kingdom would be within. Its law would be found, in the moral sense, in the conscience, in the moral consciousness of the God-respecting, and so of the God-taught, individual. The old kingdom had been external; the new would be internal. It would come without observation. Its citizenship would not be of this world. This is the interpretation of those chapters in the history of religion which are contained in the whole range of the old, and in the inception of the new, Dispensation.

God has ordained progress in human affairs. We are sure of this, for history demonstrates it. Those affairs mean ultimately, in their highest form, morality and religion, towards the perfecting of which further approximations are ever from time to time being made; and these successive approximations are the steps of true progress. The most conspicuous instance of this progress, in the historical period, is Christianity itself. Progress means, when we look backward, a lower precedent condition of things just as much as it does, when we look forward from any point, a higher subsequent condition. Of any particular time, it means what was, in the progressive order of things, possible under the circumstances of that time. That was what was ordained for that time. The Mosaic Dispensation, therefore, was just as much ordained of God as the Christian, and the Christian as much as the Mosaic. Each, looking at the contemporary condition of the world, was from God in the same sense, and on analogous grounds. Moses was not wrong in allowing facilities for divorce. Under the circumstances, polygamy was one of them, he was right. Just so with his abstention from using the sanction of the rewards and punishments of the future life. The promulgator of the old Dispensation, we may suppose, felt and understood that mankind would attain, in some coming time, to a higher law than that which he was himself delivering, when he spoke of a Prophet like himself, that is, a moral legislator, who would some day arise, and to whom it would be the duty of God’s people to hearken. Christianity did not contemplate the abolition of slavery. Yet its abolition was a logically and morally right deduction from, and evolution of, Christianity. It was done rightly on Christian principles. If (for argument’s sake) the world should ever grow to a higher moral condition than that apparently contemplated by the first promulgators of Christianity, that would be no proof that Christianity had not been ordained of God as a step in the foreseen and appointed progress of humanity. Just the contrary. It was necessary for that condition, which would not have been possible without it. So was it with the old Dispensation.

It may, in passing, be noticed that the foregoing argument appears to throw some light on the much-vexed question of the historical relation of the New Testament to the Old. It, also, almost brings one to suspect that there must be some error in that teaching which supposes that in respect of the doctrine of a future life, and of the closely connected doctrine of Divine Interposition, particularly of a retributive character, in the ordinary course of human affairs the two are in perfect accord. Of course, they are in accord, though, it would seem, not in the way popularly taught. Their accord consists in the fact that each treats these doctrines in the way that was logically necessary for its own objects. Its own requirements, which were very much those of the knowledge and circumstances of the times, is the point of view from which each regards them.

Here I would ask leave to remark that doctrines, or different ways of stating some particular doctrine, which, from some points of view, or to some minds, appear discordant and contradictory, may, from other points of view and to other minds, appear quite the reverse: that is to say, in a higher and profounder sense they may be eminently accordant. It is so, for instance, I believe, with the doctrines, or doctrine, for it may be only the same idea stated reversely, of a Particular Providence and of General Laws. Our popular theologians on one side, and our men of science on the other, speak of the two as irreconcilably hostile, and exclusive of each other. But is there not an eminence, higher than that occupied by either of these two classes of expositors, from which the two doctrines are seen to be identical? Does not, in fact, the doctrine of general laws imply, and necessitate prevision of, and provision for, every particular case that has ever arisen, that is now arising, and that ever will arise? If so, then, it contains implicitly the doctrine of a Particular Providence. And does the doctrine of a Particular Providence at all imply that God ever acts otherwise than in conformity to the dictates of complete knowledge, perfect wisdom, unvarying justice, and unfailing goodness? If so, then, it contains implicitly the doctrine of General Laws. The two doctrines, therefore, must be mutually inclusive. Each presupposes the other. In fact, the two are one and the same thing.

If, in some points, the preceding statements and conclusions do, at all, diverge from anything that is popularly taught on the subjects to which they refer, there need be no attempt here to gauge and discuss such divergences. Because all that the inquiry that has been before us calls upon me to consider, in a work of this kind, is the higher question (which, in fact, embraces, and is decisive of, the minor ones) of what in this matter is historically true. We have been endeavouring to ascertain the right interpretation, and the real connexion of some particulars in the history of our religion, regarded as a part of general History. That the conclusions we may be brought to have an important bearing on morality and religion themselves, which are the chiefest concerns of mankind, ought to have the effect of making us only more careful, and more determined, in our search for the truth. We are all agreed that truth, together with the effects it has on men’s hearts and lives, is, or at all events ought to be, religion: not what any person, or persons, at the present time think, or at any past periods may have thought; but, as far as is attainable, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. We owe no fealty to anything else. Any error in this matter, just like any mistake in the statement of an arithmetical problem, must vitiate every step that follows. If any mistakes exist in the data, either of the arithmetical, or of the religious, problem, it cannot be worked out to any useful conclusion. From the beginning it was apprehended that religion was the truth. In this sense it was that it was described as ‘the Knowledge of God.’ In no other sense can it be ‘the Inspiration of Gods Spirit.’ We, at this day, looking back over the pages of History, can see that wherever this knowledge was clouded, or something else mistaken for it, the result was bad; and, as far as it went, destructive of religion. However venerable any mistakes may be, and however useful they may appear, supposing there are such mistakes, it is our interest, as well as our duty, to rid ourselves and the world of them as speedily and as completely as possible.

I hardly need say that there is nothing in the foregoing argument, or in any of the remarks that have arisen out of its course, which militates against the ideas, that God has so ordered the course of this world as to show on which side He is; and that He has made doing right to be good in itself and good in its general and final consequences; and doing evil to be evil in itself, and evil in its general and final consequences. In fact, as much is assumed in the argument.[6]

But, however, if the discussion we have been passing through supplies a true and complete solution of the interesting question this chapter propounds, and I cannot but think that it does, then one of its consequences will be, (though, indeed, it is a consequence in which the world will not, now, take much interest) that Bishop Warburton’s much-bruited Theory of the Divine Legation of Moses—as a schoolboy I rejected it, but could not then answer it—will prove to be but an Escurial in the air. That the Mosaic Dispensation made no use of the Doctrine of a future life does not prove that it was upheld by a daily renewed miracle. With contemporary and subsequent history before us, we can see that the omission was originally made on logical and administratively wise grounds.

We ask permission for one remark more. It will be observed that the foregoing disquisition assumes to some degree that there is a logical basis for belief in a future life. It is the argument which arises in the bosom of social development. It is not precisely the same process of thought as that which appears to have first implanted the idea in the mind of the Aryan: that was, in some measure, founded on a sentiment, which arose from the bosom of nature. But, however, the old Aryan sentiment which, though a sentiment, had its logic, combined with the distinctly logical argument, founded on the recognition and eternity of justice, which there is no possibility of working out on the stage of this world, where the same act carries one man to the gallows and another to the throne, and which argument social development makes palpable and intelligible, will satisfy many minds and must have weight with every mind. That something, and even that much, can be said on the other side, is a remark of no weight. It is merely an assertion that, in this respect, the question before us does not differ from other moral and religious questions. The same observation may be made of every one of them; for this is a world, as all must see, in which belief, just like virtue itself which is the matured fruit of belief, can be the result only of a right choice, after honest deliberation, between conflicting considerations. This is of its very essence. The great argument, however, itself, and everything that depends upon it, are lost to, and obscured by, those who have persuaded themselves, and are endeavouring to persuade others, to accept precisely what Christ overthrew, and which He overthrew precisely that He might establish belief in the future life.

I have dwelt on the question of this chapter, not on account of its intrinsic interest, although that is great, but because it is a necessary part of the survey of old Egypt. The history of Egypt must include some account of the influence it had upon the world; and a great part of that influence had to pass through, and be transmitted onward by, the Hebrews. It was imperative, therefore, in a work of this kind, that some attempt should be made to obtain a true conception of the relations of Israel to Mizraim; and the most essential part of those relations is that which is intellectual, moral, and religious. This appears to be the only intelligible meaning that can be attached to the reference ‘out of Egypt have I called my son’: His capital doctrine was what had been the capital doctrine of Egypt. If, however, the reference was not intended to have any meaning in the intellectual, moral, and religious order, this passing comment is non-suited and must be withdrawn. But, whatever may be the value of the explanation I have been just attempting to give of the particular question that has been before us, the fact itself remains, standing forth on the long records of history as one of the most important they contain, that, while the belief in future rewards and punishments was the motive power of morality and religion in Egypt, among a neighbouring people, who had in some sort been a secession from Egypt, and always continued to be more or less affected by it, morality and religion were able, under most adverse circumstances, to maintain themselves for fifteen centuries without any formal or direct support from this belief.

Verily we are debtors to the Jew for the great lesson contained in this fact. Another religion—that one indeed which at the present day commands the greatest number of believers—does, as some of its own doctors tell us, leave open, to a considerable extent, this question of future rewards and punishments, contenting itself with teaching that virtue is its own sufficient reward; and that should it have any consequences in a life to come they cannot be evil: and the bearing of this evidence on the point before us is not unimportant. Those, however, who are in the habit of passing by unheeded what more than 300,000,000 of the human family have to say on such questions, will not think it immaterial what the Jews believed. And never had any people more unclouded faith in the eternity and ultimate mundane triumph of truth, of right, and of goodness than the Jews, although they seldom had any thought, and then only very dimly; that they should themselves participate in, or witness that triumph: they lived and died in the faith of it, never having been supported and strengthened by the sight of it, but only by the desire to see it: the better condition, which was to make perfect theirs, having been reserved for other times. Never, however, were any people more ready to sacrifice everything, even to life itself, in proclaiming, and endeavouring to carry out, what they believed. It was this that prompted, and made successful, the Asmonæan insurrection against Greek domination; and which afterwards impelled them to challenge single-handed the world-Empire of Rome. Contemporary history, like much that has been written subsequently, did not understand, indeed quite misunderstood, their motives, and what was stirring within them; and so failed to do them the honour they deserved for their heroic efforts to prevent the extinction of their religion and morality. We, however, can now, at the same time, both do them justice, and acknowledge our obligations to them, for having taught us that the moral sentiments have such deep root in man’s nature; and can maintain so vigorous an existence by their own inherent power, without aid from other-world hopes and fears, and against all of force or seduction with which this world can assail them. This, I submit, throws light upon much that, at the present day, and amongst ourselves, stands somewhat in need of proof and distinctness.

It shows, I think, that there are in our composite mental and bodily constitution principles, or laws, of morality, which, as they are indestructible, and capable of maintaining themselves, and of acting vigorously, under even the most adverse circumstances, must be regarded as inseparable and essential parts of our being. This fact in the natural history of morality may be illustrated by an analogous fact in the natural history of language. A man cannot but use language, and he cannot but use it in conformity with certain rules and laws. He cannot alter one law of language any more than he could invent a new language: he can even hardly add a single word, deliberately and designedly, to an existing one. And he must not only use language in conformity with its natural laws, but he must also use that particular form of it which the working of general laws has developed, necessarily, both for him, and in him. Just so is it with morality. Indeed, the parallel is so complete as to lead one to suspect that morality must to some considerable degree be dependent upon language. Man seems to invent it; and so he does in a certain sense. But, however, he cannot help inventing it; and he must invent it in conformity with certain laws. Over these he has no control: for though he must use, yet he does not invent, or originate, them. That falls within the sphere of a Higher Power. In some form or other, better or not so good, and in some measure, more or less, morality is a congenital necessity of our being, and if society be fairly and wisely dealt with (but of this when we speak of the wisdom of Egypt, and again in our summing up) there are grounds for disposing us to believe that moral, and not animal instincts, may in any people be made the lords of the ascendant.

It will be enough to say here that extremes, then, appear in some sense to have met. We believe just as distinctly as the Jew, or as the Egyptian, that the law came from God; that in it God speaks within us, and through us; and that our part is to hearken to, to bow down before, and obey the Divinity. This involves morality, religion, responsibility, conscience. They saw this through moral intuition. We see it also through history and science. The primæval intuition, and the modern demonstration, constructed out of the materials with which our hoards of experience and observation have supplied us, are in perfect accord. Intuition prior to knowledge, and accumulated knowledge reasoning out the problem, have both arrived at the same conclusion: and so we have sufficient grounds for believing that no other conclusion is possible; and that what history has demonstrated to be inseparable from the working of society, and from the being of man, will endure as long as society and as man shall endure.[7]

CHAPTER XXVI. THE EFFECT OF EASTERN TRAVEL ON BELIEF.

The question that I find has been most frequently put to me since my return home is—What effect travel in the East has on belief?

What the effect may be in any case will, of course, depend on what were the ingredients and character of the belief. If, for instance, a traveller makes the discovery that old Egypt was far grander, far more civilized, and far more earnest than the mention of it in the Hebrew Scriptures had led him to suppose, he will receive a shock; or if a man finds the agricultural capabilities of the greater part of Syria utterly unadapted to English methods of farming, and has no idea of other methods; and if, furthermore, he is ignorant of the ways in which commerce can maintain a large population anywhere, he will receive another shock. We can imagine that such persons will ever afterwards affirm that the effects are bad. They were bad in their own minds, and they cannot see how they can be good in any other mind.

We will take these two instances first. Suppose a different kind of traveller, one who had previously arrived at some not altogether inadequate conceptions of the mind, and of the greatness of old Egypt. He had also observed the fact that these things are not dwelt on in the Hebrew Scriptures, and had formed some opinion as to the cause of the omission. Then he will receive no shock from what he sees in the monuments of the greatness of Egypt, and of the evidently high moral aims of its religion. Suppose, again, that he had quite understood that he should not see the same kind of agriculture in Syria as in Suffolk; and that when he was among the hills he had found, often to a greater extent than he had expected, that formerly every rood of ground had been turned to account; it is true, in a very un-English manner, but still in a manner well adapted to the locality; that terraces had been formed wherever terraces could be placed; that corn, figs, olives, vines had been grown on these terraces (on some hills the actual summit is still a vineyard), and that, where the ground was not suitable for terracing, it had been depastured by flocks and herds; and that there is evidence that many hills must have been clothed from the bottom to the top with olives. And suppose also that he was quite aware that populous cities could have been maintained by trade and commerce in Judæa just as easily, to say the least, as were Palmyra and Petra in the wilderness. Then he will receive no shock from the un-English agricultural aspects of Syria. Instead of any disagreeable sensation of that kind, he will see in the present desolation of the country interesting and instructive evidence of a change in the channels of commerce, and a demonstration of the sad fact that where the Turk sets his foot, although he is a very good fellow, grass will not grow.

But to go on with the discoveries that cause shocks. With many Jerusalem is the great stumbling-block. If, however, we can imagine a traveller visiting the Holy City with sufficient historical knowledge to enable him to recall in a rough way the city of David and of Solomon, we may be quite certain that he will, as far as that part of the subject goes, receive no shock from the modern city. The same, too, I believe, may be said, to a very great extent, even of the city of Herod. One who can rightly imagine what that city was externally will not, I think, be disappointed at the sight of modern Jerusalem. I am not now speaking of the Greek traders, the Roman soldiers, the Pharisees, and Sadducees, who might have been seen in the streets, but of the city itself. It must be seen from the Mount of Olives, and I submit that the grand Mosk of Omar, as beheld from that point, is a far more imposing structure, architecturally, than the temple of Herod was likely to have been, which, when seen from a distance, being in the Greek style of architecture, was, probably, too much wanting in height to produce any very great effect. The Mosk combines great height with variety of form, for there are the curves of the dome as well as the perpendicular lines of the walls and great windows. The dwelling-houses, too, of the modern city must, with their domed stone roofs be more imposing than those of the old city. The cupolas and towers of the churches, and the minarets of the mosks are additional features. The walls also of the modern city are lofty, massive, and of an excellent colour; and I can hardly think that those of old Jerusalem could have added more to the scene. Herod’s Palace, and the greater extent of his city are probably the only particulars in which what has passed away was superior to what is seen now. As looked at from the mount of Olives this day, the city does not appear to contain a single mean building. History, then, will again save the traveller from receiving a shock at the sight of the outward appearance of Jerusalem; or if it must be felt, will much mitigate its force.

The traveller, however, might be one who had never rambled so far as the field of history, and was only expecting to find in the Christians of Jerusalem, that is, in the specimens of the Greek and Latin communions there, living embodiments of the Sermon on the Mount; but instead of this, finds littlenesses, frauds, formalism, animosities, dirt. Of course, he receives a shock; and this is, perhaps, the commonest shock of all. But the fault was in himself: he ought to have known better than to have allowed himself to indulge in such unlikely anticipations.

Every one, then, of these shocks was unnecessary and avoidable.

And now let us look at another order of suppositions. Suppose the traveller is desirous of understanding something about the efforts that have been made to interpret, and to shape man’s moral and spiritual nature under a great, and, on the whole, progressive variety of circumstances, out of which has arisen, from time to time, a necessity for enlarging and recasting former conclusions, so as to include the results of the new light, and to adapt ideas and practices to new circumstances: then what he sees of the East, and of its people, will help him mightily in understanding what he wishes to understand. We are supposing that he has limited his expectations to certain clearly-defined objects, such, for instance, as the observation of what now can be seen, that will throw light on the history of the people, whose record is in the Sacred volume, on what kind of people they were, and how it came to pass that they became what they were; and on what it was in the natural order that made their minds the seed-bed for the ideas, with which, through their Scriptures, we are all more or less familiar; and on what there was in the people that made the moral element more prominent and active in their civilization than in that of Greece and Rome: that is to say, if his objects are strictly limited to what can be investigated and understood by what one sees in the East, because it is the investigation and understanding of what may be seen in the Eastern man, and in Eastern nature; then I think that travel in Egypt and Syria will not cause any shocks or disappointments. On the contrary, I think the traveller will feel, on his return home, that he has brought back with him some light, and some food for thought, he could not have obtained elsewhere.

As to myself: for of course I can only give my own experience; and equally, of course, it is only that that can be of value, should it happen to possess any, in what I may have to say on this question: I now feel, as I read the sacred page, that I understand it in a way I never did before. It is not merely that I can, sometimes, fit the scene to the transactions—that is something; but that, which is more, I am better able to fit the people to the thoughts, and even to understand the thoughts themselves. The interest, therefore, and possibly the utility, too, of what I read is increased for me. I have seen the greater simplicity of mind of these oriental people. I have seen that the moral element in them is stronger, either relatively to their intellect, or absolutely in itself—I know not which—and obtains more dominion over them than over our beef-eating, beer-drinking, and indoor-living people; that the idea of God is more present to them than to us, and has a more constant, and sometimes a deeper, power over them.

Observations of this kind enable one to see and feel more clearly what was in the minds and hearts of the old Orientals. This is true of the whole of Scripture, from the first page to the last; but in an especial manner is it true of the Psalms and of the Gospels. Before I visited the East I saw their meaning through the, to a certain extent, false medium of modern English thought. Elements of feeling and meaning, which before were unobserved and unknown, now stand out clear and distinct. I seem to be conscious of and to understand, in a manner that would have been impossible before, the depth and the exaltation of feeling of the Psalms, and their wonderful didactic beauty, the result, clearly, of the feelings that prompted them, rather than of the amount and variety of knowledge they deal with. The simplicity, the single-mindedness, the self-forgetting heartiness of the morality of the Gospel, also, I think, gains much from the same cause. I think, too, that I understand now, better than I did before, the fierce tone in which the Prophets denounced existing wrongs, and their unfaltering confidence in a better future.

And as it is in great matters and on the whole, so is it in small particulars. For instance, I heard a tall bony half-grey Syrian Arab, in whose mind I had but little doubt that the thought of God was ever present, cursing the God of the Christians. It had never crossed his mind that the God of the Christians was the same as the God of the Mahomedans. Here was the persistence to our own day of the old exclusive idea.

A poor native Christian at Jerusalem told me that he believed the holy places were not known now, because, in these days, men were not worthy of such blessed knowledge. The old idea again of the superior holiness of past times. And so one might go on with a multitude of similar instances.

I will here give a tangible and distinct example of the change in one’s way of looking at things, and of the consequent change in feeling, which travel in the East actually brought about in one’s mind, naturally and without any effort, just by allowing the trains of thought that spontaneously arose to take their own courses, and, in combination with pre-existing material, to work themselves out to their own conclusions.

Formerly I never read the account of the deception Jacob practised on his father at the instigation of his mother, and at the expense of his brother; or the imprecations of the 109th Psalm; or the account of the way in which David, for the purpose of appeasing God (Who was supposed to be terribly afflicting an innocent people for the mistaken zeal on His behalf of a deceased king), gave up seven innocent men, sons and grandsons of Saul, to be hanged by those whom Saul had sought to injure; without wishing, as I believe almost everybody does, every time he hears these passages read, that, by some process of beneficent magic, they could be made to vanish from the Sacred Volume, and be heard of and remembered no more for ever. But now they appear to me in quite a different light, and I regard them with quite different sentiments. Now I am very far indeed from wishing that they could be made to vanish away. I have been among people who are, at this moment, thinking, feeling, and acting precisely in the way described in those passages; and so I have come to regard them as containing genuine, primitive, historical phases of morality and religion, and as giving to the record, and just for this very reason, no small part of its value. This primitive morality, which has been kept alive all along, or to which men have again reverted, in the East, belongs to the stage in which subtilty, although it may, as in the instance before us, palpably mean deception, has not yet been distinguished from wisdom; when men think they are serving God by being ready to inflict any and every form of suffering, and even, if it were possible, annihilation itself, on the man who rejects, or who does not support, their ideas of morality and religion; and when the current conception of responsibility is made to include the family and descendants of the evil-doer. These very misconceptions and aberrations are in conformity to the existing sentiments and daily practice of the modern Oriental. With him deception is a perfectly legitimate means for obtaining his ends; nor, in his way of thinking, is any infliction too severe for misbelievers and blasphemers of the Faith; and in the custom of blood-feuds the innocent descendants of the man who shed blood are answerable for the misdeed of their forefather. These, then, and similar mistakes, the contemplation of which is so painful to us, were honestly made, and were even consequences of deliberate and careful efforts to act up to moral ideas under the conditions and in conformity with the knowledge of the times.

I have thus come to see that morality and religion,—and this includes my own morality and religion—are, in no sense, an arbitrary creation, but a world-old growth. Thousands of years ago they were forming themselves, in some stages of their growth, on the hill of Zion, as they had been previously in earlier stages on the banks of the Nile, and as they did subsequently in the grove of the Academy, on the seven hills of Rome, and in the forests of Germany. This has been brought home to me by actual acquaintance with people whose morality and religion are different from my own—the difference very much consisting in the fact that they are still in the early stage to which the ideas in the passages referred to belong. To associate and to deal with people who are mentally in the state, which the old historic peoples were in, is to have the old history translated for you into a language you can understand. What I now find in myself was once, in its earlier days, just what I find described in those passages. My morality and religion, which are my true self, have passed through that stage; that is to say they were once in the stage of the Patriarch and of the Psalmist. Virtually, I was in them. My more perfect condition, therefore, must share the blame which mistakenly appears—this is a mistake into which unhistorical minds fall—to belong only to their more imperfect condition. Both are equally parts of the same growth. I now look upon these earlier stages of my moral being as I do upon my own childhood. To speak of the ideas, or of the acts of the Patriarch, or of the Psalmist as, perhaps, I might have been disposed to speak of them formerly would, I now feel, be to blaspheme my own parentage. I look with a kind of awe on the failure—so shocking and so intelligible—of their efforts to find the right path upon which, through a long series of such efforts, I, their moral offspring, and heir, have at last been brought. Now I link myself to the past, and I feel the power and the value of the bond. Now I know that my religion and morality are not a something or other of recent ascertainable date; a something or other that has come hap-hazard; even that might, conceivably, never have been. They are something, I know, that appertains to man; that came into being with him, indeed that is of his very being; that has grown with his growth, and strengthened with his strength; and which accumulating experience and enlarging knowledge have, all along, ever been purifying, broadening, deepening. I see distinctly, now, that they rest on foundations in man himself, which nothing can overthrow or shake. A conviction is brought home to me that I am standing on an everlasting rock. Formerly there might have been some lurking germ of suspicion or misgiving that I was standing on ground that was not quite defensible. Universal history, rightly understood, dissipates these enfeebling misgivings, and generates that invaluable conviction. It is a conviction which nothing can touch, for it rests on incontrovertible facts and unassailable reasonings; and which are such as will justify a man in expending his own life, and in calling upon others to do the same, for the maintenance and advancement of morality and religion.

And this connexion with the past appears to give a prospective as well as retrospective extension to my being. If I am in the past, then, by parity of reason, I am equally in the future. As my moral and intellectual being was, in this way, forming itself before I was in the flesh, it will continue, in the same way, the same process after I shall have put off the flesh. The dissolution of the body will not affect what existed before the assumption of the body.

These thoughts I did not take with me to the East, or, if I did, they had at that time only a potential existence in my mind as unquickened germs. It was what I saw and felt in the East that gave them life and shape. At all events, I brought them back with me as recognized and active elements of my mental being.

I am aware that there are some on whom the sight of the diversities observable among different peoples in moral and religious ideas has an effect the very contrary to that which I have been describing. Instead of helping them to bring their knowledge on these subjects into order, and giving them solid foundations to rest the structure upon, it appears in them only to make confusion worse confounded, and to render more incapable of support what had in them little enough support before. But may not this arise from the fact that the true idea of history does not exist in the minds of these persons? For I suppose that just as true science infallibly generates the craving, and, as far as it reaches, the successful effort, to harmonize all nature, so does true history the craving, and, as far as it reaches, the successful effort, to harmonize all that is known of man. One man observes differences in moral ideas, and thence infers that it is impossible to arrive at any fixed and certain conclusions on such subjects. Another man observes the same differences, but observing at the same time that they are those of growth and development, thence infers that the principle of which they are the growth and development must be as real and certain as anything in the earth beneath, or in the heaven above.

There is no difficulty in understanding the prepotency these ideas must have in modifying and forming a man’s conceptions of duty and of happiness.

I have, then, no commiseration for those who receive the kind of shocks we spoke of at the beginning of this chapter. If a man goes to the East with anti-historical and unreasonable expectations, there is nothing in the East, or the wide world, that can, so far as his expectations go, be of any use to him. Wherever he comes upon truth it will shock him. Nor do I think that travel in the East will be of advantage to the man whose minute apprehension is incapable of taking in anything higher than points of Zulu criticism. This is the criticism of people who, like those kraal-inhabiting, skinclad philosophers, are all for small particulars, and who appear to labour under a congenital incapacity for large views, and for general ideas. According to their logic, the best established general proposition in contingent matter is not only utterly false, but even inconceivable, if they can adduce a single case, or point even, in which it fails. If one of this sort were to find a burr on your clothes, he would be unable to see your clothes for the burr; or if he were to go so far beyond the burr as to form any opinion about your clothes, it would be that they were bad clothes, because of the burr. I have known a person of this kind so perverse, that if you had told him that his wife and children had been burnt to death on the first-floor of a house, the intelligence would have had no effect upon him, if he chanced to suppose that you were inaccurate, and were calling the ground-floor the first-floor. He would be incapable of attending to the intelligence you had brought him, till this had been rightly understood, and set right. Till that had been done, he would be unable to think of anything else, or talk of anything else. Such is the mind of the Zulu critic. Still, however, there is a place for him, and he is of use in the general scheme.

But my late excursion to the East not only led to the question which stands at the head of this chapter having frequently been put me, and which may be regarded as illustrative of the mental condition of an educated stratum of society amongst us, but it also led to my obtaining the following illustration of the mental condition of the uneducated class amongst us.

Shortly after my return I had the following conversation with one I knew to be a good specimen of that class—an honest, conscientious, religious soul.

‘They tell me, sir, you have been a long away off.’

‘Yes, neighbour, I have been to Jerusalem.’

I thought Jerusalem might touch a chord, but was not sure that Egypt would.

‘What! Jerusalem, sir?’ with great surprise.

‘Yes: Jerusalem.’

‘Now, sir, you have surprised me. I did not know that there was such a place as Jerusalem in the world. I had always thought that Jerusalem was only a Bible word.’

CHAPTER XXVII. THE HISTORICAL METHOD OF INTERPRETATION.

It belongs very closely to our subject to determine in what sense the Hebrew Scriptures are to be interpreted, because, if the popular interpretation is to be maintained at every point, Egyptology, and a great deal more of what eventually must, and now ought to be, used in the construction of religious thought, will continue for a time to be deemed in popular opinion, and to be represented by its guides, as hostile to religion. I would, then, submit that, if universal history is to be aided at all by the Hebrew Scriptures, or if they are to be applied to any historical purpose whatever, they must be interpreted according to the received canons of historical criticism.

Those who deny this accept, in so doing—if they are logical and consistent—one or other of two alternative consequences: either that all contemporary and antecedent history is contained in the interpretation they put upon the sacred records—that is, in what at present happens to be the popular interpretation—so that nothing that is not contained in, or deducible from, or in harmony with, that interpretation is to be received as history; or else that history has nothing at all to do with the documents, or the documents with history.

There are, however, other people, not less learned nor less desirous of attaining to the truth, who are completely incapable of accepting either of these two alternatives. They value the Holy Scriptures too highly to treat them in this way. They believe that, though their primary object was not historical, they contain much history of many kinds, and of great value. History of events, of the human mind, of conscience, of religion—much of the history, in one word, of man, or of humanity; but, furthermore, they believe—and in this lies the gist of the controversy—that what they contain on any one, and on all of these subjects, is to be ascertained only by critical investigation. The single historical question with them is, when the documents have been rightly interpreted, what do they really contain?

They believe that the purpose, the character, and the contents of the documents, alike, preclude the idea of fraud and deception. The thought of the existence of any thing of the kind in them had its birth, naturally and unavoidably, in the popular interpretation. A false and ignorant interpretation was met by a false and ignorant attack. It could not have been otherwise; for both belong to the same age. No one, then, can be deceived by these documents, excepting those who interpret them ignorantly and wrongly. It is a question of interpretation. A false interpretation has surrounded them with difficulties, and in a great measure destroyed with multitudes their utility and their credit. The true interpretation will remove these difficulties; and where mischief has been done, restore their credit and utility.

But there appears to some a preliminary question: that of the right of interpretation. About this there, however, can be no real question at all, even among those who support what we call the popular interpretation. How can they deny to others the right they claim for themselves, of adopting the interpretation that appears to them most in accordance with truth and fact? The third, the twelfth, the sixteenth, and all other centuries, had a right to interpret the document in the way which at the time seemed true. The nineteenth century has the same right. The men of other times interpreted it according to the combination of knowledge, and of ignorance, that was in them. We must do the same.

Let us see, then, what is the difference between the popular, and the historical methods of interpretation. Proximately we shall find it very great; ultimately not much. But the point before us will not be fully understood until it be seen in a distinct concrete instance. The popular method goes on the assumption that the modes of thought, and the modes of expression of early ages, and of other races of men, must be accepted by us in the sense in which we must take anything addressed to ourselves by a contemporary author. This, the historical method tells us, is an impossibility. It has been rendered impossible by subsequent advances in knowledge, in the generalization of ideas, and in language through a larger use of general and abstract terms. The historical method says that archaic modes of thought, and modes of expression, must be translated into our modes of thought, and our modes of expression.

I will now give an instance that will include both. In those early times men had not been trained, as we have been, by ages of culture, to think abstractedly. They could only think, if we may so express it, concretely. It was necessary that a palpable image of what was meant should be before their minds. This was what made idolatry so attractive to the people Moses led up out of Egypt. It was so to all the young world, and is so still to all who are in the infancy of thought. And it was so in a pre-eminent degree with those Moses had to deal with, for they had been mentally degraded below even the level of the times, by the hard slavery in which they had been kept for some generations. Even among our own labouring class this inability to think abstractedly is very conspicuous. Their want of intellectual training, their ignorance, their life of toil, their poverty of language, particularly of abstract and general forms of expression, are the cause of it. They can never tell you what they themselves said, or what anybody else said, except in a dramatic form. With them it is always ‘I said,’ and ‘he said;’ in each case the very words being given. They cannot indicate the purport of what was said by the general, or abstract, form of expression that a man consented, or hesitated, or refused compliance, or remonstrated, &c. General forms of thought and expression are beyond them. Nor will they, for they cannot, tell you simply that a thing was done: instead of this they must tell you every step of the process. That which is very remarkable, in this nineteenth century, in one class, amongst ourselves, was a law, a necessity, of thought among those with whom Moses had to deal.

As a foundation, then, for the theocratic system he was about to establish, he had to announce the idea, not perhaps altogether new to some of those who had come out of Egypt, but one to which the thought of Greece and Rome was never conducted, that God was the Creator. Suppose, then, that he had contented himself, as we might, at this day, with stating it in that abstract form. We may be absolutely certain that the statement would have fallen dead on the ears of the people, to whom he had to address himself. They could not have taken in the idea. No effect whatever could thus have been produced upon them. He was therefore obliged, not as a matter of choice, but of necessity, to present the idea to them in the concrete. That is, to give them a series of pictures of creation. This, he had to say, was the picture of things before creation begun. This was what was done first. This was what was done next. And so on throughout the whole. And this was what was said at each act of creation. When the idea was presented to them in this concrete, dramatic form, they could understand it, and take it in. It was the only mode of thought, and the only mode of expression, that were possible then. When translated into modern modes of thought, and modern modes of expression, they simply mean God is the Creator. Nothing more. Those who would press them further, do so because they are not acquainted with the difference between archaic, rude, uncultured modes of thought and expression, and those of minds that have received culture, and been benefited by the slowly maturing fruits of ages of culture.

This method of historical criticism offers similar explanations of much besides these first chapters of Genesis. It tells us that good, and true, and God-fearing men, and who were moved by a holy spirit, which they described as coming to them ab extra (in which their metaphysics, if erroneous, were honestly so) could hardly in those times have thought, or expressed themselves otherwise than as they did; and that if, through some realization of the Egyptian idea of the transmigration of souls, they had returned to earth, and were now amongst us, with precisely the same yearnings for justice, truth, and goodness they had been moved by in those primitive days, they would not express themselves now as they did then, but as we do. Their metaphysics would have become the same as ours. But in either case there would be no difference in their meaning.

It is evident, by the way, that the historical method of interpretation differs also, in the effect it has on the feelings and practice, from the popular interpretation of the present day, and of former times. It is evident, for instance, that it could not lead a man to denounce the mythology and religion of Egypt, the aims of which were distinctly moral, as the invention of devils. The old popular methods of interpretation, also, naturally sanctioned the persecution of those who differ from us in religion, as they did at the time of the Crusades; and of those who differ from us only in interpretation, as in the case of the treatment of the Vaudois; and in the still more shocking case of the creation and maintenance of the Inquisition, one of the most dreadful episodes in human history. The historical method, however, suggests nothing of the kind. It can regard such extravagancies only as contradictions of the meaning and purpose of religion.

But to go back to the contrast between the popular and the historical methods of interpretation as applied to the particular instance I selected, that of the first chapters of the Book of Genesis. Some little time back I met with the following illustration of the errors into which we must fall, if we feel ourselves obliged to take them precisely in the sense that would belong to their words, had they been addressed by a living writer to ourselves. There happened to be an equestrian circus exhibiting in the neighbouring town. The gardener who was in my service at the time had rather an inquisitive mind; and the word equestrian, which occurred in the posters that announced the performance, puzzled him; and as he did not like to give his money without knowing what it was for, he asked me what the word meant. I told him it meant an exhibition in which horses bore a part, and that the word was derived from equus, the Latin name for a horse.

‘No,’ he exclaimed, ‘that can’t be right.’

‘Yes,’ I rejoined, ‘it is so.’

‘No;’ he continued, ‘it is impossible; because we are told that when the animals were created they were all brought to Adam, and that whatsoever he called each, that was the name thereof. So horse must be the name of the animal all over the world for ever. Being an animal, it can have only one name: the name Adam gave it.’

Argument was useless. For him to have been persuaded of anything that contradicted his literal interpretation would have been to abandon belief in the authenticity of the book.

Here then we have the popular method actually at work. We see the whole process. And the way in which it demonstrated to my gardener that equus could not possibly be Latin for horse, is much the same as the way in which some other conclusions have been arrived at, with which everybody is familiar, but with which very few people are satisfied.

The attempt to get over the difficulties of the literal method, in the instance that was just now before us, by abandoning it at one point only, that of the meaning of the word ‘day,’ has three disadvantages. First that of abandoning a principle while loudly and energetically professing to maintain it. Secondly that of addressing itself to one particular, and not to the whole of the subject. And, thirdly, that of being, in itself, surpassingly preposterous. For who ever did doubt, or could doubt, that in the place referred to, the word ‘day’ means, and was intended to mean, the space of our twenty-four hours? Is not this the meaning attributed to the word in the reference made to the first chapter of Genesis in the Decalogue? And are we not told, in the body of the narrative itself, with the most emphatic iteration, that the period of time intended by the word is what is comprised in the evening and morning?

On the other hand the historical method of interpretation explains satisfactorily, both why the work is divided into days, and why the constituent parts of each day are spoken of. This was done, because to do so was in conformity with archaic modes of thought and expression.

In this there is nothing forced or strained. Above all it is perfectly true. It also explains everything.

The attempt to place all we know of the stratification of our earth, of the series of changes that have been effected in the relations of the sea and land, and in extinct Floras and Faunas, on the further side of ‘the beginning’ of the first verse of this first chapter of Genesis, is equally portentous. Here again, all the difficulties of the narrative are left wholly unexplained, and the student is referred to an arbitrary, and contextually impossible, assumption, and told that it contains a sufficient answer to every objection. This interpretation makes the explicit statements of the subsequent account direct contradictions to the (by the supposition) implicit meaning of the first verse. One cannot but think that those who propound an interpretation of this kind have no suspicion of the mischief they are doing. It is impossible that its worse than hollowness could, in any case, escape detection one moment beyond the time that a man, who has but a very small store of knowledge, begins to think. And then, as all experience proves, the revulsion that ensues against such teaching (and revulsions of this kind generally reach the subject itself also, on behalf of which such teaching is advanced) is out of all proportion to the gain—and what kind of gain is it?—temporarily secured from ignorant and unthinking acquiescence.

Of course, the word ‘beginning,’ just like the word ‘day,’ and all the rest of the narrative, was intended to be taken by the rude people to whom the pictures of which the narrative is composed were submitted, precisely in the sense in which it was always taken by them; that is to say in the sense in which plain words are taken by plain people. And then arises the question we have been considering, How is all this to be taken by ourselves?

As our ideas rest on a different basis, that of scientific demonstration, we can acknowledge, in respect of any particular, that we are ignorant, either of the modus operandi, or of the time required for the operation, or of both. But Moses could not do this: he could deal with these matters only in conformity with the requirements of his purpose, and with the facts of the times.

CHAPTER XXVIII. THE DELTA: DISAPPEARANCE OF ITS MONUMENTS.

The respective fortunes of the monuments of Upper Egypt and of the Delta have been very different.

In the Delta there was a large number of populous and wealthy cities. Five of them—Tanis, Bubastis, Sais, Mendes, and Sebennytus—were of sufficient importance to have given rise to dynasties; and, therefore, each had, in turn, become the capital. So many great cities were probably never before arrayed on so small an area. The duster of flourishing commercial and manufacturing towns in the Low Countries, offers the nearest approach to it in modern times. These, however, were supported primarily by manufactures and trade, while those of the Delta were supported primarily by agriculture. The base of the Delta along the air line, from Canopus to Pelusium, was not 140 miles, while its two sides, from its apex to those cities, were only about 100 miles in length.

Every one of these numerous cities of the Delta had its grand temple—some more than one. Many were, even for Egypt, of unusual extent and massiveness. They were generally built of the finest granite. At Tanis there was a temple of this kind. It had been erected by the great Rameses. In one respect, at all events, more had been done for it than for any other temple in Egypt, for it was enriched by at least ten obelisks. In its construction granite had been largely used. As Rameses built with sandstone at Karnak, Luxor, and Thebes, which were different quarters of his great capital, and where he must have wished to make the chief display of his magnificence, why was he not content with it in the Delta? We here find him using a far more costly material, and one which he had to fetch from a greater distance than the sandstone quarries of Silsiléh. The only imaginable reason is, that he desired to build for eternity, and that he was afraid that the sandstone he was employing in Upper Egypt might, in a long series of years, feel the effects of the damp in the Delta, at all events to such an extent as that the sculptures might suffer. The sandstone is remarkably hard and compact, and he was satisfied with it in the dry climate of Upper Egypt; but he had misgivings as to its power of resistance to the climate of Lower Egypt; and therefore, that he might not incur any avoidable risk, he went, in the Delta, to the additional expense of employing granite from Assouan.

And now a word or two about the city itself. This Tanis had from very early days, as we now know, been conspicuously connected with the history of Egypt. The importance of the place had been recognized in the days of the old primæval Monarchy, for we find in it traces of Sesortesen III., a mighty Pharaoh of the XIIth Dynasty, and whose name is found at the other extremity of the land on the Theban temples. Its position it was that gave it this importance, for it was on the flank of all invaders from the North or East; and, too, on the very spot where there were more facilities for establishing a stronghold than anywhere else in Egypt. Being on the Tanitic branch of the Nile, and not far from its mouth, it could receive supplies and reinforcements both by the river, and by sea; and being behind the Pelusiac branch, it could make that its first line of defence against an enemy coming across the desert, who as he would be without boats, and would find no materials for constructing them in such a district, would have but a very slight chance of effecting the passage of the river. As the city was also placed in the low district which now forms Lake Menzaléh, it, doubtless, was in the power of its defenders at any time to lay the surrounding country under water. The forces collected in this strong position, would, if themselves strong enough, be able to attack an invader, while yet in the desert; or, if this were thought more advisable, to fall either on his flank or rear, as he advanced along the Pelusiac branch.

In the Hebrew Scriptures the place is called ‘the Field of Zoan.’ Sân is its present name, and Zoan is probably a nearer approach to the old Egyptian form than the Greek Tanis. The expression of ‘the Field of Zoan’ was, of course, meant to be descriptive of the character of the surrounding country. There would have been nothing appropriate in speaking of the Field of Memphis, or of Thebes. It indicated that the district had been originally, as it is again at the present day, composed of pools and marshes, just what our fens once were, but that by a system of dykes and drains it had been reclaimed. And so, just as we might talk of the Fen of Boston, they talked of the Field, we should say the Fen, of Zoan.

Such having been the character and position of Tanis, it does not surprise us that it was made the royal residence, and in some respect, the capital, in the time of the Hyksos. Not only was it the nearest point to their old home, from which they might at times be glad to receive some assistance, but as it commanded the road into Egypt they had themselves so successfully traversed, they would naturally wish by strengthening the defences of the place, and residing there themselves, to use it as a bar against any who might make a similar attempt. More traces of these conquerors are found here than anywhere else in the land. And it is very interesting to see in these traces that they adopted, just as we might have expected, the religion of Egypt; and yet that they did not, in so doing, abandon that of their old home. For there is evidence that they placed by the side of the temples of the gods of Egypt, temples to Set or Soutekh, the Egyptian name of the Assyrian Baal. This was the obvious compromise of the opposing difficulties that beset them in this matter. They could not abandon their own morality; and, on the other hand, the conquerors and the conquered could never become one people as long as their moral ideas and sentiments were different. Of course the Gods, and the services of religion, were the external embodiment and representation of these ideas and sentiments.

On the expulsion of the Hyksos we find the history of the Great Pharaohs of the XIXth Dynasty closely connected with Tanis. Its magnificent temple, as we have already mentioned, was built by Rameses the Great. Meneptha, his son, was holding his court here at the time of the Exodus; and it must have been with the militia of the neighbourhood, where a considerable force of the military caste was settled, that he pursued the fugitive Israelites. We are, therefore, prepared to find that at last it became the actual recognized capital of Egypt. This was brought about under the XXIst Dynasty. It had come to be seen that under existing circumstances Thebes was no longer the best position from which the country could be guarded and governed. It was now the opposite extremity of the country that needed all the vigilance that could be exercised, and where should be placed the head quarters of the military power of the Empire.

We now come to Bubastis. The great temple of this famous city, of which Herodotus gives a minute account, and which appeared to him more finished and beautiful than any other structure in Egypt, was nearly a furlong in length, and of the same width. It was built throughout of granite. Its sculptures also bear the name of the great Rameses. It was placed on a peninsula, formed in an artificial lake in the middle of the city. The isthmus leading to the sacred enclosure was a strip of land between two parallel canals from the Nile. Each of them was 100 feet wide. They fed the lake which completely surrounded the temple, with the exception of the isthmic entrance. The width of the lake was 1,400 feet. Along the sides of the isthmus were rows of lofty evergreen trees. As the ground on which the city stood had been raised by the earth excavated from the bed of the lake, and by other accumulations, to a considerable height above the temple enclosure, the spectator looked down on the temple of red granite, the green trees, and the water from all sides. We can understand Herodotus’s preference for this temple. Most of the particulars of his description and measurements can still be traced out. Of the temple itself, however, only a few scattered stones remain, but these are sufficient to show of what materials, and by whom, it was built.

It was to Bubastis that the XXIInd Dynasty transferred the seat of Government. Almost all the names of this Dynasty are Assyrian. The strange apparition of these names is accounted for by the probable supposition that its founder was a military adventurer, who, while stationed in this city, had become connected by marriage with the Royal Family. This semi-foreign House occupied the throne for a little more than a century and a half, when Tanis again became the capital under the XXIIIrd Dynasty.

The temple of Sais could not have been inferior, in extent, or in costliness, to those either of Tanis, or of Bubastis. It was built partly of limestone and partly of granite. Here were buried all the kings of the Saite Dynasty. Herodotus dwells upon its magnificence. Its propylæa exceeded all others in dimensions. It, too, had its lake, on which were celebrated the mysteries of the sufferings of the martyred Osiris. Like the temple of Tanis, it had its obelisks, and, besides, several colossi and androsphinxes. The margin of its sacred lake was cased with stone; but its chief ornament was a shrine composed of a single block of granite, in the transport of which, from Elephantiné to Sais, two thousand boatmen had been employed for three years. This shrine was 31 feet long, 22 broad, and 12 high. The lake, but without the stone casing of its margin, and the site of the temple remain, but every other trace of all this magnificence has almost entirely disappeared.

The last Capital of Egypt, in which the wealth, culture, and glory of the old Pharaohnic Empire were completely revived, and exhibited to the world, was Sais. This revival took place under the XXVIth Dynasty; and, fortunately for us, was witnessed and described by the Greeks. Absolutely, and in itself, the country, probably, was then quite as great in all the elements of power as it ever had been in the palmiest days of the famous times of old; but, relatively, the sceptre had departed from Egypt. The arts which minister to and maintain civilization, and endow it with the ability to organize, wield, and support large armies, had travelled to the banks of the Euphrates, and from thence were spreading over the highlands of Media and Persia. By a law of nature civilization first germinated, and bore its precious fruit, in the teeming South, but by a right of nature Empire belongs to the enduring and thoughtful North. History contains the oft-repeated narrative of the fashion in which those, who have successively received the gift, have successively repaid it by subjugating the donors. The Assyrians had already, taking advantage of the disturbed state of the country during the XXVth Dynasty, looted all the great cities of Egypt, from Migdol to Syené. But where prosperity does not depend on the use and profits of accumulated capital, but on the annual bounty of Nature, recovery is very rapid. And to this bounty, which was larger and more varied in Egypt than anywhere else in the world, by reason of its winter as well as summer harvest, there had now been superadded the unbought gains resulting from her having been allowed to become what nature had intended her to be, that is, the centre for the interchange of the commodities of Asia, including India, of Africa, and of Europe.

Sais was placed on the Canopic, the most westerly branch of the river, at a distance of about forty miles from the sea; between which and it was Naucratis, where the Greeks had been allowed to establish a factory and emporium. In the city also of Sais itself a quarter was assigned to them, where they were governed by their own laws, administered by magistrates selected from among their own body. As Psammetichus, the founder of the Saite Dynasty, had been raised to the throne, and was maintained upon it, mainly by the aid of Greek mercenaries, we can hardly suppose that this contiguity of the city he made his Capital to the source from which so much of his support was derived, was accidental. It was in accordance with his policy towards the Greeks that he granted a Factory to every other nation which was desirous of maintaining one, giving to all equal liberty to trade in the land. From the same motive he had his children taught Greek.

Facts of this kind imply the complete reversal of the old national policy of seclusion. The Government, and it must have been seconded by the general approval of the people, saw that seclusion could no longer be maintained, while at the same time the opposite system was offering to the country very great advantages; and so, just as is the case at the present day with the Japanese, the requirements of the new conditions were speedily and unreservedly accepted. The military caste, however, whose susceptibility was offended at the employment of, and still more at the preference which was shown to, a large body of Greek mercenaries, was an exception to the general acquiescence. To the number of 240,000 they seceded from Egypt; and, having been well received in the now rival country of Ethiopia, were settled in a fertile tract of land which was bestowed upon them in the neighbourhood of Meroé.

Necho, the son and successor of Psammetichus, was desirous of pushing the new commercial policy of his Father to its utmost limits. With this view, he undertook to adapt for navigation, and to prolong to the head of the Arabian Gulf, an old canal, that had for many centuries connected Bubastis with Lake Timsah, in order that every impediment to the traffic of the Indian Ocean with the Mediterranean might be removed. He had carried this great work as far as the Bitter Lakes, when, from some military, or perhaps for an agricultural, reason, he abandoned the work, after having expended upon it the lives of 120,000 of the Fellahs of those times. Herodotus saw the Docks which, as a part of this plan, he had constructed on the Red Sea.

The only incident in the History of Geographical Discovery which can be set by the side of the great achievement of Columbus, is this Necho’s circumnavigation of Africa. These two enterprises resemble each other not only in hardihood, grandeur, and success, but also in being equally instances of the happy way in which the scientific, and even the semi-scientific, imagination at times divines the truth, or the real nature of things. The truth, indeed, appears to possess not only some power of suggesting itself, but also of compelling the mind, to which it has suggested itself, to undertake the demonstration of its being the truth.

It would be unfair to the Father of History to make mention of this famous undertaking in any words but his. “Libya itself,” he says, “enables us to ascertain that it is everywhere surrounded by water, except so far as it is conterminous with Asia. The Egyptian King, Necho, was the first we know of who demonstrated this. He did it in this wise: when he had abandoned the attempt to dig the Canal from the Nile to the Arabian Gulf, he despatched a squadron manned by Phœnicians, with instructions to sail on till they got back into the Northern (Mediterranean) Sea, through the Pillars of Hercules; and in this way to return to Egypt. These Phœnicians, then, having set sail from the Erythrœan (Red) Sea, entered on the navigation of the Southern Sea (the Indian Ocean). When the autumn came, they would draw up their vessels on the beach, and sow what land was required, wherever they might happen to be at that point of the voyage. They would then wait for the harvest, and when they had got it in, would again set sail. In this way two years were spent; and, in the third year, having doubled the Pillars of Hercules, they returned to Egypt. They said what I cannot believe, though some, perhaps, may, that while they were sailing round Libya, they had the sun on their right hand. So was first acquired a knowledge of the contour of Libya.”

Necho also pursued the policy of his Father in attempting to recover for the Double Crown of the then reunited Upper and Lower Egypt, the Asiatic dependencies, of which the Assyrians had despoiled it. For nine and twenty years had Psammetichus been barred in the first step of this enterprise by the obstinate resistance of Ashdod, which had thus sustained, as Herodotus observes, the longest siege then known to History. At last, however, it had succumbed; and being now, again, in the hands of the Egyptians, the old line of march into, and through, Syria was open, and Necho set out for the re-conquest of the old provinces. He could not deem that his Egypt was the Egypt of Tuthmosis and Rameses, unless what they had held along the maritime plain of Syria, and back to Carchemish on the Euphrates, and which had been—more or less completely—in subjection to Egypt during the intervening nine centuries, with the exception of the short period of Assyrian supremacy, had been recovered. As might have been expected, he could not see that, though Nineveh had fallen, its power had only been transferred to Babylon; and that behind Babylon was being organized the Empire of the still more energetic Persians, which was soon to overshadow all that part of the world. It was, in truth, only wasting his resources to retake Carchemish: he should have attacked Babylon itself. Nothing was gained if its power was not destroyed. But, however, as he advanced along the maritime plain, with which the Egyptians had been familiar from time out of mind, Josiah, we know, attempted to stop him at Megiddo, where he was defeated and slain.

The Hebrew Prophets of these times saw as clearly, as we do now, that the course of events had transferred the constituents of power from the Nile to the Euphrates; and so they became the uncompromising instigators of this anti-Egyptian policy. Of course it would have been wise in Josiah to have remained quiet: his best policy would have been that of “masterly inactivity.” Necho, however, as it happened, having easily crushed him, did not allow himself to be diverted from his main object by the tempting facility thus offered to him for at once taking possession of the Kingdom of Judah, but continued, as rapidly as he could, his advance to the Euphrates. Having reached Carchemish, and provided sufficiently, as he thought, for the permanent re-occupation of all that had thereabouts “pertained to Egypt,” he returned home; and, by the way, settled, without any resistance having been offered to him, the conditions of the subjection of the Kingdom of Judah.

At this juncture Egypt must have deemed that all was recovered, and that everything was again, and would continue to be, as of old. Isaiah, however, and Jeremiah, and the other Prophets of the time were right; for the Babylonians were not long in expelling the Egyptians from Asia.

Necho was succeeded by his son Psammis; and he by the Apries of Herodotus, the Pharaoh Hophra of the Hebrew Scriptures. Egypt is still very rich and prosperous, and so he makes another attempt for the recovery of the dominion of Western Asia. In this effort he attacked Phœnicia both by sea and land. Still no change, or vacillation, is perceptible in the utterances of the Hebrew Prophets. They at all events are not misled, or dazzled, by the riches and greatness of Egypt. Ezekiel sees, just as Isaiah and Jeremiah had seen, that the valley of the Nile can no longer be the seat of Empire; and that the capacity for acquiring it had passed into the hands of their North-Eastern neighbours.

In the reign of Amasis, the successor of Apries, “Egypt,” as Herodotus tells us, “reached the very acmé of its prosperity. Never before had the river been more bountiful to the land, or the land to those who dwelt in it. It contained 20,000 inhabited cities.” Such was the Egypt Amasis marshalled against this invading host of Persia. But to no purpose: the single and signal defeat his son sustained at Pelusium, the very threshold of the land, gave to Cambyses the whole country. From that day to this Power has continued the Northward course it had then commenced; and, consequently, there has been no resurrection for the first-born of civilization, the inventress of Letters, and of Political Organization, and of so many of the arts that better man’s Estate, and embellish life. This, to some extent, hides from our view the fact that we are, greatly, what we are at this day, because Egypt had been what she was in the prehistoric times.

At Sais and Bubastis were held two of the great annual religious Assemblies and Festivals of the Egyptians. It naturally occurs to us to ask, why at these two cities of the Delta, and not at primæval This, royal Memphis, or imperial Thebes? The answer that first occurs is that these two then modern Capitals may have been selected in order to bring them into repute, and invest them with an importance, they would not otherwise have possessed. This supposition, however, is, to some extent, negatived by the known antiquity, at all events, of Bubastis, and by the remark of Herodotus that the Egyptians were the first of mankind to institute these religious gatherings and fêtes: we are, therefore, precluded from imagining that their chief celebrations of this kind dated only from the Bubastic or Saite Dynasties. We can also see that the people of Upper Egypt, all of whom dwelt on the actual bank of the river, would be more disposed to come down the stream to the Delta, than the people of the broad Delta would be to ascend the stream to This or Thebes.

These great annual Feasts answered several important purposes. They impressed the same religious ideas on all who participated in them; and this contributed much to national, as well as to religious, unity and amalgamation. By their tone also of gladness, festivity, and licence they temporarily lightened the yoke of an austere religion, and provided a recognized vent for some very natural, and not unhealthy, impulses of our common humanity. Just what the Saturnalia were to the ancient Roman, and what the Carnival is to his modern representative, the Feast of Bubastis was to the old Egyptian for some thousands of years before the name of Rome had been heard on the seven Hills. The reader may form his own opinion on this point by turning to the account of the Festival given by one who four centuries and a half before our era was travelling through Egypt, and who we may be pretty sure himself witnessed what he thus describes. “While those, who are about to keep the Feast, are on the way to Bubastis, this is what they do. The men and women go together; and there is a large number of both sexes in each boat. Some of the women are provided with castanets, and some of the men with pipes, upon which they perform throughout the whole of the voyage. The rest of the men, and of the women, accompany them with singing, and with clapping their hands. When, as they sail along, they have reached any city, having made fast their boat to the bank, some of the women do what has been already mentioned, while of the rest some assail the women of the city with loud cries and scurrilous jibes, others dance, and others stand up, and make immodest exhibitions. They go through these performances at every river-side city. When they have reached Bubastis they keep the feast with unusually large offerings, and there is a greater consumption of grape wine at this feast than in the remainder of the whole of the twelve months. The number of men and women who are brought together on this occasion, for the children are not reckoned, reaches, as the Egyptians themselves say, to 700,000 souls.”

I will append his account of the Feast at Sais. “When the people are assembled at Sais for the solemnity, on a certain night everybody lights a great number of lamps, in the open air, in a circle round his house. The lamps are cups full of oil mixed with salt. The wick rests on the surface, and burns all night. This is called the Feast of Lamps. All Egyptians who happen not to be present at the gathering, wherever they may be, light lamps; and thus there is an illumination not only in Sais, but throughout the whole of the country. A religious reason is given to account for this particular night having been thus honoured by illumination.” He does not give the reason; but as we know that the Festival was in honour of Neith, the Egyptian Athena or Minerva, or of Osiris, we may suppose that the old Egyptians were the first to use light shining in darkness as the symbol of the mind-illuminating power of the Divine Spirit.

A few fragments of granite, in the mounds of the old city, are all the remains of the former greatness of Sebennytus.

Only six miles, however, from Sebennytus are the rubbish-heaps of Iseum. Here are the ruins of a most stately temple, every stone in the walls and roof of which was an enormous block of granite. No other material had been used. So regardless had been its builders of cost, that throughout the greater part of the structure they had sculptured this intractable adamant in unusually high relief. But though it had been thus massively constructed of imperishable materials, and decorated with such lavish expenditure, it was so completely wrecked, that now the traveller finds in its place merely a heap of stones. What had been the temple is there, but not one stone has been left standing on another.

And so we might go on throughout the whole Delta. Every few miles would bring us to the site of a city that once was great—the distinguishing feature of the greatness of which had been its temple. The peculiarity of them all was that the material chiefly used in their construction was granite. In most cases, the very materials of which the temples were constructed have utterly disappeared, though the spot on which each stood is still easily distinguishable. In some few cases, where the temple was of unusual extent—Iseum is the most conspicuous instance of this—considerable proportions of the materials remain, but even there everything has been thrown down, and, as far as possible, destroyed.

The reason generally given for this, in every case, utter ruin, and in most cases complete disappearance of the monuments of antiquity throughout the Delta is, that the climate being rendered comparatively moist by the contiguity of the sea, has not been so favourable to their preservation as the drier climate of Upper Egypt has proved to the monuments of that district. The difference in the hygrometrical condition of the air, and the rain that falls occasionally in the Delta, will not account, I think, for the effect that has been produced. The climate of Gizeh is not very different from that of the actual Delta, and here five or six thousand years have not in the least affected the original casing at the top of the Second Pyramid. The obelisk that had been standing for very nearly two thousand years on the very beach at Alexandria, and which for the previous two thousand years had stood at the apex of the Delta, has not been affected to such an extent as would contribute, in any appreciable degree, I will not say to the overthrow, but to the injury, of any building ever raised by an Egyptian architect. And yet at Alexandria these supposed disintegrating influences are at their maximum, and are aided by the salt-impregnated drift from the sea in the case of this obelisk, which has, notwithstanding, outlived for so long a period every temple and palace throughout the Delta, after having witnessed the erection of every one of them. If it had a tongue, it would, I think, tell us that it was not the climate that had been the destroyer, but man.

The decree which the Emperor Theodosius issued at the instance of the Archbishop and Christians of Alexandria, to authorize the destruction of the great temple of Serapis in that city, shows what was probably the cause of the first overthrow of the temples of the Delta. As long as they stood, it was thought there would be priests to minister in them, and worshippers to frequent them. And in those days of religious faction-fights, we know that they were frequently used as fortresses. We might say that the way to meet these difficulties was to trust to the imperishableness of truth, and to the sure decay of falsehood; but whatever we might do, we certainly should not destroy the historic monuments of a glorious antiquity. They, however, had not our ideas on these subjects; and, moreover, were blinded by the dust and smoke of the battle that was raging around them; and so they acted on the principle that was afterwards formulated to the north of the Tweed, that the way to get rid of the rooks is to pull down the nests.

When the overthrow of a temple had been once effected, we may be quite sure that all the limestone that could be found in it would be very soon sent to the kiln. A great deal of lime is used in Egypt for walls, and for plastering; and everywhere throughout the country, even in places where the stone might be had for the quarrying, the Arab has preferred the stones of old tombs and temples to the somewhat more costly process of cutting what he wanted from the living rock. Mehemet Ali, while constructing his paltry nitre-works at Karnak, although the mountain on the opposite bank was of limestone, to get what of this material was requisite for his purpose, destroyed one of the historic propylons within the sacred enclosure. In the pyramid district, often with the limestone under their feet and all around them, it has been the common practice to calcine the, to us, precious sculptured and painted stones from the tombs. And in this the modern Arab is only following the example of the old Egyptian, and of all other people who wanted the materials of unused buildings close at hand. We may, therefore, be sure that, a few centuries after the overthrow of these temples of the Delta, all the limestone that could be picked out of their ruins was consumed in this way.

We have seen, however, that the chief material employed in the construction of the grandest of them was not limestone, but granite. This was utterly indestructible by the climate; and yet, in some places, it has entirely vanished as completely as the limestone; and has in the rest been much diminished. The same cause, I believe, has brought about the disappearance of both. As was done with the limestone, so has it happened to the granite: it has been used for whatever purposes it was adapted. The smaller pieces, as may frequently be seen, have been carried off for building material; and the larger pieces have been turned to account in the way in which we find that fragments of the granite colossus of Rameses the Great at Thebes have been employed, that is to say, as millstones for grinding, and mortars for pounding corn. In the alluvial Delta the old buildings were the only quarries.

All the phenomena of the case are thus accounted for. Every one must wish that these imposing historic monuments of a great past had been preserved to our times. We feel as if those who threw them down, and those who afterwards employed their displaced, but still sacred, stones for their own petty purposes, had done to ourselves, and to the civilized world, an irreparable wrong. It may, however, mitigate our indignation, to remember that the former acted under a misapprehension of the nature and requirements of their cause; and that we ought not to be hard upon the poor Arab for having done what popes and cardinals did, when, to build palaces for themselves, they pulled down, with sacrilegious hands, the monuments of old Rome.

This destruction of tombs and temples has in Egypt been going on always. Of late years, indeed, there has been an increased demand for building materials, in consequence of some portion of the Khedivé’s numerous loans having been spent in public works, and in giving employment to a great many people who have had to build houses for themselves: the work of destruction, therefore, is now advancing at a greater rate than it ever did before. Many can confirm this from their own observation. Every one who revisits the country sees how rapidly and completely the stones of newly-opened tombs have disappeared. He saw them a few years ago: now he hears that they have been sent to the kiln.

CHAPTER XXIX. POST-PHARAOHNIC TEMPLES IN UPPER EGYPT.

The Ptolemaic temple of Edfou, unlike those of the Delta, has suffered little from the injuries either of time, or of man. It is substantially, both internally and externally, in the state in which it was two thousand years ago, when the inhabitants of the great city of Apollo passed in procession between its stately propylons, and entered its great court, to hear hymns sung in praise of, and to witness offerings made to, the child Horus, and the Egyptian Venus, or, as she is described in an inscription on the walls, “the Queen of men and of women,” to whom the temple was dedicated.

The external walls are complete, so are all the chambers, halls, corridors, and courts within, even to the monolithic granite shrine. The well, too, to which you descend by a flight of steps, is still full of water. I seldom found a temple without its well. Many had lakes also annexed to them for ornament, for the performance of religious ceremonies, as that at Sais for the mysteries of Osiris, or for the boat procession in the funeral function, as at Thebes; or, in addition to these objects, to strengthen the defensive position of the temple. We know that this was a purpose for which the temples were used: in fact, each had its own trained and armed militia: and it is impossible to look upon such a structure as this temple of Edfou without perceiving that the idea of having a stronghold was included by the builder in his original design. The height and massiveness of the surrounding wall were such as to make either battery, or escalade, impossible, and there were no apertures left in it by which entrance could be effected. In fact, the temples gave the priests, and government, in every city an impregnable citadel, and one against which no exception could be taken, however strong it was made, for was it not all done for the glory of the gods of the city? And so the people were tricked into assisting to forge their own chains. Thoughts of this kind arise in your mind as you pass through the courts and galleries, ascend the propylons, and walk upon the roof of this magnificent fortress temple. Some of the sculptures on the walls, representing a royal boat procession on the river, enable us to picture to ourselves how the last of the Ptolemies, the Circe of the Nile, appeared on these occasions. Here, too, is an inscription of much interest, for it gives some account of several estates belonging to the temple.

At Dendera the greater part of the work, and of the sculptures, belong to the Roman period. The Egyptian architect now receives through the Roman governor of the province, his instructions from, and reports back their execution to, the banks of the Tiber. On the walls we read the names of Augustus and of his four successors in the Empire, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero. On an older part of the structure occurs the name of the Egyptian son of the greatest of the Cæsars, together with his mother’s, the great Egyptian enchantress. In the Ptolemaic temple also at the south-west angle of the enclosure at Karnak, both these names are repeated several times. In each case the name is accompanied with what is meant for a sculptured portrait of this famous lady. In the fulness and roundness of the face there is some resemblance to the features with which Guido embodies his idea of her in his celebrated picture. His intuitive perception of refined and enduring voluptuousness has thus proved true to nature.

But, though at Dendera the existing buildings are modern, dating from a little before and after the Christian era, yet the site is as old as any in Egypt. An inscription has been found by which we are informed that a temple was completed on this spot by Apappus (that is to say, perhaps three thousand years before Christ), which had been commenced three or four hundred years previously by Cheops, the builder of the Great Pyramid. (We may ask, by the way,—How does this agree with the legend that he closed the temples?) And that eighteen hundred years after the foundation of the temple by Cheops, that is one thousand five hundred years before Christ, the structure which Apappus had completed was reconstructed by Tuthmosis III.

At Esné is another of the great post-Pharaohnic temples of Upper Egypt. What has been disinterred here belongs also to the Roman period. The list of inscribed names includes Tiberius, Germanicus, Vespasian, Trajan, Adrian, Antoninus, and Decius. The last is of the date 250 A.D., and is the latest instance yet found of the name of a Roman emperor on an Egyptian temple, inscribed in hieroglyphics. Here, too, has been found the shield of Tuthmosis III. We may infer, therefore, that the work of the Roman period now standing was placed, as at Dendera, upon the site of a temple erected by this great Pharaoh of the eighteenth dynasty. Perhaps, as the excavations here have not yet extended beyond what may be regarded as merely the front of the temple, some of the older structure may hereafter be brought to light from beneath the still undisturbed mounds behind.

These three temples of Edfou, Dendera, and Esné, to which some others in Upper Egypt may be added, are of great value historically. They enable us to understand what was the condition of Egyptian art, and, to some extent, in what condition the Egyptians themselves were in the Greek, and in the Roman period. From the time of Menes to the time of Decius we see that they possessed the same language, the same arts, the same style of art, the same method of writing, the same mythology, and the same social arrangements. The mind is almost overwhelmed at the contemplation of such stability in human affairs. With this vast tract of time, spread over four thousand years, we are acquainted historically. Of the period that preceded it we have no monuments, and know nothing historically. What we know, however, of the historical period enables us to infer with confidence that the period which preceded it, and in which all this knowledge, all these arts, and these aptitudes were acquired, this mythology constructed, and this social organization, possessing so much vitality and permanence, grew into form, and established itself, could not possibly have been a short period.

The antiquity of the sites of Dendera and Esné, and perhaps also of Edfou, must have contributed largely towards the eventual preservation of their temples. When a temple had for some thousands of years been standing on the same site, the surrounding city necessarily rose very much above it. This rise would be more rapid in Upper Egypt than in the Delta from merely natural causes, for the yearly deposit of soil is far greater in that part of the valley which first receives the then heavily mud-charged waters of the inundation. When, therefore, these cities were overthrown or deserted, the deep depressions, in which the temples stood, were soon filled from the rubbish of the closely surrounding mounds; and the temples, thus buried, were preserved. Both at Dendera and Esné the very roofs are below the level of the mounds, and nothing can be seen till excavations have been made, in which the temples are found complete. It was almost the same at Edfou also.

Wherever, too, the temples were constructed not of limestone, but of sandstone, there was, in the comparative uselessness of their material, another cause at work in favour of their preservation. Probably, however, that which most effectually of all contributed to this result was the circumstance that from the time when these temples were built, that is to say, throughout the Greek, Roman, and Saracenic periods, the upper country has never been prosperous, or made the seat of government. That has always established itself in the Delta. It has been a consequence of this that in Upper Egypt, that is in the district to which our attention has been just directed, there has been little or no occasion for building: it was not, therefore, worth while to pull down these temples at the time they were standing clear, or to disinter them after they had been buried in the rubbish heaps of the cities in which they had stood, for the sake of the building materials they might have supplied.

CHAPTER XXX. THE RATIONALE OF THE MONUMENTS.

It was for us a piece of great good fortune that the mighty Pharaohs of old Egypt felt to an heroic, almost sublime, degree the narrow, selfish, oriental desire to perpetuate their names, and the memory of their greatness. Of course, this was connected very closely with the traditional, primitive idea that great kings were not as other men. They were of the materials of which gods had been made. Were they not, indeed, already objects of worship to their subjects? Were they not already received into the family of the gods? It is to these feelings that we are indebted for the possession of one of the earliest—and not least interesting—chapters in the records of our race. We have at this day precisely what, four or five thousand years ago, they deliberately contrived means for our having; and we have it all written in a fashion which indicates, through the very characters used, much of the artistic peculiarities, and even of the moral condition, and of the daily life, of those who inscribed it. There is nothing in the history of mankind which combines such magnitude, such far-reaching design, and such wise provision of means for the purpose in view, crowned, as time has shown, with such complete success. Some circumstances and accidents, such as the climate of the country, the materials with which they had to work, and the point the arts they had to employ had then reached, happily conspired to aid them; but this does not deprive them of the credit of having turned everything they used to the best account with the utmost skill, and the most long-sighted sagacity.

The question they proposed to themselves was—How the memory of their greatness, and of their achievements, might be preserved eternally. There was the method we know was practised by the Assyrians, the Persians, and the Hebrews. They might have caused to be recorded what they pleased in chronicles of their reigns, written in whatever was the ordinary character, and on whatever were the ordinary materials. There can be little doubt but that this was done. Such records, however, did not give sufficient promise of the eternity they desired. All materials for writing were perishable. Great national overthrows might occur, and all written documents might be destroyed. The language in which they were written might change, and even the memory of it die out. Written documents, too, in order that the record might be preserved, must be transcribed. Here were opportunities for omissions and alterations. These objections were conclusive against trusting exclusively to written documents. We can now see that if the old Pharaohs had relied only on such records as these, very little would at this day be known about them, or ancient Egypt. What we now know would have occurred, fully justifies their prescience: just as well as we know now, after the event, what would have been, they knew, before the event, what would be.

They, therefore, devised another method—that both of inscribing, and of sculpturing, on stone what they had to record. This was a material which might be so used as to be practically imperishable. What was written on this would not require to be rewritten from time to time. The work might be so done as to bid fair to survive national overthrows. It might be read by any man’s eyes, although the language of Egypt might be lost. The sculptures, at all events, would be partially understood.

But in order to secure the advantages which might be found in the adoption of this method, certain conditions were necessary, a want of foresight, or neglect of which would render the attempt futile. The building on which the records were to be engraved, and sculptured, must be of such a size as to supply sufficient wall-space for the whole of the chronicles of the king’s reign, and for all the scenes, religious or secular, he might wish, from their connexion with himself, to depict and perpetuate. This, it is obvious, would necessitate very large buildings. They must, also, be so constructed as to be able to withstand all the accidents, and adverse circumstances, to which they might, in the course of ages, be exposed. No buildings that men had hitherto considered most solid and magnificent would fulfil these conditions. They all in time, from one cause or another, had become dilapidated. A double problem was thus presented to them: first, how to get sufficient wall-space, and then to get this sufficiency on buildings exempt from all the ordinary, and even most of the extraordinary, chances of destruction. The first was easily answered. The building—or if it be a tomb, the excavation—must be enlarged to the required dimensions. The second was more difficult. They answered it by the character they gave to the architecture. The smaller the stones of which a building is constructed, the smaller its chances of longevity: the larger its stones, the greater its chances. The stones, for instance, might be so small, that any one who, in times when the building might be deprived of all natural guardians, happened to want such pieces, might carry them off on his donkey, or, if larger, on his camel, to burn for lime, or to use for the walls of a house or enclosure. Stones, even of considerable size, might easily be thrown down, and cut up, to serve the purposes of those who could command the amount of labour always at the disposal of any well-to-do person; but it was possible to imagine stones used of so great a size that it would require such expensive tackle, and so many hands, to throw them down, that it would be as cheap, in most instances, to go directly to the quarry, and cut out for one’s self what was wanted. It was, too, hoped that there would be some indisposition to destroy such grand structures, for massiveness appeals to the thought of even the most uninstructed. Now, this was just what the Pharaohs of old Egypt foresaw, and acted on. They built with stones, which could not be removed, except by those who could command something like the amount of labour, machinery, and funds they themselves employed in raising them, and who might find it profitable to employ their resources in this way. The wisdom of the prevision was proved when the Persians were in complete possession of the land, and in their iconoclastic zeal, and hatred of the religion of Egypt, would, if they could have readily managed it, not have left one stone upon another in any temple throughout the Valley of the Nile.

This method of building also reduced to a minimum the number of joints. This was, in more ways than one, a great gain. Many joints would have interfered very materially with the sculptures and wall-writing; and to have these in as perfect a form as possible was the great object. That the masonry had many joints would also, sooner or later, have led to the displacement of stones, which would have mutilated the record; and eventually have brought about the ruin both of it, and of the building itself. When we see how careful Egyptian architects were in making the joints as fine as possible, so that the stones of a building are often found to be as accurately fitted together as if it were jewellers’ work, and not masonry; and when we observe that the further precaution is sometimes taken of covering the joints of the roof with stone splines, in order to minimize the corroding effects of air and wet, we may be sure that they would be predisposed to adopt a style of building, which would very much reduce the number of joints.

The thoughts and motives I have been attributing to these old builders will account for another fact, that needs explanation. The ancient Egyptians were familiar with the principle, and use of the arch. We find in the temple-palace of the great Rameses a crude brick arch, every brick of which contains his name. On the same grounds we must assign another brick arch in this neighbourhood to Amunoph, one of the great builders of the preceding dynasty. There are, too, frequent instances of it in tombs of a still earlier date; but we do not find it in their grand structures. There is no difficulty in divining the reason. It was unsuitable to the purpose they had in view. For the reasons I have given they had decided on using enormous blocks of stone. Arches thus heavily loaded would have been subject to unequal subsidence, which would have been derangement—probably, destruction—to them; and they knew that the arch, in consequence of the lateral thrust, is a form of construction that never sleeps. Hence their conception and formation of a style—for they did not borrow it—which was confined to horizontal and perpendicular lines.

That it was their intention to use their walls for historical and descriptive sculptures and writing, precisely in the same way in which we use a canvas for a picture, or a sheet of paper for writing, or printing, is undoubted, because every square foot of space of this kind they had created, in the great buildings they erected, is invariably used in this way. And that this, and the other motives I have assigned, decided them in employing such enormous blocks of stone, is equally undoubted, because they are obvious reasons, and no other reason can be imagined for inducing them to go to so much expense. The size of the building was decided by the amount of wall-space they required for the records they wished to place upon it; and the size of the stones by their estimate of what would be sufficient to ensure their record against the destroying hand, both of time and of man. Had the arts of printing, and of making cheap durable materials to print upon, been known in those days, these monuments would never have been constructed: the motive would have been wanting.

Two methods were used for presenting the record to the eye, hieroglyphical writing and sculpture. Here, again, the idea that originated the monument is manifested. Those who could not understand the writing would be able to understand, at all events, the sculptures. The time might come when none would understand the writing, then the sculptures might still be depended on confidently for supplying the desired record. If the object was any other than that of securing an eternal record, why adopt these two methods? If it had been merely decoration that was in their thoughts, the sculptures would have been enough.

The question has often been asked—Why the rock tombs of the kings, and of others, were excavated to such a surprising extent? Their extent presents so much difficulty to some minds, that one of our best known engineers, who is also quite familiar with them, tells me that he cannot believe but that they were originally merely stone quarries; and that the kings, and sometimes wealthy subjects, finding them ready made, converted them into tombs. We may, however, be quite sure that the Egyptians never would have gone up into the mountains to the valley of the kings, to quarry limestone in descending galleries, two or three hundred feet long, when every step that they had taken for the previous two or three miles had been over limestone equally good. Nor would they have made such multitudes of quarries subterranean, and of precisely the dimensions and character that fitted them for tombs. What, indeed, was the fashion in which they worked their quarries, we see at Silsiléh, and elsewhere. The true answer is that they made these sepulchral excavations of such enormous extent for just the same reason that they constructed their temples and palaces of such vast dimensions. They would not have answered the purpose for which they were wanted had they been less. Wall-space was required for recording all that an active prince in a long and eventful, or prosperous, reign had done; and all that he wished to be known about himself, his pursuits, his amusements, and his relations to the gods. And just as, if it had been possible to put it all in print, a great deal of paper would have been needed, so, when put in hieroglyphics and sculptures, there was required a proportionate amount of wall-space. So also with private individuals. If Petamenap could have written memoirs of himself, and had a thousand copies struck off, and sent one to be deposited in each of several great public libraries, he would have been content with less than three-quarters of a mile of wall-space in his tomb. Under the circumstances, then, what we find is just what we might have expected. There is nothing wonderful, considering the motive, in the extent of these excavations. The excavated tombs of Jews, Edomites, Greeks, Etruscans, and many other people were not larger than was necessary for the becoming interment of the corpse. If the Egyptians had had only the same object, and no other, their excavations would have been of the same size.

Of course the idea of suggesting the greatness of the gods by the greatness of the houses that had been built for them, and of regarding the temple as an offering, which became worthy of its object in proportion to its vastness and costliness, could not have been wanting in Egypt. Nor could there have been wanting among the priest class the additional idea that the greatness of the temple is reflected on those who minister in, and direct its services. All this may be readily acknowledged; still such ideas will not justify, or account for the unusual dimensions of these temples, or for the still more unusual dimensions of the stones of which they are constructed. Everything has a reason. And in an especial degree must particulars of this kind, which involved so great an expenditure of time and labour, have had a distinct and sufficient reason; and that could have been no other than the one I have assigned for them. Of course, the vast dimensions of the rock-tombs must be considered in conjunction with the vast dimensions of the temples. What made the rock-tombs of Egypt larger than other rock-tombs made the temples of Egypt larger than other temples: and that was the desire of their excavators and builders to secure a vast expanse of wall-space fit for such mural sculptures, paintings, and inscriptions as we now find upon them.

The obelisks, also, come under the same category. They were books, on which were inscribed the particulars those who set them up wished them to record. Herodotus mentions that stelæ and figures, both with inscriptions, were set up by Sesostris (Sethos and Rameses in one) in Syria, Asia Minor, and elsewhere. The object in view here also was, of course, mainly to have something to write upon. Where the commander-in-chief of a modern army would use a gazette, or posters, for his manifestoes, Sesostris inscribed what he had to say to the people of the country on the face of a rock, or upon a statue of himself he had set for that purpose.

CHAPTER XXXI. THE WISDOM OF EGYPT, AND ITS FALL.

As day after day we wander about on the historic sites of old Egypt, among the temples and tombs, and endeavour to comprehend their magnitude and costliness, the thought and labour bestowed on their construction, and the ideas and sentiments embodied and expressed in the structures themselves, and in the sculptures placed upon them, we are brought to understand that never in any country has religion been so magnificently maintained. Israel had but its single temple; here, however, every city of the land—and no land had a greater number of great cities—had erected a temple, and often more than one, which was intended not so much for time as for eternity. One third of the land of Egypt was devoted to the support of the priesthood. The payments also made by the people for the services of religion must have amounted to large yearly aggregates. The spoils of Asia and Africa were, as well as the royal revenues, appropriated, in a large proportion, to religious purposes. Pharaoh was himself a priest, and his palace was a temple. Both law, as then understood, and commerce, as then carried on, were outworks and supports of religion. The sacred books, in which everything that was established and taught was contained, had the sanction of heaven. And the religion the people professed was not around them and before them only: it was also in their hearts. Their motives were drawn from it, their actions had reference to it, and their whole life was framed upon it. It had inspired literature, created art, organized and legislated for society, made commerce possible, and built up an empire; and no form of religion had or, we may add, has ever, for so long a period of time, made men what they were; for, from the time of Menes, at least, to that of Decius, it had been doing this work.

At last a day came when life suddenly left the organism—for religion is an organism of thought. It was dissolved into its primal elements; and a new organism having been constructed out of them in combination with some other elements recently accrued, the new took the place of the old. That so much had been said and done on its behalf and in its name; that it had borne so much good fruit; that it had had so grand an history; that it had been believed in, and been the source of the higher life to a great people for so many thousand years, were all powerless to save it.

But here the Muse of History whispers to us that it is not enough that we have seen in the monuments the evidence of the existence, of the greatness, and of the overthrow of this religion, but that we must also endeavour to make out what it was that had maintained it, and what it was that overthrew it; and then what are the lessons its maintenance and its overthrow contain for ourselves.

It is useless to turn to the history of Egypt, or of any other country, merely to satisfy an empty curiosity or to feed a barren—and often a mischievous—love of the marvellous. The legitimate aim, and—if it be reached—the precious fruit of such studies, is to enable ourselves to make out the path along which some portion of mankind travelled to the point it reached, and to see how it fared with them by the way; what hindered, and what promoted, their advance; to ascertain what they did, how they did it, and what effects the doing of it had: and all this in order that haply thereby some serviceable light may be thrown on our own path and position. This is the only way in which we can properly either form opinions, or review the grounds of opinions already formed, on many subjects in which we are most concerned: for these are subjects with respect to which the roots of opinion are for us laid in history.

First then—What was the cause of this long life, this stability of the religion of Egypt? The primary cause was that, as we have seen, it was thoroughly in harmony with the circumstances and conditions of the Egypt of its time. It had thoroughly and comprehensively grasped those circumstances and conditions. It had, with a wise simplicity, interpreted them, and adapted itself to them. But that was not all. In a manner possible at that time it had made itself the polity and the social life, as well as the religion, of the nation; and having done this—that is, having absorbed and taken up into itself every element of power—it gave to itself a fixed and immutable form. The physical characteristics, too, of the country, while, as we have seen, they made despotism inevitable in the political order, could not have been favourable to any kind of intellectual liberty. Thenceforth, all fermentation, or disposition to change, in political and social matters, and too in manners and customs, and even in art and thought, became impossible: for all these things go together. The natural condition, therefore, of Egypt became one of fixity and equilibrium: there was no tendency to move from the status quo, or even to do anything in a way different from that, in which men had done it, or to feel in a manner different from that, in which men had felt for, at least, four thousand years. What were now the instincts of the people were all in the opposite direction. It appeared as if Egypt had never been young, and could never become old; as if it had never had a beginning, and could never have an end. Time could not touch it. Society worked with the regularity of the sun and of the river.

This will show us, too, why it did not spread. This religion, and this system, which were so admirably adapted to the existing conditions and natural circumstances of Egypt, were not adapted to the conditions and circumstances of other countries. If the world had been composed, physically and morally, only of so many possible Egypts, so that the discovery of new regions might have issued only in the addition of new Egypts to those already known, then the temples of Abydos, Memphis, Heliopolis, and Karnak would still be crowded with the devout worshippers of the gods of old Egypt, and so would the temples of thousands of other cities. The ideas in the minds of these worshippers would still be the ideas which had existed in the minds of Sethos and Rameses, and the Egyptians of their day—neither better nor worse—and they would have been propagated, and would continue to be propagated, to the other Egypts of the world. But, fortunately, the world is not a repetition of Egypts, nor of anything else; and so an insuperable barrier existed, in the very nature of things, to prevent the outflow of Egyptianism into other lands.

But what was it that overthrew it in its own home, where it was so strong? We may infer that it will probably be something, not that was spontaneously generated within, but that came from without. And so it was. But what was that something? It was not force. That the Persians had tried, and it had been powerless. Nor could the dominion of foreign laws and customs at the summit of society overthrow it: that has, elsewhere, sapped and undermined domestic institutions; but in Egypt it, too, was powerless, as was demonstrated by ages of Greek and Roman rule.

Nor did the religion of old Egypt fall because it had aimed in a wrong direction. By their religion I mean their philosophy of the whole, their purposed organization of the entire domain of experience, and observation, and thought, including in its range the invisible as well as the visible world. Its object had been the moral improvement of man. Though, of course, from this statement some very damaging deductions must be made; for it had not aimed equally at the moral improvement of all, that is to say, of every man because he was a man. It had failed here because it had had another co-ordinate aim, necessary for those times: the maintenance of the social, intellectual, and material advantages of a part of the community at the expense of the rest. This was, though necessary, immoral or, at all events, demoralizing. Still, however, it made the present only a preparation for the higher and the better life. The things that are now seen it regarded as the ladder, by which man mounts to the things that are not yet seen, which alone are eternal realities. Of these aims and doctrines of the religion every man’s understanding and conscience approved. Without this approval the religion could not have maintained itself.

Neither did it fall because the civilization of Egypt had at last, after so many thousands of years, worn itself out. There were no symptoms of the life within it having become enfeebled through time, or from anything time had brought. The propylons, the enclosing wall, the monolithic granite shrine, the mighty roof-stones, the sculptures of the Ptolemaic Temple of Edfou, and the massive monolithic granite shaft of the pillar raised at Alexandria to the honour of Diocletian, prove that, down to the last days of this long period, they could handle, as deftly as ever their forefathers had done, masses of stone so ponderous that to look at them shortens our breathing; and which they sculptured and polished in the same way as of old. The priests who explained the sculptures of Thebes to Germanicus were lineally the descendants of those who had formed the aristocracy, and had supplied the magistracy, and the governing body of Thebes, and of Egypt, under Rameses the Great, under Cheops, under Menes. Nor can we suppose that any such amount of moral, or intellectual degeneration had been brought about, as might not easily have been recovered by the restitution of the old conditions of the country. The Egyptian system, which left so little to the individual, seemed to provide, just as they had taken care that their great buildings should, against whatever contingencies might arise. It still had in itself the capacity for rising, Phœnix-like, into new life.

So would it have been had Egypt been able to maintain its old insulation. The day, however, for that had gone by. It now formed a part of the general system of the civilized world; and, looking at it in its relations to other people, we discover in it elements of weakness, immorality, and effeteness; and these precisely it was that, under the then existing circumstances, caused its fall. The state of things that had arisen could have had no existence during the four thousand years, or more, it had passed through. What that state of things was, and how it acted, is what we have now to make out distinctly to our thoughts.

If the mind of man had been incapable of advancing to other ideas, and the heart of man incapable of higher moral sentiments, than the ideas and sentiments that had been in the minds and hearts of Sethos and Rameses, and the Egyptians of their day, then all things would have continued as they had been. But such has not been, is not, and, we may suppose, will never be, the condition of man on this earth. Ideas and sentiments are powers—the greatest powers among men. And there were ideas and sentiments yet to come which were higher generalizations than those of old Egypt, and which, therefore, were instinct with greater power. Knowledge, and corresponding moral sentiments, had been the power of old Egypt, but now they were to be confronted by profounder knowledge, and more potent moral sentiments. The Egyptians, however, had put themselves into such a position that they could not add the new light to the old, or graft the scion of the improved vine upon the old stock. The only result, then, that was possible was that that which was stronger and better must sweep away that which was not so strong or so good, and take its place. It must be a case, not of amalgamation, but of substitution.

The old Egyptians, in order to perpetuate, and render available their knowledge, and to bring out immediately, and fully, its working power, had swathed both it, and society, in bands of iron. In doing this they had seen clearly what they wanted, and how to produce it. They knew that morality only could make and maintain a nation; and that within certain limits morality could be created, and shaped, and made instinctive. They knew precisely what morality they wanted for their particular purpose, and how they were to create this, and shape it, and how they were to make it instinctive. In this supreme matter they did everything they wanted to do. This, this precisely, and nothing else, was the wisdom of Egypt.[8] It was the greatest wisdom any nation has ever yet shown. It took in hand every individual in the whole community, and made him what it was wished and needed that he should be. If we do not understand these statements the wisdom of Egypt is to us a mere empty phrase. If we do understand them, the phrase conveys to us the profoundest lesson history can teach; and at the present juncture, when the foundations of social order are being shifted, a transference of political power taking place, new principles being introduced, and old ones being applied in a new fashion, and in larger measures, it is, of all the lessons that can be found in the pages of history, the one that would be of most service to ourselves.

They knew that they could make the morality they required instinctive. If they could not have done this the whole business would have been with them, as it proved with so many other people, a more or less well-meant, but still only a melancholy fiasco. They did, however, thoroughly succeed in their great attempt, and this is what we have now to look into.

First we must get hold of the fact that morality is instinctive. The moral sentiments are instincts engendered in our suitably prepared physical and mental organization by the circumstances and conditions of the life of the community; this is the spontaneous self-acting cause; and then, secondarily,—this, however, has ultimately the same source and origination—by the deliberate and purposed arrangements established by governing mind, that is, by laws and religion, the formal embodiments of that mind. They are instincts precisely in the sense in which we apply the word to certain physio-psychal phenomena of the lower animals. They are formed among mankind in the same way, with, as we have just said, the additional cause of the foreseen and intended action of those regulations, which are suggested by the working of human societies, and which are devised, and designedly introduced, by an exercise of the reasoning faculties. They are transmitted in the same way, act in the same way, and are modified, extinguished, and reversed in the same way. Whatever, for instance, may be predicated of the maternal instinct in a hen may be predicated of the maternal sentiment in the human mother, and vice versâ, due allowance having been made for modifying conditions, for there are other instincts in the human mother, (for instance, that of shame at the dread of the discovery of a lapse from virtue,) which may enable her to overpower and extinguish the maternal sentiment—a state to which the hen, through the absence of other counteracting instincts, and from defects of reason, can never be brought. This is true of all the moral sentiments from the bottom to the top of the scale. The necessities of human life, and chiefly the working of human society, have originated every one of them. This accounts for every phenomenon belonging to them that men have observed and commented on, and endeavoured to explain; as, for instance, for their endless diversity, and yet for their substantial identity; for their universality; for their apparent foundation in utility; for their apparent origination in the will of the Creator; for their apparent innateness; and for their apparent non-innateness. They are diverse, they are identical, they are universal, they are founded on utility, they originate in the will of the Creator, they are innate, they are non-innate, in the sense in which instincts generated by the necessities of human life, and the working of human societies (everywhere endlessly modified by times and circumstances, yet substantially the same), must possess every one of these qualities. A volume might be written on the enlargement and proof of this statement. The foregoing paragraph will, however, I trust, make my meaning sufficiently clear.

By an instinct I mean an impulse, apparently spontaneous and involuntary, and not the result of a process of reasoning at the time, disposing one to feel and act in a certain regular manner. Observation and experience have taught us that dispositions of this kind in any individual may have been either created in himself, or received transmissively from his parents, having in the latter case been congenital. On the ground of this distinction instincts may be divided into the two classes of those which have been acquired, which are generally called habits, and of those that have been inherited, which are generally called instincts. This division, however, has respect only to that which is unessential and accidental, because that which brings any feeling, or act, into either class is that it originated in an impulse that arises, on every occasion that properly requires its aid, regularly, and without any apparent process, or effort, of reason. It is founded on an apparent difference in origination, but primarily the origination in both members of the division must have been the same. In this particular these moral conditions may be illustrated by an incident, or accident, of the property men have in things; an estate is not the less property because its possessor acquired it, nor is another the more so because he inherited it from his predecessors. And just as we distinguish between the unessential circumstances that a property has been acquired by a self-made man, or that it has been inherited, so do we between these two divisions of instinct. It is, however, clear that a habit is merely an acquired instinct, and an instinct an inherited habit. That the thing spoken of should be habitual, that it originated in a certain regular impulse, and not in a conscious exercise of the reasoning faculties at the time; and that the impulse to which it is attributable arises regularly whenever required, and produces, on like occasions, like acts and feelings, are the essential points.

How the dispositions were acquired in cases where they are not hereditary, though a most interesting and important inquiry, and one upon which the old Egyptians would have had a great deal to tell us, is not material to the point now before us. In whatever way the dispositions may have been acquired, the feelings and acts resulting from them are instinctive. As a matter of fact, instincts may be acquired in many ways, as, for instance, through the action of fear, hope, law, religion, training, and even of imitation. A generalization which would include far the greater part of these causes is one I have already frequently used—that of the working of society. Perhaps still more of them may be summed up in the one word knowledge. What a man knows is always present to him, and always putting constraint upon him, disposing him to act in one definite way, conformably to itself, and regularly, instead of in any one of ten thousand other possible ways. This, sooner or later, issues in the habit which is inchoate instinct, and at last in the instinct which is hereditary habit. The hereditary habit, however, is still reversible.

It was just because the Egyptians observed a multitude of these social, family, and self-regarding instincts in the lower animals, who possessed each those necessary for itself, without the aid of speech or law, or other human manifestations of reason, that they made them the symbols of the attributes of divinity.

That they had designedly studied the whole of this subject of instinct carefully and profoundly, and that their study of it had been most successful and fruitful, are as evident to us at this day as that they built the Pyramids and Karnak. We see the attractiveness the study had for them in the fact that they had trained cats to retrieve wounded water-fowl, and lions to accompany their kings in war, and assist them in the chase; and that they recorded in their sculptures and paintings that they had thus triumphed over nature, obliterating her strongest instincts, and implanting in their place what they pleased. This tells us, as distinctly as words could, the interest they took in the subject, and the importance they attached to it; and that they had formulated the two ideas, first that instincts can be created and reversed, and then that everything depends upon them. All this had been consciously thought out, and worked out by them; and was as clear to their minds as the axioms of political economy are to our modern economists.

The Egyptians then deliberately undertook to make instinctive a sense of social order, and of submission to what was established, and a disposition to comply with all the ordinary duties of morality as then understood, and which were set forth in the forty-two denials of sin the mummy would have to make at the day of judgment. All this they effected chiefly by their system of castes; and by the logical and practical manner in which they had worked out, and constructed, their doctrine of the future life; and had brought it to bear on the conduct, the thoughts, and the sentiments of every member of the community: and they effected it most thoroughly and successfully.

And now we must advance a step further, and note some of the incidents that belonged to, and consequences that ensued on, what they did. We must bear in mind that their times were not as our times. The means they had to work with, the materials they had to work upon, and the manner in which they were obliged to deal with their means and their materials, necessitated the construction of an inelastic and iron system. This was necessary then and there. Like all the oriental systems, it altered not, and could not alter; and being thus inexpansive and unaccommodating, it besides, in its institution of castes, involved injustice at home; and, in its being for Egyptians alone, exclusiveness towards the rest of the world, which was, in a sense, the denial of the humanity of all who were not Egyptians. Being settled once for all, it abrogated human freedom. It rejected and excluded all additional light and knowledge; it denied all truth, excepting that to which it had itself already attained: that is to say, however good it may have been for its own time, it eventually, when brought into contact with a differently circumstanced, and advancing world, made immorality, injustice, falsehood, thraldom of every kind, and ignorance, essential parts of religion. This it was that caused its overthrow.

Let us separate from the list just given of the elements of its eventual weakness, one which was peculiar to those early times, and the history of which is very distinct and interesting: it is that of national exclusiveness. We can see clearly enough how this instinct of repulsion arose. Those were times when the difficulties in the way of forming a nation were great. Tribes and cities that had always been hostile to one another, and populations composed of conquerors and the conquered, were the materials that had to be compacted in a homogeneous body, animated by one soul. Not cementing, but the most violently dissevering, traditions alone exist. No community of interests is felt. The instincts of submission to law have not been formed; every man is for doing what is right in his own eyes, or at most in the eyes of the few, who feel and think as he does. Communications are difficult. A common literature does not exist to inspire common sentiments. It seems almost impossible, under such circumstances, out of such elements, to form a nation: but unless this be done, all good perishes. On no other condition can anything good be maintained. This is the one indispensable condition. Here, then, is a case in which the feeling of exclusiveness, if it can be created, will go very far towards bringing about what is needed. It can bind together; it is the sentiment of sundering difference from others, the corollary to which is the sentiment of closest unity among themselves. It is then good and desirable: it must by all means be engendered and cherished. The governing and organizing mind of the community sees this. Efforts therefore are made to establish it as a national instinct.

In Egypt these efforts were made with complete success. At first Egypt had been a region of independent cities: the instincts that had arisen out of that state of things had to be obliterated. A feeling also of intense dislike to their Hyksos neighbours had to be created. All this was done. They were brought to feel that they were a peculiar people, separate from the rest of the world. That they were not as other people. They had no fellow-feeling towards them. They shrank from them. They hated them. It was quite agreeable to their feelings to ravage, to spoil, to oppress, to put to the sword, to degrade, to insult, to inflict the most cruel sufferings on, to make slaves of, to sacrifice to their gods, those who were not Egyptians. This moral sentiment—in us it would be destructive of morality—had originated in, and been fed by, their circumstances; and had been shaped and strengthened by their institutions deliberately designed for this purpose. It had become habitual. It was, taking the word literally, an Egyptian instinct. We can imagine a very different condition of the moral atmosphere of the world: such, indeed, as it is about ourselves in the Europe of the present day. The sentiment of nationality has everywhere been formed. It can maintain itself without any assistance. What is needed is not something that will separate peoples, but something that will bring them to act together. The instinct of exclusiveness, of repulsion, will lead only to troubles, to hostile tariffs, to wars. No good, but only evil, can come of it. Whatever will promote friendliness and intercourse, and prevent their interruption, must be cherished. The old instinct of exclusiveness has now become a mistake, an anachronism, a nuisance, a sin. Everybody sees that what is wanted is the sentiment of universal brotherhood. This, therefore, in its turn, comes to be generally understood, and to some extent to be acted on. That is to say, a moral instinct has been reversed: the old one, which did good service in its day, is dying out; and that which has come to be needed, and so is superseding it, is its direct opposite.

And now we must follow this sentiment of national exclusiveness and repulsion into the neighbouring country of Israel. There we find that it had been quite as necessary, probably even more necessary than in Egypt. It had been engendered by the same process, and for the same purpose. Between these two peoples the feeling was reciprocated with more than its normal intensity. Their history accounts for this. But now it was to be abrogated in both, and its abrogation in Egypt was to come from Israel. And what we have to do here is to note the steps by which this great moral revolution was brought about.

Fifteen hundred years had passed since the night when the Hebrew bondman had fled out of Egypt, or, as the Egyptian annals described the event, had, at the command of the gods of Egypt, been ignominiously cast out of the land. They had ordered his expulsion, so ran the record, because he was the incurable victim, and the prolific source, of a foul leprosy. This was the evil disease of Egypt that bondman never forgot. Those fifteen hundred years, from the days of the making of the brick for which no straw had been given, and from the building of Pithom and Ramses, had been very chequered years. In that time the fugitive people had had to pass through many a fiery furnace of affliction. Their old task-masters had again, as others, too, had done, set their heel upon them.

During that long lapse of time what a stumbling-block to the Hebrew mind must have been the good things of Egypt: its wealth, its splendour, its power, its wisdom; even its abundance of corn and its fine linen: all that this world could give given to the worshippers of cats and crocodiles. Egypt must have occupied in the Hebrew mind much the same place that is held in the minds of many of ourselves by the existence of evil. It was a great fact, and a great mystery. Something which could neither be denied, nor explained, which it is unpleasant to be reminded of, and which had better be kept altogether out of the thoughts of the simple. The Hebrew “was grieved at seeing the Egyptian in such prosperity. He was in no peril of death. He was strong and lusty. He came not into misfortune, neither was he plagued like other men. This was why he was so holden with pride, and overwhelmed with cruelty. His eyes swelled with fatness, and he did even as he lusted. He spake wicked blasphemy against the Most High. He stretched forth his mouth unto the heavens, and his tongue went through the world. The people fell before him, and he sucked out from them no small advantage.” Such was the aspect in which the prosperity of Egypt presented itself to the mind of the Hebrew. “He sought to understand it, but it was too hard for him.” How grand, then, how noble, and for us how absolutely beyond all price, is the reiterated assertion of the Hebrew prophets, even in the worst and darkest times of this long and trying period, of the ultimate triumph of right; of a new heavens and a new earth, that is, of a time when mundane societies would be animated by diviner principles; and, pre-eminently, by those of universal inclusion and concord.

At last came a large instalment of what many preachers of righteousness had anticipated, and had desired to see, but had not seen. That they had anticipated it under such adverse circumstances, and had lived and died in the faith of it, is one of the chief contributories to the historical argument for natural morality. What they had anticipated came about, however, in a manner and from a quarter of which they could have had no foresight. Beyond the Great Sea in the distant West, a city, whose name Isaiah could never have heard, and which was not even a name in the days of Rameses, and for many centuries after his time, had grown into an empire, in which had come to be included the whole civilized world. All nations had been cast into this crucible, and were being fused into one people. Egyptians, Hebrews, Greeks, were each of them the children of a more ancient, and, in some respects, of a higher and better civilization; but they, like all the rest, had been absorbed into the world-embracing dominion, and were powerless within it, except so far as ideas give power. Every people was now being brought face to face with all other people, and into union and communion with them. The way in which the religions of the world were thus made acquainted with each other acted as a confutation of each in particular, or rather of its external distinctive mythology. We can form no adequate conception of what the effect must have been. They were all alike discredited. The exclusiveness of each was confuted by the logic of facts. It was out of this conjuncture of circumstances that arose the new idea and sentiment of the brotherhood of mankind. What had hitherto everywhere obscured the view of it was now falling into decay; and what must suggest it had been established.

And no people had been so thoroughly disciplined for receiving this idea as the Jews. They had been brought into closest contact with Egyptians, Assyrians, Persians, and other oriental people; and it had been that kind of contact which obliges men to understand what other people think. And after they had received this hard schooling from their neighbours, they had been brought into the same kind of contact with Greek thought. They had been obliged to take into their consideration the knowledge, and the ways of thinking, of the Greeks. They had even been to a great extent compelled to learn their language. Some of the writers of the New Testament, it is clear, had been taught Greek, just as we may be taught French; and Homer, it is evident, had been the school-book employed in teaching them the language. And now, together with all the rest of the world, they had become members of the universal empire of Rome. All this would have led to nothing except obliteration and absorption, as it did elsewhere, if the Jews had been like other people. They were incapable, however, of succumbing in this way, because they had ideas and moral sentiments that were, in some important respects, truer, and stronger, and better than those of their conquerors and oppressors. Hence originated the idea of their conquerors that they were the enemies of the human race. It was, then, for this reason, because, being indestructible and unassimilable, they had been obliged to consider the meaning and worth of other peoples’ ideas, and of facts, that Jerusalem came to be the definite spot upon which the fruitful contact of the different integers of the East with each other, and of East with West, of Europe with Asia, actually took place. Here were collected, as into a focus, the knowledge and the circumstances which would engender the new sentiment that was to reverse the old one. The old one had been that of narrow exclusiveness. It could not have been otherwise. The only one that could be engendered by the new knowledge, and the new circumstances, was one of universal inclusiveness: not the idea of a peculiar people, such as the Egyptians had regarded themselves, but its very opposite, that of the universal brotherhood of mankind. We see the embryo of the thought endeavouring to assume form at Rome, at the very time that it was being preached with the sharpest and clearest definition at Jerusalem. But it never could have assumed its proper, clear, distinct form at Rome, because morality would always there have been hazy and corrupt, and inextricably entangled with ideas of self and dominion. In Jerusalem only, the one true home of single-purposed morality, could it assume its true shape, pure and undefiled. When the words were uttered, “Ye all are brethren,” the idea was formulated. That was the moment of its birth. It then took its place in the moral creation, a living form, with life, and the power of giving life; with power to throw down and to build up. This was the new commandment, the seminal idea of the new religion, and Jerusalem was the seed-bed, prepared for it by the long series of antecedent events, where it must germinate first. When that had been done, scions from it might be taken to other localities. But it is plain that, as moral instincts die hard, Jerusalem is also precisely one of the spots in which the new sentiment will meet with the most determined and violent antagonism; nor will it ever find there general reception, or, indeed, so much reception as among other races, where the instinct of repulsion had not been so completely and firmly established.

The new sentiment had to be evoked from man’s inner consciousness, as it was acted upon and affected by the new order of things. This could not be done until the authority of this inner consciousness had been recognized. This means a great deal. What it had come to regard as true and good was to be religion, as distinguished from written law, which is imposed by the State, has convenience and expediency for its object, and is limited in its purview by the necessities of its application, and by the ignorance and low sentiment of public opinion. The Christ-enlightened, God-taught, pure conscience is a better and higher and more searching rule of life than any legislation. That would only drag conscience and life down again to the common level. To make that religion would be making Cæsar God: an evil necessity that had, to some extent, inhered in the Old Dispensation. It would kill conscience, which aims higher, goes deeper, and sees farther than written statutes and enactments, however well meant, or wisely drawn. The new religion, therefore, stood aloof from, and placed itself above, all existing legislation, except in the sense of submitting to it, and obeying it as a social and political necessity. But though it submitted itself to, and obeyed, it could not receive, a written code as the rule of life. While, therefore, it recognized the rights and necessities of the kingdoms of this world, it found in man’s conscience the law of a kingdom not of this world. The polity it created was not of them. It was God’s kingdom among men. The kingdoms of the world might at some future time become the kingdoms of God, but at present Cæsar and God were distinct powers, and represented distinctly different applications of the principles of right. Cæsar’s application was partial only, and, moreover, full of corruption; God’s was all-embracing and incorrupt.

The day of trial had been long in coming, but it had come at last; and what we have been recalling to the reader’s mind was what the wisdom of Egypt had to confront now. It was the apotheosis of the ideas men could now attach to the words, Truth, Freedom, Justice, Goodness, Knowledge, Humanity. These were of God, and made man one with God. The time, then, had come for the Hebrew bondman to be revenged: for the Hebrew invasion of Egypt. We may contrast it with the old Egyptian invasions of Syria, and with the Hyksos invasion of Egypt. It was of a kind of which the organized wisdom of Egypt could have formed no anticipation; and against which the temples and the priesthood of Egypt were as powerless as heaps of stones, and dead men. It was an invasion of ideas which could now be understood, and of sentiments which could now be felt; and which were better than any the priests, and priest-kings of old Egypt had in their day felt or understood; and the feeling and the understanding of which would utterly abolish the system they had maintained. These ideas and sentiments had been proclaimed in the cities and villages of Judea and Galilee as the new commandment, as the fulfilment of all religion. The whole Roman world was ripening for their reception. They were carried down into Egypt in the thoughts and hearts of those who had received them. They spread from mind to mind, and from heart to heart. The fugitive bondman, the cast-out leper had returned; but he had now come to bestow a glorious liberty, to communicate the contagion of regenerating ideas and sentiments, and of a larger and better humanity. The Hyksos had again come down into the old Nile land; but this time they came not to oppress, not to exact tribute, but to break bonds, and to enrich, and to place men on a higher level than they had occupied before. This was an invasion to which Egypt, in all its thousands of years of national life, had never yet been exposed. Invasions of this kind can be very rare in the history of nations, and in the history of the human race; but if, when they do come, minds are prepared for them, they are irresistible. And so it was now with old Egypt. The old order of things passed away, and the new order of things came in its place. The priesthood, with all their lore, their science, their wisdom, their legitimacy of at least four thousand years, their impregnable temple-fortresses, their territorial supremacy, the awful authority with which a religion so old, that the memory of the world ran not to the contrary, invested them, passed away like a morning mist. The whole system fell, as the spreading symmetrical pine-tree falls, never to burst forth again into new life—the overthrow having killed the root, as well as all that had grown from the root. Even the very Houses of the Gods which, as the thought of the days of Rameses had phrased it, had been built for myriads of years, passed away with it, excepting the few which have been preserved to tell the history of what once had been.

All had been overthrown: but the Christian ideas and sentiments, which had done the work, were too grand and simple for Egypt, where the most inveterate of all instincts was for the mind to be swathed. And so the new revelation was soon obscured. The reaction came in the forms of asceticism and theology.

But asceticism and theology are not religion; or, at all events, not such religion as can inspire much nobility of soul, or which has any power and vitality, except under the circumstances which created it: and so this, too, fell; and the religion which superseded it—that of the Egypt of to-day—is, in its simplest expression, a reversion to the old oriental idea, which seems always to have been a necessity there, of authoritative, unchangeable legislation, combined, however, with the Christian idea of the brotherhood of mankind. The form in which the Christian idea has been incorporated into it is that of an universal religion, which gives no sanction to exclusive pretensions, either of nationality, or of caste.

It is natural for the traveller to wish that he could behold Egypt in its old world order and glory; but he must console himself with the reflection that what perished was what deserved to perish—what had become narrow and false; and that what was good, true, and wise, including the lessons Egypt’s history teaches, survived the crash. Of all that we are the inheritors.

The fortunes and the future of the Christian idea and sentiment of the brotherhood of mankind, which gave the new doctrine so much of its power to overthrow the wisdom of old Egypt, interests and concerns us all. From the days of its first triumphs down to our own day it has been actively at work in Europe. Through all these centuries it has been gaining strength. The first logical deduction from it which, like its parent, becomes a sentiment as well as an idea, is that of universal equality, for if all are brothers, then none is greater or less than another. The flower with which this offshoot blossoms is that of humanity. Under the old exclusive systems, which placed impassable barriers between peoples, cities, and tribes; and then between the classes of the same community; and had therefore, said to human hearts, ‘So far may you go, and no further; beyond this you need not—you ought not—to feel pity; beyond this hatred and repulsion, the sword, the torch, the chain are only to be thought of;’ the idea of humanity had been impossible: but when all men are recognized as in essentials equally men, that which makes them men assumes the definite form of this idea. ‘Honour all men’—that is, do all in your power to elevate every one you may come in contact with, and nothing that has a tendency to degrade any human being, whatever may be his complexion, blood, caste, or position—was, we know, a very early injunction.

The greatest outward and visible achievement of the idea and sentiment of the brotherhood of mankind was the abolition of slavery and serfdom. This was effected very slowly. We are, however, rather surprised that so Herculean a labour should ever have been achieved by it at all. When we consider the inveteracy and the universality of the institution; that it was the very foundation on which society was, almost everywhere, built; that it was everywhere the interest of the governing part of the community, that is, of those who had power in their hands, to maintain it; that, in the early days of the new idea, it never soared so high as the thought of so great an achievement; and yet find, notwithstanding, that the old institution has fallen everywhere; that no combination of circumstances has anywhere been able to secure it; we begin to understand the irresistible force of the idea. This was the greatest of all political and social revolutions ever effected in this world.

The manifestations of the sentiment we are now thinking of have been very various, in conformity with the circumstances of the times, and the condition of those in whom it was at work. Some centuries ago it came to the surface in Jacqueries and Anabaptist vagaries. Now for some three generations it has been seen in volcanic operation in French outbreaks and revolutions. It is the soul of American democracy. It is at this moment working, like leaven in a lump of dough, in the hearts and minds of all Christian communities. There is no man in this country but feels its disintegrating, and reconstructing force. Every village school that is opened, every invention and discovery that is made, every book, every newspaper that is printed, every sermon that is preached, aids in propagating it. Its continued growth and spread gradually deprive governing classes of heart, thus betraying them from within, and of a logically defensive position in the forum of what has now come to be recognized as public opinion. It is at this day the greatest power among men. The future, whatever it is to be, must be largely shaped by it.

Here the study of the wisdom of old Egypt teaches us much. One most useful lesson is that stability in human societies can be attained; but that, as the constitution and sentiments of European societies are now very different from the state of things to which the wisdom of Egypt was applied, we must give to our efforts a form and character that will be suitable to our altered circumstances. The method they adopted was that of eliminating the elements of political and social change, by arranging society in the iron frame of caste, and by petrifying all knowledge in the form of immutable doctrine. We cannot do this, and it would not be desirable for us to do it, if we could. The obvious advantages of the Egyptian method were that, under the then existing circumstances, it secured order and quiet; and that it assigned to every man his work, and taught him how to do it. Its disadvantages were that ultimately it repressed all higher moral progress, denied all new truths, and consecrated what had become falsehood and injustice. It was also worked, though with a great immediate gain of power, from thorough organization, yet with a great waste of the highest form of power, for it altogether overlooked natural aptitudes, and, quite irrespectively of them, decided for every man what he was to be, and what he was to do. We cannot suppose, on the one hand, that there are no other methods of securing social order and stability than these; nor, on the other hand, that American democracy and Chinese mandarinism have exhausted all alternatives now possible. This, however, is a problem we shall have to consider for ourselves. Here it will be enough for us to see that, even if it were within our power to attain to stability by the Egyptian application of the Egyptian method, the result would still be subject to the limitation of the rise of new ideas, and even of the propagation, more widely throughout the community, of existing ideas. These are absolutely irresistible. There is nothing under heaven, especially in these days of rapid and universal interchange and propagation of thought, which can arrest their progress. Their elements pervade the moral atmosphere, which acts on our moral being, just as the air, we cannot but breathe, does on our bodily constitution.

We may also learn from this history that progress, about which there has been so much debate—some glorying in it, some denying it,—is an actual positive historic fact. What we have been reviewing enables us, furthermore, to see precisely in what it consists. It does not consist in the abundance of the things we possess, nor in mastery over nature. We may continuously be overcoming more and more of the hindrances nature has placed in our path; we may be compelling her to do more and more of our bidding; we may be extorting from her more and more of her varied and wondrous treasures; but all this, in itself, possesses no intrinsic value. It is valuable only as a means to something else. The old Egypt of the Pharaohs might, conceivably, have possessed railways, power-looms, electric telegraphs, and yet the old Egyptian might have been, and might have continued to be for four thousand years longer, very much what he was in the days of Sethos and Rameses. The modern Egyptian possesses all these things, and the printing-press besides, and yet is inferior, under the same sky, and on the same ground, to his predecessors of those old times. The end and purpose of material aids, and of material well-being, are to strengthen, and to develop, that which is highest, and best, and supreme in man—that which makes him man. Otherwise it is only pampering, and rendering life easy to, so many more animals. The difference would be little whether this were done for so many such men, or for so many crocodiles and bulls. That which is supreme in man—which makes a man a man—is his intellectual and moral being. If this has been strengthened, enlarged, enriched, progress has been made; he has been raised to a higher level; his horizon has been extended; he has been endued with new power. History and observation show that without some amount of material advancement, intellectual and moral advancement is not possible, and that all material gains may be turned to account in this way. This is their proper place—that of means, and not of ends. They are ever placing larger and larger proportions of mankind in the position in which intellectual and moral advancement becomes possible to them. That, then, to which they contribute, and which they make possible, is their true use and purpose. Whoever makes them for himself the end, dethrones that within himself, the supremacy of which alone can make him a true man. Every one who has done anything towards enriching, and purifying, and strengthening the intellect, or the heart of man, or towards extending to an increased proportion of the community the cultivation and development of moral and intellectual power, has contributed towards human progress.

The greatest advance that has been made in the historic period was the implanting in the minds of men the idea, and in their hearts the sentiment, of the brotherhood of mankind. The idea and sentiment of responsibility dates back beyond the ken of history. Our observation, however, of what is passing in rude and simple communities, where social arrangements and forces are still in an almost embryonic condition, leads us to suppose that it is an instinct developed by the working, the necessities, and the life of society. To our own times belongs the scientific presentment of the idea of the cosmos, which, though a construction of the intellect, affects us also morally. Who can believe that even the oldest of these ideas is bearing all the fruit of which it is capable, and—that it will have no account to give of even better fruit in the future than it has ever produced in the past? How wide then is the field, in the most advanced communities, for moral and intellectual, the only truly human, progress! How impossible is it to foresee any termination of this progress!

CHAPTER XXXII. EGYPTIAN LANDLORDISM.

Landlordism, or the territorial system, which gives, generally throughout a country, the ownership of the land to one class, and the cultivation of it to another, who pay rent for it, is often spoken of as something peculiarly English. We hear it said that this divorce of ownership from cultivation is unnatural. That it is bad economically, and worse politically. That attachment to the land, the great element of stability in political institutions, hardly exists under it. On the other side it is urged that it is a great advantage to a community to possess in its bosom a large class, far removed from the necessity of working for its support, which is, therefore, better able to set to other classes an example of refinement, and of honourable bearing; and of which many members will naturally desire to devote themselves to the service of the state, and of their respective neighbourhoods. We argue the point, as if the landlordism of England were almost something sui generis. This is a mistake. The same system was developed, only more designedly and methodically, throughout Egypt more than three thousand years ago. There the whole acreage of the country was divided into rectangular estates. One third of these was assigned to the king, and the remaining two thirds, in equal proportions, to the priestly, and to the military castes. These estates were generally cultivated by another order of men, who, for the use of the land, paid rent to the owners.

It is a curious fact, that the Egyptian farmer paid the same proportionate rent which is paid by the British farmer of the present day. Rent in Egypt three thousand years ago, was one fifth of the gross produce. The circumstances of Egypt, of course, almost exclude the idea of average land, for any one acre anywhere was likely to be as good as any other acre anywhere else, all being fluviatile alluvium similarly compounded. And all were subject to much the same atmospheric conditions. There could therefore be the same rent for the whole kingdom. But if the land did anywhere, from some exceptional cause, produce more or less, this was met by the system of paying a fifth. With respect to this country, however, we must talk of averages. The average gross produce of average farms is here, I suppose, estimated in money, about eight pounds an acre; and the average rent of such a farm is about thirty-two shillings an acre. Just one fifth. Exactly the proportion that was paid, as rent for the land they occupied, by the tenants of Potiphar, Captain of the Guard, and of Potipherah, Priest of On, Joseph’s father-in-law. The same rent was paid by the occupiers of the farms on the royal demesne to Pharaoh himself.

It may also be worth while noticing how similar circumstances produced in those remote times, and produce in our own, similar tastes and manners. Those old Egyptian landlords were not altogether unlike their English representatives. There are traces in them of a family likeness. They were much addicted to field-sports. You see this everywhere in the sculptures and paintings. You find there plenty of scenes of fowling, fishing, and hunting; of running down the gazelle, and spearing the hippopotamus; of coursing and netting hares; and of shooting wild cattle with arrows, and of catching them with the lasso. They had their fish-ponds as well as their game-preserves. They had, too, their game laws. They were fond of dogs and of horses. They kept very good tables. They gave morning and evening parties. They amused themselves with games of skill and chance. They thought a great deal of their ancestors, as well they might, for a thousand years went but for little in the date of the patents of their nobility. They built fine houses, and furnished them handsomely. They paid great attention to horticulture and arboriculture.

If the estates in Egypt were all of the same size as the military allotments mentioned by Herodotus, and the probability is that they were, they must have been about ten acres each. This may be reckoned as fully equal to thirty acres here; for in Egypt the land is all of the best description, and is manured every year by the inundation; and two crops at least can every year be secured from it, the cultivation being almost like that of a garden under irrigation. This would be ample for those who cultivated their land themselves. Those who let it for a fifth would of course get that proportion of every crop. The man therefore who had forty-two estates, as we find it recorded of an old Egyptian on his tomb, had a very considerable income. It would be interesting to know how he came to acquire so many estates; whether by inheritance, by purchase, or by favour of the Crown; whether there were any statutory limits to the acquisition of landed property; and whether provisions were made for dispersing a man’s accumulations at his death: for instance, supposing he had received several estates from the Crown, was he merely a life-tenant without power of absolute disposal, the estates reverting at his death to the Crown? What was the rule of distribution generally followed in their wills? How was the property of an Egyptian, who died intestate, disposed of?

CHAPTER XXXIII. CASTE.

In old Egypt, where we find the earliest development of Aryan civilization, every occupation was hereditary. In the United States, where we have its most recent development, no occupation is hereditary. In Egypt a man’s ancestors from everlasting had practised, and his descendants to everlasting would have to practise, the same business as himself. In the United States it is a common occurrence for the same man to have practised in succession several businesses.

With respect to ourselves, it is a trite remark that in this country legislation is the only work that is designedly made hereditary. It is, however, obvious that this is an instance which is subject to considerable limitations, both as to its hereditary character, and as to its actual extent. For our legislator caste is always receiving into its ranks recruits from outside, and its legislative power is only a power that is exercised co-ordinately with that of an unhereditary chamber.

Circumstances, not positive institution, except indirectly, have hitherto made our agricultural labourers very much of a caste. Those who are engaged in this kind of work are generally descended from those who have for many generations been so employed. Multitudes of the class, however, escape from it; and every village school that is at work amongst us is supplying means of escape from it for many of those whose horizon it enlarges.

The clergy of the Established Church to a great extent form a caste, but without hereditary succession. This caste character of the clergy is a result of their segregation from secular employments, and of their corporate perpetuity.

Serfdom had, in mediæval Europe, a similar effect, which was, at the same period, felt at the other extremity also of society, through the institution of feudal nobility.

But the most widely-spread form of the institution was that which now appears to us the most hideous of all human institutions, that of slavery. Still we cannot pronounce it unnatural, for we find it, at certain stages of their development, among all races of men; and even constituting a regular part of the economy of certain insects. In Europe it is difficult to believe that some of the early advances of society could have been made without its aid. It belongs to that stage when wealth, which gives the leisure which makes any degree of intellectual culture possible, can only be secured by binding down the many to compulsory toil for the few, and giving to them all that the many can produce in excess of the absolute necessaries of existence. The Homeric chieftain was the product of this arrangement. So were the highly-cultured Greeks of the age of Pericles. It was the same with the governing class in the period of Roman greatness. It is, in one view, a very complete form of the institution, because it embraces every member of the community, from the top to the bottom. It divides society into two castes, assigning to one leisure, culture, the use of arms, government; to the other, denying them all participation in these advantages and employments, it assigns absolute subjection, labour, and bare subsistence. The history of this institution is very instructive. It shows how, in human affairs, circumstances rule and decide the question of expediency; and even that it is impossible to predicate of matters of this kind good or evil absolutely. Here, at all events, is something (it is, in fact, the very mould in which a community is cast,) which at one time builds up society, and at another overthrows it; which at one time is the cause and instrument of progress, and at other times retards, or reverses it; which, under some conditions, is not unfavourable to morality, and is under others immoral and demoralizing.

Of all these arrangements, then, we may suppose that they were, in their respective times, necessary and useful. They appear to belong to early and transitional stages of society, and not, if there be, or ever is to be, such a state, to its maturity. They mean either that every member of society is not yet fit to be trusted; or that society cannot yet afford to endow all its members with freedom and power, and that, under such circumstances, more or less rigid restriction is an indispensable condition of life and growth.

The abolition of slavery is the recognition, morally and logically—though, of course, not always practically and politically: it must, however, always work in this direction—of the axioms ‘that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; and that among these are life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.’

In India the word for caste signifies colour. The castes are the colours. This connects the institution with conquest. Probably in Egypt it had the same origin. We have seen that it might have had. But this could not have maintained it through thousands of years. Nothing could have given it such vitality but its utility. Benefit of clergy is evidence of there having been a period in the history of modern Europe when only a very limited class was educated, and so it became the sole depository of the knowledge of the times. As there was such a period in the history of those who had inherited the arts of Greece and Rome, and among them an easy style of writing, it could not have been otherwise in old Egypt. The difficulties of maintaining knowledge must at that time have been very great; and, as all knowledge was more or less connected with religion (religion, indeed, then meaning the organization of the knowledge of the community for the regulation of its life and action), it naturally fell into the keeping of the priests, who could see no advantage in communicating it to the profane vulgar. It was their patrimony, their inheritance. This at once preserved it, and constituted its guardians a caste. The existence of one such caste would make the general introduction of the system throughout the community natural and easy. It was obviously in such times the best way of maintaining the knowledge of every art, as well as of religion itself. It also endowed society with a fixity and order nothing else could impart to it. Every man in the community was born to a certain definite condition and occupation, of which nothing could divest him, and which he never could abandon. This utterly extinguished all motives for, and almost the very idea of, insurrections and revolutions.

Such a state of society had, of course, certain easily-seen disadvantages, but it also had certain very considerable advantages. The chief of these was that just adverted to, that society, having paid the penalty of the restrictions and losses the system imposed, advanced with internal peace and order. These, when the system had once been disturbed, could never again be attained till society had arrived at the opposite, that is the Chinese or American, extreme, in which there is abolished, as far as possible, every vestige of the old system, even what might be called the natural and uninstituted caste of the ignorant. Caste throughout from top to bottom, or caste nowhere, equally ensures domestic quiet. All between, every form of the partial application of the system, carries within itself the germs of social disquiet, dissatisfaction, and disorder. The history of all countries has been hitherto very much a history of caste. This is a point which has not been sufficiently kept in sight. The picture of social order maintained in ancient Egypt for several thousand years, as in India, astonishes us. Universal caste explain the phenomenon. There was nothing in the bosom of those great communities to suggest recourse to arms, except the occasional occurrence of religious innovations, or of dynastic rivalries.

CHAPTER XXXIV. PERSISTENCY OF CUSTOM IN THE EAST.

Every traveller in the East is struck with the obstinate persistency of forms of expression even, as well as of customs, he meets with. In bargaining in the Khan Khaleel Bazaar, at Cairo, for an amber mouthpiece for a pipe, I had to go through the very dialogue which passed between Ephron and Abraham. I objected to the price. ‘Nay, then,’ replied the modern Hittite, ‘I give it thee. Take it, I give it thee.’ At last the price was agreed upon, and he took his money. Some time afterwards, at Jaffa, I noticed that a roguish hanger-on for odd jobs at the hotel was using precisely the same words, in an attempt he was making to get a friend I was with to give him for a box of oranges ten times the price they were selling at in the market, only a couple of hundred yards off. I was struck with the coincidence, and, on mentioning the matter to one familiar with the ways of the East, I learnt that this pretended gratuitous offer of the article represented a regular recognized stage in the form of bargaining. For three thousand years, at all events, it has been in stereotype.

Marriages are arranged now, as was that of Isaac and Rebekah, without the principals having seen each other.

Women in the East to-day wear the veil just as they did in the time of the Patriarchs.

The shoes are still taken off on entering holy places. The worshipper, in praying, still turns his face in the direction of the great sanctuary of his religion.

“Jezebel stimmied her eyes.” So the Septuagint version has it. This translation was made at Alexandria by Jews. Their own wives and daughters had made them familiar with the practice, and with the word technically used to express it; and they very naturally and properly adopted the technical term in their translation. They again used it in the parallel passage of Ezekiel. The rendering in our English Bible of this incident in Jezebel’s last toilet is misleading. It makes her “paint her face.” This suggests the rouge-pot and the cheeks, instead of the kohl-stick and the eyes. On the monuments we see that the ladies of old Egypt had the same practice. In the streets of the Cairo of to-day you find that the ladies of modern Egypt have retained it. The object of the practice is two-fold—to give prominency to the eyes, the most expressive feature, and to make the complexion of the face, by the effect of the contrast with the thus deepened darkness of the eyes, appear somewhat fairer.

The history of Joseph, I might almost call it the Josephead, the more distinctly to indicate my meaning, wears very much the appearance of an episode in a great national epic cycle, which had been handed down from the legendary age, and which must have been, as is still the case with oriental romances, in form prose, though in style and spirit full of dramatic force and poetry. I can imagine the men and children sitting at the tent-door, and the women within, to hear its recital. Just such histories are now recited daily throughout the East. While their incidents interest and entrance the imagination, they teach history, morality, and religion. How pleasingly do the high moral aims of this story of Joseph, so simple and natural, so true and profound, contrast with the frivolous, mawkish, false, sensational sentimentality of the modern novel! Its ideas, style, form, and colouring supply almost a collective illustration of the obstinate persistency we are noticing in everything oriental. With the exception of slavery, which, in deference to the ideas and feelings of the Christian world, has lately been abolished by law in Egypt—though I understand the law is very imperfectly observed—this history may be read to-day just as if its object were to give a picture of the thought, feelings, and practices of modern Egyptian life. If its dialogue, and all its minutiæ of detail, were heard for the first time at the date of the Exodus, it would still possess a very remote antiquity. It is, however, curious that we have every particular of Joseph’s adventure with Potiphar’s wife in the story of the ‘Two Brothers,’ the only Egyptian romance we have recovered, and the papyrus manuscript of which is somewhat older, at least, than the Exodus; for it was written, or edited, by Kagabu, one of the nine literati attached to the household of Rameses the Great, for the instruction of the crown-prince, Meneptha, in whose reign the Exodus took place.

Jusuf, by the way, is one of the commonest names in Egypt. Among others of this name I met with was a lad, the most beautiful boy I saw in the East, who had been, I was told, donkey-boy to the Prince of Wales at Thebes, and who served me in that capacity on one of my visits to Karnak. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Moses, David, and Solomon, of course in their Arabic forms, are all very common names. They must have been introduced at the time of the Mahomedan invasion, unless the Christian invasion had brought them in some centuries earlier.

The modern Egyptians’ ideas of unclean things and persons, of the obligation of washing hands before meals, and their practice, while eating, of sitting round the dish and dipping into it, were, we know, very much the same among the Hebrews.

The serpent charmer still charms the adder, as in the Psalmist’s day, with neither more nor less of wisdom.

It was an enactment of the law given by Moses, that if a poor man pawned his clothes, they should be returned to him at sunset, that he might have something to sleep in. So is it with the modern Arab; he passes the night in the clothes he had worn during the day.

Hospitality, the treatment of women, the relation of the sexes, respect for age and for learning, belief in dreams, the arbitrary character of the government, indifference to human suffering, absence of repugnance to take human life, and, indeed, almost all that goes to constitute what is distinctive in the life of a people, is the same now in the East as it was in the earliest days of which we have any record. Some differences, however, and not unimportant ones, are obvious at a glance—as, for instance, that in the organization of society, and the well-being of its members, there has been great and lamentable retrogression. For this our good friends, the Turks, are in no small degree responsible.

The perpetual change among Europeans in great things as well as in small—in manners and customs, in social ideas and practices, in dress, in laws, in ideas and forms of government—indicate the operation of widely different influences.

CHAPTER XXXV. ARE ALL ORIENTALS MAD?

A friend of mine who has resided much among Orientals, and is very familiar with their ways of thinking and acting, is in the habit of affirming that he never had dealings with any one of them without soon discovering in him a loose screw. Every mother’s son of them, he thinks, is, to some degree, and in some way or other, mad. The meaning of this I take to be that their way of looking at, and estimating things, and feeling about them, is different from ours. They see what we cannot, and cannot see what we can. This is, I believe, very much a question of religion.

In the world of spirit a religion is a real, organic, living, acting entity. It animates, it subdues, it pervades, it colours, it guides men’s minds and hearts. They breathe it. They feed upon it. They are what it makes them. Now our religion is characterized by liberty. It leaves men to construct their own polities, and to devise for themselves the laws they are to live by. It obliges them to understand that they are the arbiters and the architects of their own fortunes. It leaves them free, from age to age, to battle about, and to construct their own theology, with the certainty that whether the same or different forms are used, it will always in the end be adjusted to the ideas of the age, and even of the individual. It appeals to men’s own ideas of God, which vary as knowledge advances; and to the sense mankind have of what is just, and merciful, and lovely, and of good report. It does not define these things, for it supposes that the ideas of them are in man. It makes the light that is within the measure of duty. One of the general results of such a religion is, that it renders men capable, and desirous, too, of thinking. It produces within them an habitual desire to see things as they are, and to conform their feelings and their conduct to realities.

The system which is most diametrically opposite to this is that which the Oriental has adopted. He has no liberty of any kind. He must think, and feel, and live in accordance with, and every detail of his inner and outer life must be conformed to, what were the ideas of the Arab barbarians of twelve centuries ago. This is the procrustean bed on which the mind of every Oriental is laid. This, then, is what my friend’s nineteenth-century Christianity, or, if you prefer it, his nineteenth-century ideas and feelings, have been brought into contact with—the ideas and feelings of Arab barbarians of twelve centuries ago. It would be somewhat surprising if he did not perceive something of lunacy in the minds of such people.

What struck me in the Oriental was a kind of childishness. Both men and women appeared to be only children of a larger growth. There was an expression of childishness in their features, and there were very perceptible indications of a corresponding condition of their minds. It looked like moral and intellectual arrest. The manhood of the mind had never been called into exercise, and had, in consequence, become aborted. They never think. Why should they? All truth of every kind has already been fully revealed to them. To question what they have received, or to endeavour to attain to more, would be impious. They have hardly any occasion to act, for is it not Allah who directly does everything as it pleases Him, on the earth beneath, as well as in the heaven above?... There is in them a softness of expression which could not co-exist with activity, and firmness, and largeness of brain. Child-like, they believe anything and everything. The more wonderful, and the more contradictory to nature it may be, the more readily do they believe it. They have no idea of extorting the secrets of nature. What good would it do them to seek to know anything or everything? Allah will reveal what He pleases, and when. Such knowledge would not promote their happiness. Their idea of blissfulness is that of the Arab of the Desert. Shade and rest. Plashing fountains and delightful odours. Lovely houris. This is not the stuff that makes men.

Nature also works against them. Much time is needed for the acquisition and digestion of knowledge, and for the growth of the moral and intellectual faculties to what we regard as their full stature. The time, however, allotted to them for these sovereign purposes is very short. Where girls are married women at eleven, what time can there be for the mind to mature itself? Compare this with the many years of deliberate culture amongst ourselves. What can be done by the age of eleven? What should we be if our mental culture and growth ended at that age? But in their case it is so with half the community—the mothers; and so also with the other half—the fathers, only in a somewhat less degree. Of the negroes of the interior Sir Samuel Baker observes that the little children are quick enough, but that mental development appears to have ceased by the age of fourteen. I observed, and heard from several Americans that they had observed, something of the same kind in the negro schools of the United States. Up to an age not quite so advanced as that Sir S. Baker speaks of, the coloured children appear to be as quick as the children of the whites; but beyond that point they begin to fall behind. Their apprehensiveness appears to have exhausted itself. This must doom the black race in the United States, in their struggle with the whites for the means of subsistence, to extinction. Just so, too, must his prematurity always place the Oriental, in the struggle between nations, at a disadvantage in comparison with the European. In him Nature does not allow herself the time for doing what ought to be done.

CHAPTER XXXVI. THE KORAN.

With respect to the Koran, the Orientals are at this day in the position into which, as respects our Holy Scriptures, an attempt was made to bring our forefathers in the days of mediæval scholasticism. They believe that in their sacred volume is contained all knowledge, either explicitly or implicitly. We have long abandoned definitively this idea. We have come to understand that the New Testament announces itself only as a moral revelation; and of that gives only the spirit, and not the letter; that is to say, that it does not profess to give, and, as a matter of fact, does not contain, a definite system of law, but the principles only which should regulate such a system. It leaves us, therefore, to go not only for our astronomy to astronomers, and for our geology to geologists, but also for our municipal law to jurists and legislators, so long as what they propound and enact is not at discord with Christian principles. The Mahomedan, however, has not this liberty, for the Koran professes to contain an all-embracing and sufficient code. It regulates everything. This is very unfortunate; or, whatever it was at first, it has, in process of time, come to be very unfortunate; for it makes the ideas—what we must regard as the ignorance rather than the knowledge—of a more than half-savage Arab of the seventh century the rule by which everything in law, life, and thought is to be measured for all time.

While I was in the East I was full of commiseration for the people I saw bound hand and foot in this way. They are handsome, clean-limbed fellows, and quick-witted enough. There is in them the making of great nations. Power, however, is an attribute of mind, and mind cannot work unless it be free. While I commiserated them, I saw no hope for them. The evil they are afflicted by appears not to admit of a remedy; because while, for men who have advanced so far as they have, it is intellectual suicide to be faithful to such a religion, to be unfaithful to it has hitherto proved to be moral suicide.

Their ideas and sentiments on all the ordinary concerns and events of life, and, in short, on all subjects, are the same in all, all being drawn from the same source. So also are even their very modes of expression. There is a prescribed form for everything that occurs; of course, not drawn, in every instance, first-hand from the Koran, but, at all events, ultimately from it, for these expressions are what have come to be adopted by the people universally, as being most in harmony with the spirit and ideas of the Book. The words to be used at meetings and at partings, under all circumstances; the words in which unbecoming acts and sentiments are to be corrected and acknowledged; the words, in short, which are appropriate to every occasion of life, are all prescribed, and laid up in the memory, ready for use. God’s name is rarely omitted in these formulæ, reference being made sometimes to one of His attributes, sometimes to another, as the occasion may require. Sometimes a pious sentiment is to be expressed; sometimes a pious ejaculation will be the correct thing. But everybody knows what is to be said on every occurrence, great or small, of life.

Learning the Koran by heart is education. It is for this that schools are established. Reading, writing, and arithmetic are de luxe, or for certain occupations only. History and science, of course, have no existence to their minds.

They treat the material volume itself, which contains the sacred words, with corresponding respect. For instance, when carrying it they will not allow it to descend below the girdle. They will not place it on the ground, or on a low shelf. They will not, when unclean, touch it. They will not print it for fear of there being something unclean in the ink, the paper, or the printer. They will not sell it to any unbelievers, even to such partial unbelievers as Jews or Christians. And in many other ways, indeed in every way in their power, they endeavour to show how sacred in their eyes is the Book.

In principle and effect it makes no great difference whether the letter of the Sacred Text be exclusively adhered to, or whether it be supplemented by more or less of tradition, and of the interpretations and decisions of certain learned and pious Doctors of the Law. The latter case, as far as the view we are now taking of the action of the system is concerned, would be equivalent only to the addition of a few more chapters to the Sacred Text. The existing generation would equally be barred from doing anything for itself. If the laws of Alfred, or of Edward the Confessor, had been preserved and accepted by ourselves as a heaven-sent code, incapable of addition or improvement; or if the laws of either had been received, with an enlargement of certain traditions, interpretations, and decisions—we should, in either case, equally have lost the practice and the idea of legislating for ourselves: that is to say, we should have lost the invigorating and improving process of incessantly discussing, adapting, and endeavouring to perfect our polity and our code: so that what is now with us the self-acting and highest discipline of the intellect, and of the moral faculty, would have been transformed into the constant and most effectual discipline for their enfeeblement and extinction.

CHAPTER XXXVII. ORIENTAL PRAYER.

Prayer is still in the East, just what it was of old time, a matter of prescribed words, postures, and repetitions. This, however, is only what it is on the outside, and it is not the outside of anything that keeps it alive, but what is within. It is there we must look for what gives life. We shall be misled, too, again, if in our search for life in this practice we suppose that what prompts it in Orientals must be, precisely, the same as what prompts it in ourselves. Our manifestation of this instinct is somewhat different from theirs. Prayer with them is the bringing the mind into close contact with the ideas of infinitude—infinite power, infinite wisdom, infinite goodness. It calls up within them, by an intense effort of the imagination, their idea of God, just as the same kind of effort calls up within ourselves any image we please. The image called up, whatever it may be, produces certain corresponding sensations and emotions. But none can produce such deep emotions as the idea of God: it moves the whole soul. It is the ultimate concentrated essence of all thought. The man who is brought under its influence is prostrated in abasement, or nerved to patient endurance, or driven into wild fanaticism. It calms and soothes. It fills with light. It puts into a trance. Mental sensations may be pleasurable just as those of the body, and the deeper the sensation the more intense the satisfaction. In their simple religion these attributes of God are really, as well as ostensibly, the nucleus, the soul, of the matter. All things else are merely corollaries to and deductions from them—matter that is evidently very subordinate. Theirs is a religion of one idea, the idea of God. And the calling up within them of this idea is their prayer.

Or we may put this in another way. We may say that prayer is with them the conscious presentation to their minds of certain ideas, and the prostration of their minds before them—namely, the ideas of the different forms of moral perfectness, the idea of intellectual perfectness or complete knowledge, and the idea, belonging to the physical order, of perfect power. Their conception of these ideas is, of course, not identical with ours, but such as their past history, and the existing conditions of Eastern society, enable them to attain to. We can separate this effort of theirs into two parts. First, there is the creation in the mind of these ideas of the several kinds of perfectness; and then there is the effect the holding of them in the mind has on the mind itself. That effect is the production in themselves of a tendency towards making these forms of moral being, such as they have been conceived, instinctive sentiments, and instinctive principles of action.

In this view prayer is with the Oriental, the effort by which he both forms the conception of what is good, and actually becomes good; both, of course, in accordance with the measure of what is possible for him. But why, it may be asked, should he do this? All men who have lived in organized societies have done it; though, indeed, the character of the act has not in all been so distinctly moral as it is with the Oriental. Still it has been a natural ladder by which individuals and communities, and mankind generally, have mounted from lower to higher stages of moral being. It has been the natural means by which the moral ideas, which the working of the successive stages of social progress suggested, have been brought into shape, purified, disseminated, and made universal and instinctive. As respects the community everybody understands that its peace, and order, and even that its existence, very much depend on there being a general unanimity in moral ideas and sentiments throughout all its classes and members. And it has always been perceived that the most effectual way of bringing this about is that all should have the same object of worship—that is to say, that the prayers of all should be the same. Formerly, when these things were more studied than they are now, this was regarded as the one paramount way. Fellow-citizens then were those who worshipped the same Gods in the same temples; aliens were those who worshipped other Gods. There could be no citizenship where there was a diversity of prayers; for that gave rise to, and implied, a diversity of moral standards. And with respect to the individual, the spontaneous working of what is within has pretty generally revealed to him that this moral effect of prayer is his highest personal concern. He regards it as the advancement of his truest self; for, if he is not a moral being, he cannot tell in what he differs, specifically, from the lower animals; and prayer, he knows it is, which has been the chief means for keeping alive, and nurturing, and bringing into form, his moral being. It gives birth, form, permanence, and vitality to moral aspirations.

To dwell for a moment longer on the subject, looking still at the same fact, but now from a somewhat different point of view. The object of their prayer has been the highly compound abstraction of all, but more especially in the moral order, that would, according to their ideas and knowledge, contribute towards the upholding and building up of a human society. We see indications of this elsewhere besides among Orientals. In a democracy wisdom and counsel in the general body of the community are necessary, and so at Athens was worshipped the Goddess of Wisdom. The maintenance and enlargement of Rome depended on the sword, and so the god of Rome was the God of War. The martial spirit and martial virtues were necessary to them. When concord became necessary, a temple was erected to Concord. This also explains the deification of living Egyptian Pharaohs, and of living Roman emperors. Each was in his time the “præsens deus” of society. What was done was done by their providence. Their will was the law of society, and its regulative power.

Even revealed religion is not exempt from this necessity. When the existence of the Hebrew people depended on the sword, Jehovah was the Lord of Hosts, the God of Battles. He taught the hands to war, and the fingers to fight. He gave them the victory over all their enemies round about. He it was Who made them a peculiar people—that is to say, Who brought about within them the sentiment of national exclusiveness; and Who, in short, made them zealous of all the good works that would maintain society under its existing conditions and circumstances. At the Christian epoch, when the chief hope of the world was in peace and order, He was regarded as the institutor of civil government; and as having made all people of one blood, so that there could be no ground for anything exclusive. As men’s ideas changed, the substance of their prayers changed correspondingly. To deny these facts is to deny both history, and the plain, unmistakable announcements of the Sacred Volume. And to reject the grand, simple, instructive explanation universal history thus gives is to refuse to accept that view of the working of providence in human affairs, which God submits to our consideration, just as He does the order and the mind of the visible material world. It is, in fact, to refuse to be taught of God.

But to return to the modern Egypto-Arabs. To us there appears to be very little, surprisingly little, in their minds. They have but little thought about political matters, no thoughts about history, no thoughts about the knowledge of outward nature. Their ideas, then, of God, which are the summary of their religion, obtain full sway over them. Prayer is the continual exhibition of them to their minds. It stirs and keeps alive their hearts and souls. While these ideas are acting upon them they are conscious of an unselfish, and sublime, exaltation of their moral, and intellectual being.

With us Prayer has somewhat of a different aspect, both as to its immediate source, and even, apparently, in some degree, as to its substance. It is not always primarily, or mainly, an attempt to bring our inmost thought into contact with the pure and simple idea of God. It almost seems as if something had occurred which had interposed an insulating medium between our hearts and that idea, which cannot now, as of old, directly reach our hearts, and generate within them its own forms of moral perfectness. Much of our Prayer is prompted by the thought of our own wants, and of our own sins; and so has something of a personal, and of a selfish character. Still, perhaps, this is ultimately the same thing. It may be only an indirect way of reaching the same point. It is, evidently, a perpetual reminder of our moral requirements, and a perpetual effort to form just and elevated conceptions of those requirements. This mode of culture quickens the moral sentiments, raises them to the level of their immediate purpose, and makes them distinct, vigorous, ever-present, and instinctive.

What has been said will explain why Orientals pray in set forms of words. Words represent ideas; and the Prophet, or the Saint, whose mind is in a state of extraordinary religious exaltation, and the general thought of religious teachers and of religious people, can, of course, better imagine the attributes of Deity, and clothe what they imagine in more appropriate words, than ordinary people could. It is, therefore, better to take their words than to leave the matter to the ignorant, the unimaginative, and the dead in soul. Under their system of unchangeable forms all become alike animated by the best ideas, presented in the most suitable words. This will explain why they practise repetitions. With their method it is a necessity.

Short forms, composed of as few ideas as a piece of granite is of ingredients, and as inelastic and inexpansive, and those forms incessantly repeated, could not affect us in the way of prayer; but they mightily affect the Oriental. They are both the frame in which his mind and life are set, and the spring upon which they are wound up. In short, and in truth, these ideas are the seminal germs which fecundate, legitimately, the moral capabilities of his nature, which, if unquickened by their contact, either will become aborted; or, by having been brought into contact with other illegitimate ideas, will give birth to abnormal, and more or less pernicious developments.

CHAPTER XXXVIII. PILGRIMAGE.

The pilgrimage to Meccah occupies a large place in the thoughts, and is the great event in the life of every true believer; and where the faith is so elementary, so much reduced to the very simplest expression of belief, all are believers. The great event of the year at Cairo, is the return of the caravan of pilgrims from Meccah. The whole city is moved. Many go out to welcome back the happy saints. At no other time are men, or women, so demonstrative. In these days, no Christian people, except the lower classes in Russia, have the ideas which produce these emotions. No others are, speaking of the bulk of the people generally, in the pilgrim condition of mind. There was, however, a time when, in this matter, we were all alike. The pilgrim staff and shell were then as common, and as much valued, in England as elsewhere.

We now ask how these ideas came to exist in men’s minds? An equally pertinent question is how they became extinct? The answer to either will be the answer to both. A little vivisection, which may be practised on the mind of the modern Arab, will reveal to us the secret. On dissecting it we find that it is in that state in which the distinction between things moral and spiritual on the one side, and things physical on the other, has not yet been made. These two classes of ideas are in his mind in a state of intimate fluid commixture. There is a vast difference here between the mind of the Arab and that of the European, excepting of course from the latter a large part of the Greek communion, and some small fractions of the most behindhand of the Latin. With us these two classes of ideas have become disentangled, and have separated themselves from each other. Each has crystallized into its own proper form, and retired into its own proper domain. Hence it is that the idea of the value of pilgrimages still holds its ground amongst them, but has disappeared from amongst us.

It belongs to precisely the same class of ideas as the belief that if a man drinks the ink, with which a text of the Koran has been written, dissolved in a cup of water, he will be thereby spiritually benefited; that bodily uncleanness injuriously affects the soul; that having eaten some particles of dust from the Prophet’s tomb makes you a better man; or to take the process reversely, that the thoughts of an envious or covetous man (the evil eye), will do you some bodily hurt; or that Ghouls and Afreets—creatures of your mind—feed on dead bodies, and throw stones at you from the house-top. When our Christian ancestors were in the same stage of mental progress, similar beliefs, or rather confusions of ideas, some precisely the same, were manifested in them. A great advance has been made when men have come to see that what defiles is not what goes in at the mouth, but what comes from the heart. This has a wide application; at all events men, when it is seen, go no more pilgrimages.

I went up to Jerusalem with the ideas about pilgrimages I have just set down stirring in my mind. My object in going was that I might be enabled the better to understand history by making myself acquainted with the very scenes on which it had been enacted. I wished to become familiar with those peculiar local aspects, and influences of nature, which had gone some way towards forming the character of those who had made the history, and which had, indeed, themselves had in this way much to do with the making of it. Nothing could be further from the pilgrim condition of mind. I believe, however, that I did not come away with my (as some would call it) cold-blooded philosophy quite untouched. True, I turned with repugnance from the scenes that presented themselves around the supposed Holy Sepulchre. I felt commiseration, mingled in some sort with respect, for the prostrations, the tears, the hysterical sobs of the poor Greek, Armenian, and Latin pilgrims. I contemplated them for a time, till feelings of pain preponderated, which, as I turned away, were exchanged only for feelings of disgust as I saw the priests, and thought of their frauds, their greed, their indifference, their dirt, and their mutual animosities. I again had to repress the same feelings in the Garden of Gethsemane, when I found it in possession of some unusually begrimed monks, who had enclosed it with a wall ten feet high, and without a single opening through which the eye could catch a glimpse of the interior; and who only admitted you in the hope of backsheesh. Still the pilgrim feeling grew upon me. I had crossed the Brook Kedron to a place where there had been a garden; I had stood in what had been the courts of the temple, and where had been the temple itself; I had looked on the goodly stones of the substructures of the temple, I had beheld the city from the Mount of Olives. In my walks round the walls I had stood on the rock, somewhere at the north-west angle, where the Light of the world had sealed His truth with His life-blood. Imagination on the spot had recalled the particulars of the scene. Day by day I was conscious that the pilgrim feeling was gaining strength within me. And now that I am quietly at home again, I can hardly persuade myself but that I am in a different position from what I was in before: I can hardly think that I am just as other men are—that all this is nothing. I have trodden the same ground, I have been warmed by the same sun, and I have breathed the same air, as He. I have looked on the same objects, and they have impressed on my brain the same images as on His.

But we must get over these pilgrim feelings—we must not allow ourselves to be juggled and cheated by the old confusion of things physical with things spiritual. It is not poetry to put the chaff for the corn. There is no talisman like truth. He is not there: nor are we the nearer to Him for being there. He still exists for us in His words. The thought, the spirit that is in them we can take into our hearts and minds. This is truly to be very near to Him; this is to be one with Him. This is a pilgrimage all can go, and which really saves.

CHAPTER XXXIX. ARAB SUPERSTITIONS.—THE EVIL EYE.

The traveller in Egypt, who observes what is before him, and feels an interest in conversing with the natives, will have many opportunities for learning something about their superstitious or religious ideas—for, of course, much that with them is religion with us would be superstition—such as their belief in charms and amulets, and in the beneficial, or remedial efficacy of utterly irrelevant acts and prescriptions. This is a large—indeed, almost an inexhaustible—subject, because it pervades their whole lives, influencing almost everything they do, and every thought that passes through their minds. Whenever an Arab wishes to attain to, or to escape from, anything, his method of proceeding is not to use the means—or if he does, not to be content with them—which, in the nature of things, would lead to the desired result, but to depend either entirely, or, at all events, as a collateral means, on something else which can have no possible bearing on his object, but which, in consequence of the presence in his mind of certain ideas, and the absence of certain others, he thinks will have, or ought to have, some impossible effects.

Among Egyptians—it is so with all Orientals, there is an universal belief in the potency of the Evil Eye. If any one has looked upon an object with envious and covetous feelings, evil will ensue; not, however—and this is the heart and the peculiarity of the superstition—to the covetous or envious man, but to the coveted or envied object. I will attempt presently to explain this inversion of moral ideas. A mother in easy circumstances will keep her child in shabby clothes, and begrimed with dirt, in order that those who see it may not think it beautiful, and so cast an envious or covetous eye upon it. Some kenspeckle object is placed among the caparisons of a handsome horse or camel, that the eye of the passer-by may be attracted to it, and so withdrawn from the animal itself. The entire dress of a Nubian young lady consists of a fringe of shredded leather, two or three inches deep, worn round the loins. On the upper edge of this fringe two or three bunches of small white cowrie shells are fastened. The traveller might, at first,—and, probably, generally does,—suppose that this is merely a piece of coquetry, inspired by the desire to attract attention. The truth is the reverse. The white shells against the ebon skin are, it is true, intended to attract attention—not at all, however, in the way of coquetry, but from the opposite wish that the eye of the passer-by may be attracted to the shells, and thus that the wearer may herself escape the effects of the coveting, Evil Eye.

There is the same motive in the adoption by women of gold coins as ornaments for the head. Let the eye be attracted to that coveted and precious object, and diverted from the face. So, also, with the use of the veil; and so with many other preventive devices.

But as the source of the mischief is in the heart of the beholder, prevention may go further, and may dry up, if the effort be wisely made, the source of the evil at the fountain-head. This is to be done by so disciplining men’s minds, as that they shall habitually refrain from looking on anything with envious, or covetous thoughts. The method they have adopted for effecting this desirable change in the heart is to make it a point of religion, and of good manners, that a man shall so word his admiration as, at the same time, to express renunciation of any wish to possess the beautiful, or desirable object before him that belongs to another. He must not express his admiration of it simply. It would be reprehensible for him to say of a beautiful child, or dress, or jewel, or garden, or anything that was another’s, ‘How charming!—how beautiful!’ He must associate his admiration with the idea of God, and with the acknowledgment, that he submits to the behest of God that has given it to another. This he does by saying, ‘God’s will be done (Mashallah),’ or by some similar expression. If he should so far forget propriety as to express himself otherwise, the bystanders would recall him to good manners, and a proper sense of religion in the matter, by reproving him.

But supposing all these preventive measures of strategy, religion, and politeness have failed, and the Evil Eye, notwithstanding, must needs alight on some object, what is to be done then? The only resource is in the recognized counter-agents. These are of two kinds—those which have a prophylactic, and those which have a remedial efficacy. To the first belong some selected texts of the Koran, or the whole of the sacred volume, which must be enclosed in a suitable receptacle, and hung about the neck of the person to be protected. A little piece of alum has the same effect. Some have recourse to the ninety-nine titles of the Deity; others prefer the titles, equal in number, of the Prophet. These may be kept in the house, as well as about the person. Lane has an interesting chapter on Arab superstitions, from which we may gather that the names of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, and of their dog, and the names of the few paltry articles of furniture left by the Prophet, have great potency.

But supposing these, and other such prophylactics have failed, as must sometimes happen, in averting the Evil Eye, nothing remains then but the use of antidotes. One that commends itself to general adoption is, to prick a piece of paper with a pin, to represent the eye of the envious man, and then to burn it. Another that is equally efficacious is, to burn a compound of several pinches of salt stained with different colours, and mixed with storax, wormwood, and other matters. But I need not pursue this part of a single subject any farther: what has been said will be enough to show what are their ideas as to the ways in which the Evil Eye is to be combated.

And now for the explanation I would venture to offer of what is to us the strangest part of the matter, that such a belief as this of the Evil Eye should have had any existence at all, because it involves the immoral idea that all the suffering falls on the innocent victim, and that there is no retribution for the guilty cause of the mischief. This I am disposed to think has been brought about by the facts and experience of life in the East. There the Evil Eye has always had a very real, and fearful significance; and people have done very wisely in endeavouring to guard against it. It never would have done in that part of the world, nor would it do at this day in Cairo, or anywhere else, even down to the most secluded village, for one to flaunt before the world what others might covet, or envy him the possession of. The simple plan there has ever been, that those should take who have the power, and that those only should keep who are not known to possess. A man who had a beautiful wife, or child, or costly jewel, or a showy horse, or camel, or anything good, if it were observed, and known, would at any time, in the East, have been pretty sure to lose it, and perhaps with it his own life into the bargain. This of course has been a master-fact in forming the manners and customs of the people. Hence their ideas about the Evil Eye. What befel Uriah and Naboth, has befallen many everywhere. Hence the wisdom of keeping good things out of sight, and of diverting attention from them. Hence the belief that the evil is for the innocent possessor, and not for the wicked envier, or coveter. The methods adopted for obviating its effects are, of course, merely the offspring of fear acting on ignorance.

I need not give any further illustrations of this condition of the Arab mind. A general statement will now be sufficient. Every evil that flesh is heir to, every ailment, every as yet unsatisfied yearning, every loss, every suffering, has its appropriate treatment, all being of the same character as that which prescribes, for some moral obliquity in A’s mind, that B should burn a piece of alum, or of storax, purchased on a particular day. Some of these practices are laughable, some disgusting. Some that are of the latter class recall Herodotus’s story of the means to which King Phero, in the days of old Egypt, had recourse for the recovery of his sight.

It is cheap to laugh at these ideas and practices, but we have ourselves passed, in this matter, through the same stage. We had our day of such remedies, when we attempted to cure diseases, and to dispel evil influences with charms and amulets; and to ensure success by having recourse to the luck that was supposed to be in days, and things, and names, and places. The memory of all this has not, even yet, completely vanished from amongst us. The echo of it may still at times be heard. The history of all people shows that these things contain the germ of the empirical art of medicine. The first step in real progress is the abandonment of the idea that disease is the irreversible decree of heaven, or of fate. The second stage, that in which the Orientals now are, is the metaphysical treatment of disease—that which assumes that each disease is to be met by something which, from some fancied analogy, or fitness, or antagonism, it is supposed ought to counteract it. This is futile in itself, but not in its ulterior consequences, for it issues eventually in the discovery of the true remedies. In time, if circumstances favour, the subject comes to be treated scientifically. Every ailment is then deliberately examined, with the view of discovering in what it actually consists; and remedies are applied which, in accordance with the known laws and properties of things, it is reasonably hoped will check its growth or remove it.

It is curious to observe, while we are on this subject, that homœopathy is only a reversion to old ways of thinking. Its foundation is a metaphysical dictum that like cures like. And its practice that these, or some other, globules will in each case produce artificially the desired disease, is as contrary to the evidence of the senses, and the known properties of the globules, as anything to be found in Arab therapeutics.

CHAPTER XL. ORIENTAL CLEANLINESS.

On the subject of cleanliness, Orientals’ ideas are the very reverse of what, to a time within the memory of the present generation of Englishmen, we entertained. Our idea used to be that it meant a clean shirt; theirs is that it means a clean skin. The Mr. Smith, who, some forty years ago, obtained, during his University career, his differentiating epithet from his practice of changing his linen three times a day, would probably, from unfamiliarity with the bath, have been regarded by Orientals, as might many a beau of that, and of the preceding generation, as an insufferably dirty fellow. The annoyance Thackeray represents an old lawyer in chambers as feeling at the daily splashings of the young barrister over his head, and his inability to imagine how sanity of mind, or body, could be compatible with such a practice, fix the date, now about thirty years ago, when our manners and customs were changing on this point.

The old oriental ideas, which go so much further towards satisfying the requirements of the case, are still carefully maintained. In order that they may become habitual and universal, they have been made imperative by religion. The when, the where, and the how have all been prescribed. The shaving also of the head, the plucking out of hair, the use of depilatories, and circumcision, which is practised even by the Christian Copts, are customs which, though not imposed by religion, are generally observed, because they contribute to the same object as their frequent and scrupulous ablutions.

With these practices we must class their ideas about the uncleanness of dead bodies, and the defilement contracted by contact with them; for, of course, the idea of defilement had its origin in the fear of what might engender, or convey disease.

The persistent oriental aversion to knives and forks may be connected with this subject. The disinclination to use them may arise out of an uncertainty as to whether they may not have contracted defilement, which might sometimes mean the power of conveying infection. The leprosy of the East, and the cutaneous diseases of that part of the world—almost all the diseases mentioned in the Old Testament are more or less of this kind—are at the bottom of these ideas and practices. On the whole, we can have no doubt but that, if they were as uncleanly, and careless about these matters, as a large portion of our own population, the range of many bad diseases—climate and meagreness of diet being their predisposing causes—would be very greatly extended. As things, however, are, it is pleasing to observe how carefully all classes in the East attend, in their way, to personal cleanliness. The poorest, even those who cannot afford a change of clothes, do not appear to neglect it. The stoker of an Egyptian steamer does not look like a stoker throughout the whole of the twenty-four hours; nor would, if there were such people, an Egyptian chimney-sweeper never be seen without the grime of his work.

It must have been for reasons of the kind I have referred to (though doubtless religious grounds were imagined for the practice, for those were times when there was no other way of thinking about or of putting such matters) which led the Egyptian Priesthood to abstain, in their own persons, from the use of woollen garments. Habiliments of this material, from their condition not being readily ascertainable by the eye, and from their not being chilly to the skin when saturated with perspiration, are less likely to be frequently washed than those which are made of vegetable fibres. It is much the same with silk and leather. We know that in the Middle-Ages, woollens, which were then very much in use next to the skin, were not very frequently washed, though the soap which would have thoroughly cleansed them, had then been known for centuries, for it had been an old invention of the Germans, among whom the Romans had found it in use. The same negligence we may be sure had existed to an equal, or greater, extent in all the old world. At that time the washing, especially, of woollens was costly, and could only have been insufficiently accomplished. The Egyptians, we know, used alkaline preparations for rendering soluble the animal matter their clothes had contracted by being worn, that is to say for washing them. They were probably also acquainted with the solvent and detergent properties of the animal appliance which the Emperor Vespasian was bantered for having excised. We may suppose this because its washing power is referable to the alkaline matter contained in it, which was just what they were in the practice of collecting for washing their clothes; and also because the supply derived from the camel was known to be particularly effective for this purpose. In passing, the unsavoury tax just referred to was imposed as a method of making the scourers, so large and important a trade at Rome that they had their own quarter of the city, pay for licences to carry on their business, in such a manner that in each case the cost of the licence should be proportioned to the amount of business carried on. This was effected by taxing the chief material employed in the trade. The impost must have been productive, for it was retained as an item of Roman excise for two centuries. These were means, however, which were never likely to have been turned to much account, anywhere, by the mass of the people. The consequences, of course, would be serious. The animal matter that accumulated, and was decomposed in such clothing, so used, must to some extent have been reabsorbed through the pores of the skin; and so have been the fruitful source of cutaneous, and other disorders. Probably this was the very cause why our forefathers were visited so frequently by the plague, and jail fevers. The priests of old Egypt quite understood how prejudicial to health, particularly in that climate, are all practices of this kind; and they felt that it behoved them, as the teachers of the people, to set an example of cleanliness in such matters. To do this was also pleasing to their thought, because it symbolized, and appeared to have some connexion with, the analogous virtue of moral purity; and so they imposed on themselves the ceremonial observance of abstaining from woollen garments. There could be no question about the perfect cleanness, such as became a Priest, of their robes of glistening white linen. This was a lesson to every eye. Such were the thoughts and practices of men, on these subjects, in the valley of old Nile, at least six, no one can tell how many more, thousand years ago.

Orientals’ regard for cleanliness I said is shown in their way, because, as might have been expected of ceremonial practices, it does not extend beyond the letter of the law; the object and spirit of the law, as is usual in such cases, having been lost sight of. The letter of the law is compatible with untidiness and dirt in their houses, and does not exact anything from children, who are as yet too young for religious observances. Their houses, therefore, and children are singularly untidy and dirty. Why make burdens unnecessarily severe? Why go beyond the letter? If they submit to the law in what it directs, surely they may indemnify themselves by compensatory neglect in what it does not direct. This element of feebleness and failure is inherent in all religious systems which undertake to think for the whole community in every matter. It is as conspicuous in Romanism as in Mahomedanism. The letter killeth: the spirit it is that giveth life. Up to a certain point, but it is one that is soon reached, they elevate and give light. When that point has been reached, they arrest and abort moral growth, and extinguish light.

CHAPTER XLI. WHY ORIENTALS ARE NOT REPUBLICANS.

It seems strange that Republicanism should never have commended itself to the minds of Orientals. Some of the conditions to which they have been subjected, and some of their ideas ought, one might have thought, to have engendered the wish to give a trial to this form of polity. Socially, ideas of aristocratic exclusiveness have little weight with them, and, politically, none at all. The expression of ‘taking a man from the dung-hill and setting him among princes’ is old, and represents an old practice; and it is a proceeding with which they are to this day in their government, and the hierarchy of office, quite familiar. This ultra-democratic idea of the equal fitness, even for the highest places, of men taken from any class in society, offends none of their sentiments, or instincts. They would not be shocked at seeing one who had begun life as a donkey-boy, or a barber, so long as he was an Arab, or Osmanlee, and a true believer, raised to be a Pasha. Then, too, no people in the world have suffered so much, and so long, from their respective governments as the Orientals have from their despotic monarchies, administered by a descending series of hardly responsible governors. And as to general manners and ideas, there is probably a greater amount of uniformity in the East among all classes, than is to be found elsewhere. One might have supposed that all this, at one time or another, sooner or later, would have disposed them to take refuge in Republicanism. We have, however, no instance of the idea having been entertained. It seems as if they had no capacity for apprehending it, for the account Herodotus gives us of the proposal to democratize the Government of Persia is a transparent Greek fable. At all events, taking the story as we have it, the mover was unable to find a seconder for his proposal.

This phenomenon in their history surprises us: it is, however, their history which enables us to understand it, and to understand it completely. They never possessed a legislature. This, which every little Greek city possessed, which was the very soul of Greek political life, and has ever been, more or less, a necessity of European political life, never could have been known in the East. There the idea never had any place in men’s minds; or, if it had, was aborted in the embryo stage, and never saw the light. In short, with them a legislature was an impossibility; for, as their laws have always been a revelation from God, any attempt to legislate would have been nothing less than a direct and formal denial, and renunciation of their religion.

In their systems, therefore, there has been room only for the administrative, and executive departments of government. These, of course, are secondary. With that which was first and highest, and regulative of the whole, man had nothing at all to do. Under such a state of things the administrative, and executive would naturally fall into the hands of those who were best acquainted with the law, that is, of those who were its constituted guardians, as priests, elders, doctors of the law, &c., and of those who in any way, by force or favour, could attain to power and office. Here is no place for republican, or democratic ideas. The whole ground in every man’s mind is pre-occupied with ideas that are antagonistic to them. If Orientals had had to make their own laws, Republicanism would have been as common in the East as in the West; perhaps more so.

In the Mosaic polity, though it was in some respects very favourable to democracy, we see the absence of the legislative function leading necessarily in the end to a monarchy; the monarchy having been preceded by a rude exercise of administrative and executive functions, based in the main on such moral and intellectual qualifications as the system required. That the people in general assemblies, or through any other machinery, should take into their own hands the management of their own affairs was an idea that never at any time appears to have occurred to them. It was alien to their system to imagine that the will of the people was the source of power, or that law was the best reason of the community made binding on all.

One can hardly understand, without some personal observation, and thinking out what has been observed, how completely these oriental systems extinguish liberty in every matter. Not only do they deny to nations the right to frame their laws in conformity with the varying needs of times and circumstances, but they even abrogate the liberty of the individual to exercise his own judgment with respect to almost everything he has to do, and almost to say, throughout life. Law being a fixed immutable thing, it becomes unavoidable but that customs and manners should be equally fixed and immutable. The extent to which this is carried is, till one has witnessed it oneself, something difficult to believe, indeed to comprehend. Every thought and emotion must be swathed up in a certain prescribed form of words. The mummy of an Egyptian of the old times tightly bandaged, stiff and lifeless, is the image of the modern Egyptian’s mind. He has no kind of freedom. He is but a walking and breathing mummy. Everything in the political, social, moral, and intellectual order has been arranged and settled for everybody; and everybody thoroughly and completely accepts the whole settlement, because it comes to him from God, because it is the same to all classes and individuals as to himself, and because the reasons, and, as far as they go, the advantages, of the settlement are obvious, and commend themselves to his understanding. In no mind, therefore, is there anything to give rise to the germ of a desire to disturb the settlement. Here, then, there is nothing which can cause the idea of political liberty to germinate. Let the seed be sown again and again, it will fall always upon the rock.

CHAPTER XLII. POLYGAMY.—ITS CAUSE.

The traveller is struck with the various ways in which the relation of the sexes, that obtains throughout the East, has modified the manners, and customs, and the whole life, of the people. Female society is impossible. Women are not seen in the Mosks at times of prayer; and, we are told, are seldom known to pray at home, never having been taught the ceremonies requisite for prayer. One may walk through a crowded street and not see a woman among the passers by. A woman cannot, in the regular order of things, see the man who is to be her husband, or hold any converse with him, till the marriage contract is executed, and she has entered his house. Nor after marriage can she, with the exception of her father and brothers, have any social intercourse with men. One cannot but ask what it is that has given rise to manners, and customs, so opposite to all we deem wise and desirable in this matter. We see at a glance that they are the offspring of distrust and jealousy, and of a distrust and jealousy, which, though unfelt by ourselves, exist in a high degree among Orientals. What, then, is it that gives rise in them to these unpleasant feelings? It must be some fact which not only has the power of producing all this distrust and jealousy, drawing after them consequences of sufficient reach to determine the whole character of the relations of the sexes to each other, but it must also be something that is peculiarly their own. Now, all these conditions are fulfilled by polygamy, and by nothing else.

The fact that a man may possess a plurality of wives, and as many odalisques as he can afford, and may wish to have in his establishment, is the one element in oriental life to which everything else must accommodate itself. Reverse the case, and, setting aside exceptional instances, consider what, on the ordinary principles of human conduct, would be the general working of the reverse of the practice. What would be the state of things, and the customs and manners, which would naturally arise, if the wife had to retain the affection of a plurality of husbands? Would not, in that case, each woman, supposing they had the power of establishing, and enforcing, what regulations they pleased, take very good care that their husbands should have as little as possible to do with other women? Would the singular wife allow the plural husbands to see, or converse with, any woman but herself? Would she not confine them in the men’s apartments? Would she allow them to go abroad unveiled? The distrust and jealousy the women, under such arrangements, would feel, have, under existing arrangements, been felt by the men. They have acted on these feelings, and hence have been derived the manners and customs of the East in this matter.

There is nothing in the objection that all do not practise polygamy. All may practise it, and that is the condition to which the general manners and customs must adjust themselves. What all recognize as right and proper, and what all may act upon, is what has to be provided for.

But we have not yet got to the bottom of the matter. Certain manners and customs may be seen clearly to be the consequences of a certain practice: the subject, however, is not fully understood till we have gone one step further, and discovered what gave rise to the practice. The attempt is often made to dispose of this question offhand, by an assumption that passion burns with a fiercer flame in the East than in the West. This is what a man means when you hear him talking of the cold European, and of the fiery Arab; the supposed excessive warmth of the constitution of the latter being credited to the fervour of the Eastern sun. There is, however, no evidence of this in the facts of the case, nor does it account for them. If this is the true explanation, we ought to find polyandry practised as well as polygamy. But there is no evidence that this flame burns with a fiercer heat in Asia than in Europe. The probability is that it is what may be called a constant quantity.

In investigating this, just as any other matter, what we have to do is to ascertain the facts of the case, and then to see what can be fairly inferred from them. Now, undoubtedly, the main fact here is that there is a certain polygamic area. It is sufficiently well defined. It embraces North Africa, Egypt, Arabia, Syria, and Persia. I do not mean that polygamy has never been practised elsewhere. Like all other customs it may have been carried beyond its proper boundaries: we know that it has been. What I mean is that the area indicated is, and ever has been, its true and natural home. The monogamic area of Europe is equally distinct. Asia Minor is an intermediate, indeterminate region, which, though it is an outlying peninsula of Asia by situation, approximates more closely to Europe in its general features.

Now this polygamic area has one pervading, predominant, physical characteristic: it is a region of dry sandy deserts; or, rather, it is one vast sandy desert, interspersed with habitable districts. This renders its climate not only exceptionally dry, but also, from its comparative cloudlessness, exceptionally bright, which is not an immaterial point, and, too, exceptionally scorching. An excess, then, of aridity, light, and heat, is its distinguishing peculiarity. These influences are all at their maximum in Arabia, which is in every way its true heart and centre; and, in particular, the seed-bed and nursery of the race best adapted to the region, and which, at last, flooded the whole of it with its blood, its customs, and its laws. These are all thoroughly indigenous, and racy of the soil—as much its own proper product and fruit as the date is of the palm, or the palm itself of the region in which it is found.

But of the woman of this region. It is an obvious result of the aridity of the air, its almost constant heat, and of the floods of light with which everything living is ceaselessly bathed, and stimulated, that she is, in comparison with the woman of Europe, forced into precocious development, and maturity, and consequently, which is the main point, and, indeed, the governing element in the matter, into premature decline and decay. To signalize one particular that is external and visible, this climate appears to expand, to dry, to wither, to wrinkle the skin with a rapidity, and to a degree, unknown in our more humid and temperate regions. A woman, under these trying influences, is soon old. Between nine and ten is the age of womanhood. Marriage even often takes place at this age, or soon after. She is quite at her best at fifteen; decay is visible at twenty; there are signs of age at twenty-five.

Men, too, from reasons easily explained, marry much younger there than is customary—I might say than is possible—with us. Our civilization is based on intellect far more than theirs; and it takes with us a long time for a youth to acquire the knowledge he will find requisite in life. School claims him, with those who can afford the time, till he is eighteen; and with many the status pupillaris is continued at the university for three years longer: and no one would think that even then the age for marriage had arrived. And here, again, much more is required for supporting life through all ranks of society. This is another prohibition against a young man’s marrying early. He must first work himself into a position, in which he will have the means of maintaining a family in the way required here, or wait till he has a fair prospect of being able to do so. All this requires time; but in the East, where wants are few, and not much knowledge is needed, a youth may marry very early. I saw at Jerusalem the son of the Sheik of the Great Mosk of Omar, who was then, though only a lad of sixteen years of age, already married to two wives.

And so it follows that, in this region, before men have attained to even the prime of life, their wives are getting old. A necessary consequence of this must be that polygamy will come to be as natural as marriage itself. It has, at all events, been so hitherto.

The facilities for divorce which law and custom provide in these countries (all that is needed is a writing of divorcement) are a result of the same causes: they are, in fact, a corollary to the practice of polygamy. They enable both the man and the woman to escape from what, under the system of polygamy, must often become an insupportable situation, and have the practical effect of making marriage only a temporary arrangement. Indeed, sometimes even before the marriage contract is entered into, the law of divorcement is discounted in this way by the mutual agreement of both parties.

That ‘age cannot wither her’ is, then, precisely the opposite of being a characteristic of the Arab, or even of the oriental, woman. Had it been otherwise with them, polygamy would never have been the practice over this large portion of the earth’s surface.

In our cold, humid, dull climate opposite conditions have produced opposite effects. Here the woman arrives slowly at maturity; and, which is the great point, fights a good fight against the inroads of age. Man has no advantage over her in this respect. And when she is marriageable, she is, not a child of ten years of age, but a woman of twenty, with sufficient knowledge, and firmness of character to secure her own rights. The consequence, therefore, here is that men have felt no necessity for maintaining a plurality of wives; and if they had wished for it, the women would not have allowed them to have it. Voilà tout.

Nature it is that has made us monogamists. No religion that has ever been accepted in Europe has legislated in favour of the opposite practice, because it was obvious, and all men were agreed on the point, that monogamy was most suitable to, and the best arrangement for, us. The exceptional existence of the Arabic custom in European Turkey is one of those exceptions which prove a rule.

Suppose that, in the evolution of those ups and downs to which our earth’s surface is subject, it is destined that the waves of the ocean shall again roll over the vast expanse of the Sahara, which, as things now are, is one of Nature’s greatest factories for desiccated air. Then every wind that will blow from the west, or the south-west, over the present polygamic area, will be charged with moisture, and will bring clouds that will not only give rain, but will also very much diminish the amount of light which is now poured down upon it. Suppose, too, something of the same kind to have been brought about with respect to the great Syro-Arabian desert. Northerly and easterly winds will then also have the same effect. What now withers will have become humid. There will be no more tent life. Better houses will be required, more clothing, more food, more fuel. Men will not marry so early. Women will not get old so soon. Polygamy will die out of the region. Religion will be so modified as to accept, to hallow, and to legislate for the new ideas, which the new conditions and necessities will have engendered. Religion will then forbid polygamy.

CHAPTER XLIII. HOURIISM.

There are some aspects and incidents of the subject of the preceding chapter which, though one would prefer passing them by unnoticed, cannot be omitted from an honest attempt to sketch the peculiarities of Eastern life. For instance, in the Christian heaven they neither marry, nor are given in marriage. Of this everybody approves: at all events one never met, or heard of, a Christian who wished it otherwise. In the Mahomedan heaven, however, those who have kept the faith, and lived holy lives, will be rewarded with houris, damsels whose earthly charms have been perfected for the hareems of Paradise. This article of his faith is of such a nature, that it colours all the believer’s conceptions not only of the life that is to come, but also of the life that is now. The vision of these companions, as bright as stars, and as many in number, is so attractive, and so engrossing, that all other thoughts of Paradise die out of the mind and heart by the side of it. It is enough. It is Paradise. And if so, then the houris of earth are the Paradise of earth.

I have been told by men who have resided long in the East, and have had good opportunities for knowing the people well, that the facts of life there have conformed themselves to this anticipation. The houris of earth are the end-all and be-all of oriental life. Unlike anything amongst ourselves, it is with a view to them that even the arrangements of oriental houses are designed. No wonder men think they cannot make too much of, or guard too carefully, this treasure, for what more can heaven itself give them? Each, therefore, at once makes for himself in this matter, as far as his means allow, a present Paradise. The Sheik of the Great Mosk of Omar at Jerusalem introduced me to his son, a lad of sixteen, who was, as I have lately mentioned, already the master of two houris. It is said at Cairo that this part of the present Khedivé’s household does not at all fall short of what might be expected of the ruler of Egypt. To oriental thought there is nothing incongruous, nothing unbecoming, in their prophet, the chosen recipient of the Divine mind, and of all men the most absorbed in holy things, having been a matrimonial pluralist.

This is the very opposite to a sentiment with which the European world has been made familiar: the sentiment that husband, or wife, cannot be loved, except at the expense of the love of God; that it would be well if love were no worse than of the earth earthy; that those who do life-long violence to this master sentiment of our youthful nature, who trample upon it, and endeavour to extinguish it, and who put in its place such feelings as minds, that do this despite to nature, can alone originate, are better, and purer, and holier, than those who accept the duties, and cares, and happinesses of wedded life. It is strange that these ideas, which, through a natural reaction, had their birthplace in the East, are now most alien to oriental modes of thought.

Orientals are not more luxurious than ourselves. The difference is that their luxury is directed more exclusively to one object; and that that one object is of such a nature as to make their luxury more enervating than ours. Their luxury is houris, and all that appertains to them; and all that contributes to investing their society with a halo of sensuous delights; gorgeous apartments; plashing fountains; shady, and colour-enamelled gardens; exquisite odours. Our universal luxury does not relax the fibre of our minds, and bodies, as much as their one particular luxury does theirs.

We may bring ourselves to understand, to some extent, how this system acts on Orientals by picturing to our thought how it would act on ourselves. Take the first fifty men you meet in the Strand, or see coming out of a Church. Look into their faces, and endeavour to make our what you can about them from their appearance. They are evidently most of them married men. This means with us that their bark of life, as respects one most important matter at all events, is now moored in harbour. Hope and fortune are words that, in this matter, have no longer any meaning for them. They have accepted the situation, and have ceased to think about houris. Each has taken his wife for better, for worse; for sickness and for health, till death shall part them. Their thoughts are now about their business, their families, their pursuits, their society. But what a change would come over the spirit of their dreams, if each could have as many houris as he pleased, and could afford, of one kind or another, houris ever fair and ever young; and could dismiss at any moment any he wished, for any reason, to be rid of, by the simple form of a writing of divorcement: no more trouble in it than in making an entry in one’s pocket-book, and as exclusively one’s own affair; and could dismiss some without even this small formality of the writing of divorcement. Under such circumstances the houri question, which now has no place in the thoughts of one of these worthy members of society, would straightway occupy in the minds of many of them the first place of all. It would then become necessary that a complete end should be put to many things that no harm comes from now. These staid and respectable gentlemen would soon find that houris must be excluded from Churches, as Orientals have found that they must be from Mosks, during the time of Divine Service, because, under the new system, it would be impossible for them to be devout when surrounded with houris. Neither could houris be any longer domestic servants in our fashion. Houris also must be excluded from society. Nor would it be admissible for houris to appear in public, or anywhere, except in the presence of their lords, with unveiled faces. A little exercise of the imagination enables us to see what the metamorphosis would be in ourselves. And on the Oriental the effects of the system are even greater, because he has no political life, less pre-occupation from business than we have, and none of those pursuits, and employments for the mind, which our education, and the state of knowledge amongst us give rise to here.

As we were returning to Cairo by the river, we passed the corpse of a woman floating on the water. Every European of the party felt pity for her fate, and for her fault. Had it been possible we would gladly have given sepulture to these dishonoured remains of our common humanity, from which the Divine inmate had been expelled so cruelly. Such sentiments, however, are unintelligible to the Arab mind. The dogs and the vultures, they think, will give sepulture good enough to one who has brought disgrace so stinging on father, brothers, and husband. No pity have they for the fallen. No consciousness of failings of their own.

This is evil. But perhaps it might be more evil to care for none of these things. Indifference might be worse than hardness. Indifference would mean moral decay and rottenness. Hardness here is moral indignation, kindling up into an uncontrollable flame, which burns up, like stubble, all other feelings. These are simple-minded people, and they feel strongly within their narrow range of feelings.

Something perhaps might be said in extenuation of the fault of this poor frail one, whose punishment, if it were not greater than her fault, was still the extremest man can inflict. What agonizing moments must those last ones have been when, not weakened by slow disease, nor broken by days spent in long imprisonment, but fresh from her home, in the flower of youth and Nature’s pride of strength, with the blood quick and warm, she was being dragged away to the dark river, and by those God had made nearest and dearest to her. Her brothers are foremost in the work. There is not a heart in all the world, except, perhaps, of one whom she dare not think of now, that is touched with pity for her. Brothers are turned to worse than tigers, for they never did to death their own kin, or even their own kind.

But under such a system there will be some, among those who have wealth and leisure more than enough, who must fall. Women, like men, are only what the ideas in their minds make them. Every idea that is implanted, or springs up in the mind, may be regarded as a living thing. It has the attributes of life. It roots itself in the brain; it feeds, and assimilates what it feeds on; it grows; it ramifies; it bears fruit: it propagates itself after its kind; it carries on the Darwinian conflict for life with other ideas. If not killed itself, it may kill them. It may develop itself abnormally. It may get possession of an undue proportion of the ground.

These are general properties. But each particular idea has also, precisely as the various species of plants have, its own special properties. Some are beneficent, and these are beneficent in various ways. Some are poisonous, and these are poisonous in various ways. Some bear little fruit, some much. Some are serviceable to all, some only to a few. Some are feeble, some strong. Some are bitter, some sweet. Some burn, some soothe. Some are beautiful, some unsightly. Some can stand alone, some need support.

Every brain is a world any of these may grow in, and in which some must grow. For the seeds of some are carried about in the air. The seeds of others circulate in the blood. Others come from the heart. Some also are the growth of good seeds deposited in the mind by human intention and care.

What, then, are the ideas which have been implanted, or have somehow come to exist, in the minds of these inmates of the hareem? As a rule they have been taught nothing. Not even their religion. They have not been permitted to enter a Mosk at the time of prayer. All the ideas which get established in the minds of educated women in our happier part of the world, through some religious instruction, through some acquaintance with history, or art, or science, or poetry, or general literature, have never had a chance in the minds of the ladies of Cairo. They were left to those ideas, the germs of which float about in the air, or circulate in the blood, or come from the heart. And the only air that could convey ideas to them was that of the hareem; first of the hareem in which they were brought up, then of the hareem in which they must pass the remainder of their days. They have never breathed, and will never breathe, any other air. And as to the ideas, the germs of which are in the blood, and which come from the heart, they never had any chance of regulating them. Womanhood came upon them at the age of ten. Many were married at twelve. Why, before it could have been possible, had the attempt been made, for them to receive the ideas that come from religion, literature, poetry, science, art, or history, the germs that come from the blood, and from the heart, had got possession of the whole ground, and had absorbed all the nutriment the ground contained. There was no room for, nor anything to feed, any other ideas: for them time was necessary, and that, precisely, was the one thing it was impossible to have.

No wonder, then, that the lords of the hareem suppose the ground incapable of producing anything better. Under the circumstances perhaps they are right. Hence comes their thought that a woman is a houri, a toy: nothing more. But a toy that is very liable to go wrong: perhaps they are right again under the circumstances: and so must be carefully guarded. All experience, however, teaches that there is nothing so difficult, almost so impossible to guard. This is a case in which no bars or sentinels can save the shrine from profanation, unless the goddess within herself will it. The supple and soured guardians, too, are often useless; often, indeed, the intermediate agents in the very mischief they were to guard against. And so the toy goes wrong. And then it must be ruthlessly crushed. The men have their business, their money-making, their ambition, their society, their religion. In their minds all these implant counteracting ideas. And yet all these we are told are with them sometimes feeble in comparison with the ideas that come from the blood. How, then, can we wonder that the frailer, and more susceptible minds, being absolutely deprived of all counteracting influences, should at times become the victims of their susceptibility and frailty? Nor need we be surprised that, when detected, their brothers, and fathers, and husbands should avail themselves of the permission, given both by law and custom, to wipe out their disgrace, by putting out of sight for ever the cause of it. Disgrace they feel keenly; and pity is not one of their virtues.

CHAPTER XLIV. CAN ANYTHING BE DONE FOR THE EAST?

Can the oriental mind be roused into new life and activity? Can it be made more fruitful than it has proved of late, in what conduces to the well-being of communities, and of individuals? I see no reason why Egypt and Syria should not, in the future, as they did in the past, support populous, wealthy, and orderly communities, which might occupy a creditable position, even in the modern world, in respect of that moral and intellectual power, which is the distinguishing mark of man. But what might bring about this desirable result among them could only be that which has brought it about among other men.

The first requisite is security for person and property. No people were ever possessed of this without advancing, or were ever deprived of it without retrograding. The pursuit of property is the most universal, and the most potent of all natural educators. It teaches thoughtfulness, foresight, industry, self-denial, frugality, and many other valuable, if secondary and minor virtues, more generally and effectually than schools, philosophers, and religions have ever taught them. But where the local Governor, and the tax-collector are the complete lords of the ascendant, the motive to acquire property is nearly killed; and where it does in some degree survive, it has to be exercised under such disadvantages, that it becomes a discipline of vice rather than of virtue. Such, for centuries, has been the condition, under the rule of the Turk, of these by nature, in many respects, highly-favoured countries. The first step, then, towards their recovery must be to give them what they never have had, and never can have, we may almost affirm, under Eastern despots, perfect security for person and property. That would alone, and in itself, be a resurrection to life. It would lead on to everything that is wanted.

An auxiliary might be found in (which may appear to some equally, or even more prosaic) a larger and freer use of the printing press, that is, of books and newspapers. This would, of course, naturally, and of itself, follow the security just spoken of. It would, however, be desirable in this fargone and atrophied case, if some means for the purpose could be discovered, or created, to anticipate a little, to put even the cart before the horse, and to introduce at once, I will not say a more extended use, but the germ of the use, of books and newspapers. I am afraid the effort would be hopeless, as things are now; and I know it would spring up of itself, if things were as they ought to be. Still the effort might be made. It is the only useful direction in which there appears to be at present an opening for philanthropic work.

And, to speak sentimentally, what country has a more rightful claim to the benefits of the printing press than Egypt? It is only the modern application of the old Egyptian discovery of letters. To carry back to Egypt its own discovery, advanced some steps farther, is but a small acknowledgment that without that discovery none of our own progress, nor much, indeed, of human progress of any kind, would ever have been possible. There are a printing press, and even a kind of newspaper at Cairo, and, of course, at Alexandria; and at Jerusalem it is possible to get a shopkeeper’s card printed. But what is wanted is that there should be conferred on the people, to some considerable proportion—if such a thing be possible—the power of reading; and that there should be awakened within them the desire to read. No efforts, I think, would be so useful as those which might have these simple aims.

The great thing is to stir up mind. Great events and favouring circumstances do this naturally, by self-acting and irresistible means; and literature is one of the spontaneous fruits of the stirring of mind they give rise to. And the work does not stop there; for literature re-acts on the mental activity which produced it. It stimulates to still greater exertions; and, what is more, it guides to right, and useful, and fruitful conclusions. Perhaps it is hopeless to attempt to get literature to do its work, when the conditions which are requisite for producing a literature are absent, but the attempt might be made. There is nothing else to do now.

This process is seen clearly enough in history. Look at Athens. Its greatness produced its literature; and its literature supported and advanced its greatness. Public life, of course, at Athens was such that many things there gave increased power to literature; and some in a way acted as substitutes for it. The public assemblies, the administration of justice, the schools of philosophy, the theatres, were to the Athenians, to a great extent, what books and newspapers are to us. They were a machinery by which the thought and knowledge of those who, more or less to the purpose, could think, and who had knowledge, were brought into contact with the minds of all; so that all were put in the way of thinking, and of attaining knowledge for themselves; and were obliged, to some extent, to do it: and thus the thought and the knowledge of the best men became the thought and the knowledge of all, or were, at least, submitted to the attention of all. And so knowledge went on increasing, and thought went on achieving fresh conquests, and Greece became the Holy Land of mind.

Every one can see how large a share in producing the mental activity of the Americans must be assigned to books and newspapers. Facts, and men’s thoughts about these facts, are each day laid before the minds of a greater proportion of the population in the United States than elsewhere. Take away this apparatus for awakening and guiding thought, and their wonderful mental activity would disappear. As it is, all the counteracting influences of the rough and hard life most of them have to live cannot repress it. Suppose as large a proportion of our own population could read, and that they were treated in the same way—that is to say, that an equal amount of seed was deposited in their minds, and an equal amount of light, air, and warmth poured in—then I doubt not but that we should see, down even to the lower strata of society, an equal amount of mental activity.

This is a wide and fruitful subject. It is by the aid of this Egyptian discovery of letters, and of letters only, no one other thing beneath the sun being, without it, of any use in this matter, that the better thought, which is the thought of a few, sometimes originally of a single mind only, gains the upper hand of the inferior thought, which is the thought of the many; that error, which naturally commends itself to the ignorant, is slowly and painfully demonstrated to be error; and that many forms of injustice, notwithstanding their hoar antiquity, the memory of man never having run to the contrary, are shown at last to be inhumanities. It is by their aid, and their aid only, that an inch of good ground gained to-day, is not lost to-morrow, but kept for ever; that hints are treasured up till what they hinted at is discovered; that what has been observed by one man is set alongside of what has been observed by another, till at last the fruitful conclusion grows out of the connected view; that the experience of individuals, and of generations, is stored up for those who are to come after; that the spark kindled in a single mind becomes a common light. All this must be despaired of without printed records, statements, and discussions, without books, without newspapers; and the more largely these means for arriving at, and conveying knowledge are used, the greater is the effect of them. If the effect is so much when the seed is sown in ten thousand minds, it will be proportionately greater when it is sown in ten millions.

Nothing else has done in this matter for any people, and nothing else will do for the Egyptians and Syrians. Their circumstances, over which we appear to have no control, may make the effort barren; but there is nothing else we can do for them. It is ‘the one way of salvation’ for the state in which they now are. Nothing else can bring them to see except printed discussion, in which what is gained is retained, and what is discredited dies away, that for one disease the dung of a black dog is not a sovereign remedy, nor for another the dung of a white cow; and that the only preservative against the Evil Eye is the security good laws, well administered, give to person and property.

As to ourselves, had it not been for the assistance we received from letters we should still have here the Druid, or some one or other of his congeners, offering human holocausts to the accompaniment of the approving shouts of frantic multitudes; and we should still be, at this day, as far from the ideas of liberty of thought, and of humanity, as Galgacus was from the conception of the steam-engine, or of the electric telegraph.

The restorative, I have been prescribing, is one which must be designedly, and, when designedly, can never be very widely, applied. Another, however, there is, which will come spontaneously, and have a very diffusive effect. Its germs are now quickening in the womb of time. It is that of the outflow of western capital to the East, accompanied by those to whom it will belong, or who will be needed for the superintendence and direction of its employment. There is plenty the West wants which the East can supply: cotton, silk, wool, hides, wheat, maize, beans, peas, dried fruits, oil, &c. And, in return, the East will take iron, copper, gold, silver, clothing, pottery, &c. The only point that is uncertain is that of time. The trade of the East has once already been taken possession of by Europe. Two thousand years ago it was everywhere in the hands of the Greeks. The same kind of thing will be seen again. But this time the invasion will consist of Englishmen, Germans, Frenchmen, and Italians; amongst whom the irrepressible Greek will reappear. But the future trade between the East and the West will differ widely from the old in the amount of commodities to be produced, and moved, and exchanged. That will be such as modern capital only could deal with, and railways and steamboats transport. Of the dawning of the day for the expansion of this commerce to its natural dimensions I think there are some indications even now. The railway is beginning to penetrate into the East. It will, before long, be seen that much we are in want of can be produced there, at a profit, by the employment of our capital, its employment being superintended by Europeans. Security to person and property will accompany the employment of capital. And then the civilization of the East will be rehabilitated, with a life and activity it never had in the glorious days of old. The rule then was that some one district was to conquer, devastate, and plunder all the rest; so that, at one time, only one locality, almost only one city, could be great and prosperous. Looking back over the past we are misled by observing the traces only of what was mighty and magnificent; for wretchedness, degradation, and suffering leave no monuments. The prosperity, however, that is coming will be diffusive, and universal; for it will be supported not by arms, loot, and extortion, but by capital, peace, knowledge, and industry.

CHAPTER XLV. ACHMED TRIED IN THE BALANCE WITH HODGE.

You do not go through Egypt without comparing the village Achmed, who is so often at your side, with poor Hodge, whom you left at home, but who, nevertheless, is often in your thoughts. You ask which of the two is better off; and which is, after all, the better man? And you ask yourself these questions not without some misgivings, for you are pleased with Achmed, and now that you are free from work and care, and with the glorious world unfolding itself before you, you are disposed, when you are reminded of him, to feel more pity than usual for poor Hodge.

They both work alike on the land all their days. The former for the Khedivé, the latter for farmer Giles. Each of them is at the bottom of the social hierarchy to which he belongs. These, however, are points of resemblance only in words: the things the words stand for in the two cases are very different. In fact, there are no resemblances at all between them.

It is now winter. Hodge turned out this morning long before daylight. The ground was hard frozen; but by-and-by it will all be snow-slush. He had to look after his horses, and get down, before people began to stir, to the town, five or six miles off, for a load of manure. Or, perhaps, he did not get up quite so long before daylight to-day. It would have been of no use, for he is now working in a wet ditch, up to his ankles in mud all day long, facing a hedge bank. This is a job that will take him three or four weeks. It is winter work, in out-of-the-way fields; and no one will pass in sight all day. He will eat his breakfast of bread and cheese, alone, seated on the damp ground, with his back against a tree, on the lea-side; and his dinner of the same viands, in the same place, and with the same company.

And what will he be thinking about all day? He will wish that farmer Giles would only let him have one of those old pollards on the hedge-bank. He could stay and grub it up after work of moonlight nights. It would give a little firing, and his missus would be glad to see it come home. Things are getting unneighbourly dear, and he will hope that farmer Giles will raise his wages a shilling, or even sixpence a week. But he has heard talk of lowering wages. Times are very hard, and folk must live. He will hope that baby will soon be better; but it always was a poor scrinchling. He will hope his wife may not be laid up this winter, as she was last. That was a bad job. He got behind at the mill then. Tom and Dick have been without shoes ever since, and he can’t say how the doctor’s bill is ever to be paid. He will wish he could buy a little malt to brew a little beer. He shouldn’t make it over-strong. He doesn’t hold with that. He will think it can’t be far off six o’clock. He will wish they had not done away with the old path across Crab-tree Field. It used to save him many a step, going and coming. He minds that field well, because when he was scaring crows in that field—he must have been going eight years old then—the parson came along the path, and he asked the parson, ‘Please, sir, what’s o’clock?’ and the parson gave him sixpence. It was the first sixpence he ever got, and it was a long time before he got another. He always says the parson gave him that sixpence, because when the parson said, ‘What, boy, have you pawned your watch?’ he kind of laughed. He minds, too, that the corn came up very slow that year. It was cold times. Perhaps that was why he asked, What’s o’clock?

Poor fellow, in his life there is plenty of margin for wishes and hopes. As he trudges home you see that his features are weather-beaten and hard. It would not be easy to get a smile out of them; and, if it did come, it would be rather grim. His back is bent; his gait is slouchy; his joints are beginning to stiffen from work and rheumatism.

His life is dreary and hard, and so is his wife’s. She, too, is up before daylight; and her candle is alight some time after he has laid down his weary limbs, and sleep has brought him forgetfulness. She has some odd things to do which must be done, and which she had no spare minutes for during the day. She is now seated for the first time since five o’clock in the morning, with the exception of the short intervals when she snatched her humble meals. She has, unassisted, to do everything that is done in that house, and for that family of six or seven in all. She has to keep the house, the children, and her husband tidy. She has a weekly wash, daily repairs, daily cooking, weekly baking; to buy all that is wanted; to look after the sick baby, and the other children; and to look in occasionally on her sick neighbour.

The earth is a large place, but I believe that nowhere else on the earth’s surface can a harder-worked couple be found than Hodge and his wife.

And what makes their hard lot still harder is the fact that they are the only workers who never have a fête or a holiday. Our climate is such that neither in mid-winter, nor in mid-summer, need labour be intermitted; and our agriculture is so conducted that it cannot. The consequence is that Hodge is held to labour all the year round. And, if he could now and then be spared, nature here imposes upon him so many wants, and so inexorably exacts attention to them, that he could not afford a day’s idleness from the time when, being about eight years old, he began to scare crows, till the day when, worn out with toil and weather, he will be laid in the churchyard: he must be in harness every day, and all day long.

If, then, this couple have some failings (how could it be otherwise?) be to those unavoidable failings a little kind. Think, too, that it would be strange if such a life did not engender some virtues, and to those virtues be fair and appreciative. They are not afraid of any kind, or of any amount, of work. They don’t see much use in complaining. They let other folk alone. They are self-reliant within their narrow sphere. They think there must be a better world than this has been to them. In the meantime they are thankful that they can work, and earn their own, and their children’s, bread.

And here we have the true nursery of the nation. The schooling is hard, but without it we should not be what we are. It forms the stuff out of which Englishmen are made. It is the stuff that has made America and Australia, and is giving to our language and race predominance in the world. Our mental and bodily fibre is strengthened by having had to pass through the Hodge stage.

And now we have to set Achmed by the side of Hodge. Poor Hodge! How can there be any comparison between things so dissimilar? Achmed is a child of the sun, that sun his forefathers worshipped, and whose symbol he sees on the old temples. Every day of his life, and all day long, he has seen him,

pouring floods of light and gladness about him, as he pours floods of life into his veins. The sunshine without has created a kind of sunshine within. It has saved him from working in slushy snow, and in wet ditches, and from all unpleasant skyey influences. It has given him plenty of fête-days and holidays. It has made his muscles springy, his joints supple, his step light, his eye and wits and tongue quick. As to the rest, he might almost think that he had no master over him. He works when and how he pleases. Still he is not without his troubles. The Khedivé, and his people, will take all that his land produces, except the doura, the maize, the cucumbers, and the onions that will be barely sufficient to keep himself and his family alive. All the wheat and the beans must go. And he will get bastinadoed into the bargain. But about that he doesn’t trouble himself much. It always was so, and always will be so. Besides, is it not Allah’s will? After all his wants are not great. He scarcely requires house, fuel, or clothing. And to-day Achmed’s donkey has been hired by the howaji, from whom he hopes to extort two rupees. Two piastres would be plenty, but he wants the rupees particularly just now, for he has a scheme for divorcing his present wife, as she is getting rather old for him, and marrying a young girl he knows of in the village; and this, one way or another, will cost him two or three pounds. And so he is more smiling, and more attentive to the howaji, than usual.

There is however, one point of resemblance: they both end the day in the same fashion. They light their pipes, and take their kêf. Achmed, at these times, appears to be breathing a purer and less earthly ether than Hodge; but that is his manner. It may be that his thoughts are less of the grosser things of earth, the first wants of life, than Hodge’s. But who knows? Perhaps they may be only of divorcing the old wife, and fetching home the young one. Hodge, I believe, has the greater sense of enjoyment as the soothing narcotic permeates his hard overstrained fibres. Sometimes there is a half-formed thought in his mind that he is doing his duty manfully, without much earthly notice or encouragement.

On the whole, then, I am glad to have made the acquaintance of Achmed. I like him well. I shall always have agreeable recollections of him. He is pleasant to look at; pleasant to deal with, notwithstanding his extortions; pleasant to think about. But I have more respect for Hodge. He has nothing to say for himself. If he is picturesque, it is not after the received fashion. If his life contains a poem, it is not one that would be appreciated, generally, either in the Eastern, or the Western, Row. He has, however, a stout, and withal a good heart. One ought to be the better for knowing something of his unobtrusive manly virtues. Achmed has a gust for pleasure, in which matter he has had some training. He is a merry fellow who will enliven your holiday. Hodge’s spiriting lies in a different direction.

CHAPTER XLVI. WATER-JARS AND WATER-CARRIERS.

Every drop of water that has ever been used for domestic purposes—the waterworks of Cairo and Alexandria are innovations only of yesterday—has, with the exception of the small quantity conveyed in goat-skins by men, been brought up out of the river and canals by women. Their custom has been to carry it on their heads in large earthen jars, called goollehs. These are so large that they are capable of being formed into rafts, which you often meet upon the river, with two men upon each steering and punting them along. This is the way in which they are taken from the places, where they are manufactured, to be distributed to the towns and villages along the banks of the stream. Each weighs when full, as near as I could tell by lifting one, about forty pounds. Wherever you may be you see the women trooping down to the river-bank with these jars on their heads to fetch water. Arrived at the water’s edge, each woman tucks her short and scanty skirts between her legs, and, walking a step or two into the stream, fills her goolleh. She then faces round to the bank, and sets it down on the ground. The next move is to face back again to the stream, and wash her feet. When ready to depart she receives the assistance of the one who will go next into the water in placing the full jar on her head. The last of the troop has no assistance. With forty pounds weight on their heads they walk up the steep bank, and, perhaps, a mile or two off to the village, making as light of it as if it were no more than a chignon. The practice of carrying these weights on the head gives an erectness to the figure, and a prominency to the chest, which nothing else could produce.

Though I have at times smoked out a cigar while watching an incessant stream of these women coming down to, and going up from, the watering-place, I never heard one speak to another. I suppose they reserve what they have to say till they can say it unobserved by the bearded sex. Nor did I ever see one of them cast a glance upon a stranger. I quite believe what a native told me of them—that it would be regarded as a portent, if one of the very poorest class were in the least to commit herself in this way. I once saw one of my companions—a tall, good-looking young fellow—walk up to a damsel as good-looking as himself, who had filled her goolleh, and set it on the edge of the stream till she had washed her feet. As she turned round for it, he lifted it for her, and placed it on her head. I narrowly watched her face. She ought to have been somewhat taken by surprise, for she knew not that he was behind her; but of this there was no indication. She did not look at him, or move a feature: there was no apparent consciousness of any one being present. The instant the jar was on her head, she walked away just as she would have done, had it been her sister who had lifted it for her.

One is astonished at the mountains of broken crockery, or pottery, which mark the sites of the ancient cites. That well nigh all the water used in Egypt, for so many thousands of years, has had to be carried in these earthen jars—for there is no wood in Egypt to make bowls and buckets—and that the cooking utensils of the mass of the people must be made of the same fragile material—for Egypt, except in times of unusual prosperity, has no metals cheap enough for this purpose—will account for no inconsiderable part of the accumulations. These shards have gone a long way towards forming the barrows in which lie buried Abydos, Memphis, Esné, Edfou, Thebes, Dendera, and scores of other places. The importance, in its day, of any one of these ages-ago-effaced cities may be roughly estimated by observing the magnitude of the barrow in which it is buried. The mounds at Alexandria—and even already at modern Cairo—are of surprising dimensions. Had they brought up the water from the river in wooden buckets, which would have decayed, or had they cooked in metal utensils—the materials of which, when they became unserviceable for cooking, would have been turned to some other account—these mounds would have been less conspicuous objects than they are now.

CHAPTER XLVII. WANT OF WOOD IN EGYPT, AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.

Egypt has no woods or thickets. It would hardly possess a single tree without the care of man. The few it has would soon perish if that care were intermitted. Even the palm, which we regard as the tree of the desert, cannot exist unless it be supplied with water. The species of the trees one meets with commonly in Egypt do not exceed half-a-dozen. They are the large-leaved acacia, the small-leaved thorny acacia, the tamarisk, a variety of the Indian fig, the palm, and, occasionally in Upper Egypt, the dôm palm.

From this dearth of wood follow several obvious consequences, which may be worth noting. First, all the houses of the lower class, that is, of the great mass of the people of Egypt, must be built of crude, or sun-dried brick. There is no wood for posts and planks, or to burn brick for such folk as they. This obliges them to live in houses that are singularly mean; and, according to our ideas, insufficient for their purpose. They can only have a ground-floor, for no ceilings can be made without wood. Nor, for the same reason, can they have any roofs, there is no wood for rafters. Nor, if they could manage to get the rafters, would they be able to get the fuel for burning the tiles. It follows that only a part of what ought to be the roof can be covered in, and that in the rudest way, for protection against what heaven may send in the way of heat, or cold, or wet. This partial covering is very ineffectual. It consists of a few palm-leaves, or of the stalks of the millet and maize, laid horizontally from wall to wall; upon this wheat and barley straw is generally piled till it has been consumed by the donkeys, goats, camels, and buffaloes. Such is the rule; a real serviceable roof being the exception. These roofless low walls, which are the house, must also be floorless, for there is no wood either for plank-flooring, or for burning floor-bricks. Then what does duty for the floor must be dust. This makes every house a flea-preserve.

A further consequence is, that within these floorless, roofless, windowless, doorless mud enclosures there can be no such thing as furniture—nothing to sit upon, nothing to stow anything away in, nothing to put anything upon; not a cupboard, a chair, or a table. But this matters little to a people who can always sit, and sleep on the dry ground; and who have nothing to stow away. Everywhere I saw men, and sometimes even women, sleeping out of doors, even in mid-winter.

The same cause obliged the old Egyptians also to build, for all classes, with little, or no, wood. We have just seen that the rubbish heaps of their cities are so vast as in many instances to have completely buried the temples, which, together with many objects of Egyptian art, have thus been preserved for us. Of course this could not have occurred had wood been as largely used by them, as it is by ourselves, in domestic and public architecture. This was, also, one cause of the massiveness and grandeur of their style of architecture.

But the consequences on the life and habits of the people of this dearth of wood are not yet exhausted. It also puts difficulties in the way of their cooking their food. For instance, they cannot bake their bread as often as they would wish. A family may not have fuel enough to admit of the recurrence of this expenditure of it more frequently than perhaps a dozen times in the year. In order, therefore, to keep their bread sweet, they have to cut it into thin slices, and dry it in the sun. And to obtain a sufficiency of fuel, for even these restricted uses, they have to collect carefully, and to turn to account, everything that can be made to burn. As I have mentioned elsewhere, their chief resource for this purpose are the contributions they very thankfully receive from their herbivorous animals. A great part of the time of the women is spent in manufacturing this material into combustible cakes. And a shockingly dirty process it is. The raw material is deposited in a hole in the ground, together with a great deal of water. A woman, seated on the ground, on the brink of the hole, stirs up the material and water with her bare arms, which are immersed to beyond the elbow. This stirring is continued till a smooth fluid mixture has been produced, which is then left in this state, for the water to evaporate, and to drain off through the ground. When the material has in this way arrived at a sufficiently tough consistency it is made into thin cakes, which are set in the sun to dry. When this has been effected, they are stored away for use. As might have been expected, in the apportionment of domestic duties, this manufacture generally falls to the lot of the more ancient dames.

Those, who are curious in tracing up to their sources the customs, and practices, of different people, may refer many other things that they will see, and some that they will not see, in Egypt, to this dearth of wood. In agriculture no carts, or vehicles of any kind, are used: there is no wood of which they might be made. It is, therefore, cheaper that everything should be carried on donkeys and camels. Here, when you see a tree, you are looking on what may be transformed into an essential part of the instrument of transportation. The cart, or waggon, and the animals that are to draw it, together form the complete instrument. In Egypt, when you see a bundle of chopped straw, and a field of lucern, you are looking on all, out of which the Egyptian means of land transportation are to be created. In Egypt, when a donkey has any shoes, they consist merely of a piece of flat iron, the size of the bottom of the hoof, cut out of a thin plate. It is easy to cut this out, but it would be expensive, where fuel is so scarce, to forge a shoe. This list might be very largely increased.

Nor are we here in England, three thousand miles off, unaffected by the niggardliness of nature to Egypt in this matter. The country possesses railroads, steamboats, and sugar, and other, factories on a large scale, but no fuel to create for them motive power. This must come from without, and it is all supplied from English collieries, and brought in English vessels. In return for it we get no insignificant portion of the produce of the valley of the Nile. How strangely are things concatenated. The rains that fall in the highlands of Abyssinia, and in equatorial Africa, are grinding down pebbles in the channels of mountain torrents, and washing away the vegetable mould, and transporting their infinitesimal water-borne particles to Egypt, for the purpose of giving employment to the coal-miners of Durham, and to the weavers of Manchester. The intelligence and industry of England turn to account, through the medium of Egypt, the evaporation that takes place on the Indian and South Atlantic oceans. Such are the working and interworking of the physical and mental machinery of this world of ours: or rather, perhaps, we have here some slight indication of what they will one day become.

CHAPTER XLVIII. TREES IN EGYPT.

Vegetation is the garb of nature; and no description of any region can pretend to completeness till the trees—the most conspicuous part of the vegetation—have been brought into view. In Egypt as each specimen of the few species of trees commonly met with (the species may be counted on the fingers of one hand) must be carefully looked after to be kept alive, every particular tree comes to be regarded as beautiful, and valuable. The knowledge the traveller has of this care and regard, which have been bestowed upon them, enhances the interest with which he beholds them. Besides, the trees of Egypt are entitled to a place in any description of the country, for the additional reason, that on its level plain they are the most marked and pleasing objects on which the eye rests. A work, therefore, that aims at giving anything like a picture of Egypt, must bring out, with some little distinctive prominency, the characteristics of each species.

Among the trees of Egypt, the first place is held by the palm. On landing at Alexandria you find it around the city in abundance, and throughout the country you are never long out of sight of it. It is seen to most advantage from the river against the sky. It appears most in place when, in sufficient numbers to form a grove, it overshadows some river-side village. You there look upon it as the beneficent friend and coadjutor of the poor villagers. You know that it gives them much they could not get elsewhere, and which they could ill spare—shade, boxes, baskets, cordage, thatch, timber, and the chief of their humble luxuries, in return for the protection and water they have given to it. We often hear it spoken of as the queen of the vegetable world. I had rather say that it is a form of grace, and beauty, of which the eye never tires.

The tree usually employed in forming avenues, where shade is the first object, is the broad-podded acacia. The distinguishing feature in this is the largeness and abundance of its singularly dark green leaves. Its foliage, indeed, is so dense, that no ray of sunlight can penetrate through it. The effect is very striking. In one of these avenues, that has been well kept, you will find yourself in a cool gloom, both the coolness, and the gloom, being such that you cannot but feel them, while you see the sun blazing outside. The road from Boulak to the Pyramids of Gizeh is planted the whole way with these trees. For the first two or three miles they are of some age, and, having now met overhead above the road, the shelter, even at mid-day, is complete. For the rest of the way the trees are not older than the Prince of Wales’s visit, they having been planted along the sides of the road that was on that occasion made to do him honour, in Eastern fashion. No tree more easily establishes itself, or grows more rapidly, if sufficiently watered. All that is required is to cut off a limb, no matter how large, or from how old a tree, and to set it in the ground. If it be supplied with water it grows without fail. This acacia is the lebekh of the natives.

Another tree used in avenues, and which grows to a greater height and with larger limbs than the lebekh, is the Egyptian sycamore. It is a species of the Indian fig. The largeness of its limbs enables you to see the whole of its skeleton. The skeleton of the lebekh is concealed by the multiplicity of its branches, and the density of its foliage. There is a fine specimen of this sycamore in the first Nubian village, on the way from Assouan to Philæ, and another equally good on the bank of the river just opposite Philæ. Trees of this kind have more of the appearance of age than others in Egypt. Their bark is of a whitish colour, and their large branches are covered with little leafless spur-like twigs, of a dingy black, on which are produced their round green fruit, about as big as bantams’ eggs. These spur-like processes on the branches are, I suppose, the homologues of the descending aërial roots of its congener, the banyan-tree of India, of which latter also I saw one or two good specimens in gardens in Egypt. It was from the imperishable wood of the sycamore that the ancient Egyptians made their mummy cases. The fine old avenue from Cairo to Shoobra, three miles in length, is composed of generally good specimens of this tree, intermingled with the acacia, lebekh, and here and there a few tamarisks.

The tree which approaches nearest to the ability to support itself in Egypt, without man’s aid, is the tamarisk. It is a tree that drinks very little, and takes a great deal of killing. You see it growing as a stunted shrub in the nitre-encrusted depressions of the desert in the neighbourhood of Ismailia, and elsewhere, where it can only very occasionally be refreshed by a stray shower. Wherever it can get the little moisture, with which it is satisfied, it becomes a graceful tree.

The thorny small-leaved acacia gives but little shade. It produces a small yellow flower, which is a complete globe, and has a sweet scent. It is in flower at Christmas. If this is the acanthus of Herodotus, its wood must have been largely used when he was in Egypt for the construction of the river boats, which were often of very great capacity.

The dôm palm is occasionally seen in Upper Egypt. The first I fell in with was at Miniéh. That, I believe, is the most northerly point at which it is found. Its peculiarity is that, when the stem has reached a few feet above the ground, it bifurcates. It then has two stems and two heads. When these two stems have grown out to the length of a few feet they, too, each of them, bifurcate, following the example of the parent stem. There are now four stems with heads. Another repetition of the process gives eight, and so on. In fact, it is a branching palm, and every branch is a complete palm-tree. The whole is a cluster of palm-trees on one stock.

These are all the trees one notices in travelling through the country. The list is soon run through, but I saw that an attempt was being made to add to the list. In the neighbourhood of the Viceroy’s palaces I found two species of Australian eucalyptus. They appeared to approve of the soil and climate, and gave promise of soon becoming fine trees. They do well at Nice, and will probably do better in Egypt.

Every one of the trees I have mentioned remains, in Egypt, in full foliage throughout the winter.

CHAPTER XLIX. GARDENING IN EGYPT.

That horticulture was a favourite occupation among the ancient Egyptians is shown abundantly by their sculptures and paintings. Representations of gardens are so common, that we may infer that no residence, of any pretensions, was considered complete without one. We even see that rare and interesting plants, brought from Asia and Ethiopia, each with a ball of earth round the roots, carefully secured with matting, formed at times a part of the royal tribute. The very lotus, which may be regarded as, among flowers, the symbol of Pharaohnic Egypt, is now supposed to have been an importation from India. In this matter, as in every other respect, the country has sadly retrograded.

Their style of gardening was stiff and formal. Straight lines were much affected. Angles did not displease. Basins, or pools, of water were de rigueur. Every plant, or tree, was carefully trimmed, and trained. It could not have been otherwise. This was all settled for them by the aspects of Egyptian nature, the character of their religion, and their general manners and customs. As is the case among modern Orientals, flowers were not valued so much for their form and colouring, as for their odour.

The European of to-day, as he looks upon the sculptured and painted representations of Egyptian gardens of three or four thousand years ago, at which date his own ancestors were living in caves, from which their ancestors had expelled races of animals now extinct, finds that, notwithstanding the barbarism of his ancestors, and the recentness of his civilization, there have come to be reproduced in himself ideas and sentiments, which were giving grace and finish to the highly organized society which had been established then, no one can tell for how long a period, on the banks of the Nile. At all events he beholds in these Egyptian gardens a curious instance of an interesting and instructive similarity between the two; for he sees that the Egyptian of that day, just like the Englishman of to-day, took pleasure in watching, and controlling, the life and growth of plants; in tending them, because they tasked, and were dependent on, his thought and care; in making them minister to a refined and refining taste for the beautiful; and in creating by their aid, within the limits in such matters assigned to man, a kind of artificial nature.

Of course all sub-tropical, and many tropical, trees and plants do well here, if only they be regularly supplied with water. I never saw more interesting gardens, on a small scale, than those of S. Cecolani at Alexandria, and of the American Consul at Port Saïd. The same may be said of the garden of the Viceroy at his Gezeerah palace. In them you will find the plants we keep in stove houses doing well in the open air, and many of them in flower at Christmas, or soon after. In the first-mentioned of these gardens I saw very beautiful specimens of the Norfolk Island pine, about thirty feet high, growing luxuriantly. There was also a species of solanum, which, if I knew its Christian name, I would commend to the attention of those who are endeavouring to produce, in their English gardens, something of a sub-tropical effect. It was about ten feet high, and was so regularly filled up with branches, as to have a completely symmetrical, a somewhat dome-like, form. Its leaves were large, rough, and prickly. At the extremity of each twig, or lesser branch, was a large branching spike of purple flowers. The individual flowers in the spikes of bloom were about the size of the flower of its relative, the common potato, and similar in shape. It was a most effective shrub. I never saw one more so.

It is generally supposed amongst us that our English gardens are quite unrivalled. They may be in the thought, care, and money bestowed upon them; but in variety of interest they are very inferior to Egyptian gardens. These may contain all the plants we consider most beautiful and most worthy of artificial heat; which, too, may be grouped with bamboos, palms, Indian figs, bananas, cactuses, daturas, poinsettias nine or ten feet high, and many other plants and trees one would go some way to see growing with the freedom and luxuriance they exhibit in this bright, winterless climate, in which the transparent sunlight is never the mere mocking garb of a withering Liebig-extract of East wind.

CHAPTER L. ANIMAL LIFE IN EGYPT.—THE CAMEL.

In representing the natural scene animal must be associated with vegetable life. The two, in their double relation first to each other, and then to the peculiarities of the region that has shaped their characters, constitute the chief features of the natural panorama. A picture, that would exhibit this in a manner suitable to the object of these pages, will not require either complete comprehensiveness, or much minuteness of detail: such a method of treating the subject would belong to science. What is here required is that those forms only should be signalized which possess in their beauty, numbers, utility, history, or in some way or other, what will interest everybody. They must, in short, be regarded here rather from the human than from the scientific point of view.

The form, then, which first attracts the eye of the traveller in Egypt, is the camel, which, strange enough, the ancient Egyptians, either from an antipathy to the animal, or from some other cause unknown, excluded from their paintings and sculptures. If this antipathy originated in religious ideas, was it because the animal appeared to them, as we may easily suppose it might, preternaturally unclean? Or was it because it presented itself to them as the companion, and servant, of their hated Semitic neighbours? But whatever may have been the reason of their repugnance to it, their descendants, who, however, are at least equally the descendants of their Semitic neighbours, do not participate in the feeling. No sooner are you landed at Alexandria than you have the camel before you. Previously, while you were yet on the way, it had occupied a place in your anticipations of the East; and, now that it meets you at every turn, you are never weary of looking at it.

As it steps by you mark its wide, deliberate, noiseless stride. You observe that the head of the tall slim Arab who walks by its side only reaches half way up its shoulder. Its long neck is elevated and stretched forward. It neither seeks, nor flinches from notice. In its eye there is no wonder, or eagerness, or fear. It is carrying its head horizontally, with its upper lip drawn down. In this drawn-down lip, and in its whole demeanour, there is an expression of contempt—of contempt for the modern world. You can read its thoughts, ‘I belong,’ it is saying to itself, for it cares nothing about you, still you can’t help understanding it, ‘I belong to the old world. There was time and room enough then for everything. What reason can there be in all this crowding and hastening? I move at a pace which used to satisfy kings and patriarchs. My fashion is the old-world fashion. That world did well enough without railways and telegraphs. Before the pyramids were thought of it had been settled what my burden was to be, and at what pace it was to be carried. If any of these unresting pale-faces (what business have they with me?) wish not to be knocked over, they must get out of my way. I give no notice of my approach; I make way for no man. What has the grand and calm old world come to! There is nothing anywhere now but noise, and pushing, and money-grubbing.’ And every camel that you will meet will be going at the same measured pace, holding its head in the same position, with the same composed look, drawing down its lip with the same contempt, and soliloquizing in the same style.

In Alexandria this anachronism of an animal appears to be chiefly employed in carrying goods to and from the harbour, and in bringing forage into the city. This consists mainly of fresh-cut lucern, the historical forage-plant of the East, and of chopped straw—always chopped, and always carried in rope nets made of the fibres of the palm. It is always the same, because in the East there are never two ways of doing anything. As to this chopped straw, it is difficult to say how it comes to pass that the small fractions of it do not fall through the large meshes of the rope net; and that the net itself, with its contents, always retains the same rectangular form. These rope nets are used also on the river for forming the stacks of chopped straw one sees floating down the stream on boats.

On leaving Alexandria for Cairo you begin to see the camel in the fields. In that first journey in Egypt everything is new, and strange, and interests. Sometimes he is at plough, with a buffalo, or cow, or ass, for a mate. Sometimes he is tethered in a piece of lucern. From the absence of enclosures all animals are tethered in Egypt.

In Cairo you see more camels than in Alexandria. They stalk along in Indian file, not swerving an inch from the direct line, full in the middle of the street. In Jerusalem I counted as many as two-and-twenty in line, all roped together, tail and head. This is necessary there, where the streets are so narrow, that if the train of beasts were not thus vertebrated into the form of a single reptile, it would be impossible to keep them together. They bring into Cairo, besides forage, all the wood, and fuel, and grain consumed in the city, and the stone, too, that is used for building. All Cairo has in this way been carried on camels’ backs.

As you ascend the river you are never long without seeing a camel, or a string of camels, on the bank. As you look up at them, for at the season when you are in Egypt the river has subsided many feet, their long legs and long necks, seen from your boat against the sky, appear longer than they have been really made by nature, and you think that you are looking upon some arachnoid creatures, of the megatherium epoch, moving along the bank. At Siout, where the caravan road from Darfur, through the great Oasis, strikes the Nile, I saw a whole kafileh of camels that had just arrived. They were all down on the ground, on their bellies, a hundred or more of them, and filled the great market place. Their owners were busy taking off and inspecting their precious loads. It was to us a strange scene as we threaded our way through the midst of them. Some made an angry noise, and snapped at us with their ugly mouths. I know not what disturbed their equanimity. They might have been, by the grace of nature, exceptionally malcontent; or it might have been the sight of the Frank dress, or the absence of the odour of the Arab dress, that irritated them.

Camels, like horses, are of many colours, black, white, mouse-colour of varying shades, and rusty red of varying shades. The coat, indeed, of all domesticated animals, dogs, cats, horses, cattle, donkeys, pigs, as also the feathers of our gallinaceous poultry, and even the human hair, appear to acquire a tendency to vary into these colours; of which, however, in the camel none are glossy and bright. As they do not lie on their sides, their packs and saddles are often left on all night. I have seen a long string of camels at midnight all resting on their bellies on the ground, and all still saddled, just as they had been during the day. The long manger, out of which they were eating their chopped straw, was also laid on the ground; and so was the Arab in charge of them. The fire, too, by which he was sleeping, was fed, like his camels, with chopped straw.

The camel is one of the cheapest of all means of land carriage. Its load is six hundredweight. In Syria you frequently see their loads lying in the middle of the road, while the animals themselves have been let go on the hill, or the roadside waste, to pick up a feed from the almost sapless and often thorny bushes; this costs nothing. One driver manages several, and his keep costs little. This, and the original cost of the animal, are all the outgoing in the half-desert tracts through which the caravans generally make their way. He lasts in work eighteen or twenty years.

At Assouan, for the first time in ascending the river, you find that you are expected yourself to mount a camel, for the ride across the bit of desert to Philæ. For weeks you have been observing that the Arab on his back is jerked forward at every stride, and so you say, perhaps, to yourself, ‘Now for a ride on a camel; but I wonder whether my vertebræ will be dislocated. I wonder whether I shall be able to sit with my legs crossed over the creature’s neck! Perhaps I shall be pitched off as he jerks himself up from the ground!’ All that are for hire are down on their bellies on the bank. You jump on the one that has the best saddle, because you argue that the man, who can afford the best saddle, can probably afford the best beast; and that it would be unreasonable to put a good saddle on a bad beast. You jump on jauntily, as if you had been to the manner born. As you are crossing your legs before the front crotch of the saddle, up goes the beast. You are jerked forward, and get a dig in the stomach from the front crotch. Then you are jerked backwards, and get a dig from the hind crotch in your back. You steady yourself, and think those digs might have been bad, but so far all right. You observe that you are very high up in the air. The earth seems a long way off. But now for the desert on a camel.

A slender-limbed Nubian lad, to show his zeal, and that he is up to his work, immediately begins to beat the beast with a long stick. You don’t like the pace, and so you think him an imp of darkness, or the near relative of an African monkey. You submit for a few minutes, but the tossings up (you have no stirrups, and your legs are crossed) and the jerks backwards and forwards are bad, and you don’t know how far it will go, and so you call out, ‘You little Afreet, leave the beast alone!’ This is said with a sweep of your stick towards him. He dodges off with a grin. You are not disposed to laugh. Ina moment he is back again like a fly. He will keep his camel up to the front if he can. But you soon get accustomed to the swing. As you notice that the desert is strewn with sharp angular pieces of granite of all sizes, some jutting through the sand, some lying loose on the surface, you again feel, as you did at first, that you are very far up above the earth. The sun is blazing overhead. A thermometer on the sand registers 140 degrees. There is, however, a pleasant breeze. You are not long in getting to Philæ. You are surprised that the distance has been done in so short a time. You get back to Assouan in the evening not at all dissatisfied with your ride on a camel. The next day you repeat the same journey in the same way. It has lost its novelty, and you take it as a matter of course, and even expect to find it pleasant. You go as much for the sake of a second day on a camel as for Philæ itself. You now wish you could spare time for a trip to the great Oasis on camel-back. Ever afterwards you talk of the camel with an air of authority, as if you had been bred in tents.

CHAPTER LI. THE ASS.—THE HORSE. — The Horse.

The camel is, of course, the most characteristic feature of the animal life of the East. The ass comes next. The camel has no known history, except in connexion with man; for there is not sufficient evidence to justify the belief, that he has ever been seen, in a state of nature, on the elevated deserts of Central Asia; where one cannot but suppose that it would be impossible for him to exist, during the winter, in the open. But the ass once was free, and some tribes to this day retain the primæval freedom in their aboriginal Eastern home. All, however, of the race the ordinary traveller now sees are the slaves of man. Though in the order both of utility and picturesqueness the ass comes after the camel, still he deserves prominent notice, for he is everywhere—in the field, in the village, in the city. In Egypt ubiquity is one of his attributes. Universal adaptation, out of which his ubiquity grows, is another. He is the mount of the rich, and of the poor, of man, woman, and child. His lot varies, as does the lot of those he serves. The rich man’s ass is a lordly beast. In size, he is far ahead of anything of his kind we see here at home. His coat is as smooth and glossy as a horse’s—the face, of course, having been put on by the scissors as well as by grooming. His livery is shiny black, satiny white, or sleek mouse-colour. I never saw one of the dingy red of his Poitou brethren. He carries a grand saddle, resplendent with many-coloured fringes, and with a wondrous stuffed pommel of red morocco, eight or more inches high, like a bolster laid before you. The head and reins are decorated. It is a magnificent get-up, and the animal himself is worthy of it all. Many of this sort cost more than a hundred pounds. His hide has never been chafed, nor his spirit broken by ill-usage. He is always left as nature made him, and is not vicious withal. I saw one, at a rich man’s door at Alexandria, so like an unusually fine cob pony, that it took the friend, who happened to be with me, and myself a second look to assure ourselves that he was an ass. He might, however, not have been an Egyptian, for I never saw another at all like him in form or colour. He was of a dark rusty dun.

Such are high caste donkeys. There are, however, low caste donkeys—very low, indeed, and these are far the most numerous. Whatever is good in the appearance, and happy in the lot, of their well-placed brothers is reversed in theirs. They are poor men’s slaves—a proverbially miserable condition even, as Homer tells us, in the heroic days of Hellas. Puny, unkempt, ill-fed, overloaded, overworked, with shocking raws on their flanks and backs, which never cease through life to wring and rack, till they can be burdened and beaten no more, what a blessed consummation must it be for them, when they are pushed off the path, or driven out of the gate, to feed the dogs and vultures—a feast, indeed, which would, to these guests, be a grievous disappointment, had not long experience taught them to be, on such occasions, very moderate in their expectations.

The thought of the life-long sufferings of these âmes damnées of the humble fellow-workers of man troubles my recollections of the East. I used to flinch from the sight of one of them—a sight as common as disturbing. I feel now, as I then knew that I should feel always, that either in this world, though its currents are so corrupt, or in that which is to come, where the offence will stand in its true light, retribution must overtake me for having used poor beasts of this kind, though not yet fallen into quite the lowest depths. That it was up the country, where nothing else could be got, much as I wish for something to palliate the act, cannot, I know, be admitted as a justification. While my heart was bleeding at the sight of these sufferings, I could find no anodyne but the old Egyptian belief in the transmigration of souls. The poor wretches must, I tried to think, be expiating the crimes of a former life. They once were rich Legrees, or devout bankers, who had robbed widows and orphans, or holy fathers, who had kept eunuchs to sing the praises of the Creator.

What a benefactor would he be who could satisfy us on this point—who could demonstrate the thing to us. We should then no longer be maddened at the thought of the iniquities of man, nor harrowed at the sight of the sufferings of the brute. The one would cancel the other.

Little need be said of the horse in Egypt. He is not remarkable there for size or beauty, nor does he obtrude himself much on the traveller’s notice. Out of Cairo and Alexandria he is not frequently seen, and in those cities he generally appears in harness, drawing, always in pairs, the multiform public vehicles which have been culled, one would suppose, from all parts of Europe. He is seldom seen in good condition, unless he comes from the stable of the Viceroy, or of some grandee, a governor or pasha, or of some rich European resident. Taking the whole country, the number of them in good case would thus not be great. He suffers from his double competition with the ass and the camel; and from the absence, except in a few towns, of the use of wheeled vehicles. He is also affected injuriously by the dearness of his keep, compared with that of his competitors for man’s favour; barley and clover being indispensable for him. All this reduces him to the degrading position of selling for less than, at present not half as much as, a good donkey. A fair horse might have been purchased last spring for twenty, or even fifteen pounds. He is seldom more than fourteen hands high. With a tall Arab on his back, he looks too small for a cavalry horse. It is his great merit to be better than he looks. He is very docile, very hardy, and can go through a great deal of work. Trotting is not one of his paces. Egypt used to have a celebrated breed of horses of its own, but that is now nearly extinct.

CHAPTER LII. THE DOG.—THE UNCLEAN ANIMAL.—THE BUFFALO.—THE OX.—THE GOAT AND THE SHEEP.—FERÆ NATURÆ. — The Unclean Animal. — The Buffalo. — The Ox. — The Goats and the Sheep. — Feræ Naturæ.

The dog has, in the East, been spurned from the companionship of man. He is no longer allowed to guard a master’s property, or to be the playfellow of his children. He has been expelled from the home, and the door has been closed against him; every contumely has been heaped upon him; religion has pronounced him unclean, and his contact double defilement.

But centuries of ill-usage have not obliterated nature. He cannot divest himself of his old, hereditary, unreasoning feelings of eternal dependence, and fidelity. Man has, it is true, with injurious harshness, renounced the compact first indented in some distant age, perhaps in some remote northern clime; but the dog neither makes retort, nor claims his liberty. He remains faithful to his part of the broken bond. Only let him be near his old master, allow him no more companionship than to see him pass by, and he will bear all the scorn, and all the hardnesses, of his cruel lot, and will ever be forward to do him any service, however unhonoured. And so it is that he has become homeless and masterless, the scavenger, and the knacker, of eastern cities.

Among wild animals, every individual, or if the species be gregarious, every association of individuals, has its own beat, which is as much its own property as a landed estate is the property of its human owner. In this we have the germ, and the rationale, of the human developments of the natural necessity, and idea of property. Each of these beats is an appropriated hunting ground. Any outsider who appears within its limits is an invader, and is treated as such. So it is with the dogs of a large eastern city. They are divided into associations, and each association occupies its own district of the city. If a dog sets his foot beyond the boundaries of his own district, he is instantly attacked by those whose district he has invaded. An alarm is given, and all concerned rush to drive off the intruder, who is often seriously mauled. These raids, and their repulses, generally take place at night. To sybarite travellers, and to those who take no interest in the life of the world around them, the canine uproar caused in these affairs is simply insufferable. The growling is certainly very harsh: you might think it issued from the throats of packs of hyænas. Many of these dogs are badly wounded, we may infer, from one another’s teeth in these night rows, because if such results do not ensue, for what earthly purpose do they make all this uproar? It would then be made out of pure cussedness, which one cannot believe of them.

I never saw a bitch with more than two pups—seldom with more than one. I supposed some inhabitant of the district had knocked the rest of the family on the head, to prevent the pack becoming too numerous.

If a dog in the interior of the city makes himself disagreeable, he is taken up by the scruff of the neck, and carried outside the city. He is never known to return again to his old haunts: in fact, he is unable to do so, being always hindered by those in possession of the intervening districts from passing through them. He thus remains on the outside of the city, an outcast from the dog community, a pariah among dogs, for the rest of his days.

They never show any disposition to molest one in the day-time; at night, however, it is always necessary to go about provided with a good stick, for they will then scarcely ever allow a Frank to pass without assailing him, if not with their teeth, at all events with their tongues. The town dogs are about the size of our English pointers, but with longer coats, generally of a yellowish colour. The tail is somewhat bushy. The village dogs are larger and much fiercer. They are dark brown or black. Their size, courage, and social position improve as the river is ascended. I met a Scotchman, who carried his dislike, and fear, of these ill-used animals so far, that he never went out, night or day without a revolver, or a kind of fire-arm, of German manufacture, which goes off without a report. He boasted of the hecatombs he had slain—perhaps more had been maimed than slain—during his residence in the country. At one time he had cleared off so many in the quarter of the city in which he was living, that the natives, inferring from the number of dead dogs found in the neighbourhood of his house that it was his doing, laid a complaint against him before the cadi for canicide. He was admonished to abstain for the future from taking the life of, or wounding, useful and unoffending animals.

Although the Arab can give the dog no place in his affections, nor allow him the smallest familiarity, yet in his treatment of him you may trace the working of a sort of compassionate kindliness. He sets up for him water-troughs about the city; and I often observed a poor man, as he ate his scanty meal, throw a morsel to a canine mendicant, probably, and if so not misthinkingly, in the name of God.

The unclean animal often divides with the dogs the scavengering of the towns. The part assigned him is the part the dogs’ stomachs will not allow them to undertake. Outside the city a herd of swine is generally to be seen on the filth-heap. It was there I saw them, at Alexandria, Jerusalem, and elsewhere. A few solitary stragglers only are met with in the streets. Of all that is hideous-looking, and hideously filthy, I never beheld anything worse than these eastern town pigs: long-snouted, long-legged, long-haired, ridge-backed, mangy, bespattered with grime. I could hardly have supposed that there had been in the nature of things such disgusting organisms. A sense of loathing sickens you as you see them. But we must not be hard on the helpless brute: is it not more shocking that man, endowed with large discourse of reason, with sovereign power to distinguish wrong from right, the lord, the soul, the very blossom of this visible world, bid to look with the inward eye, as he has been enabled to do with the bodily eye, onwards and upwards, should, notwithstanding, still make himself a hog, morally a scavenger? And this position has been forced by necessity on the swine of the East—they did not turn to it from choice.

Christian travellers in the East, who will eat swine’s flesh, buy it from the Greeks. That it was sold by a Greek is no guarantee that it is food for a dog. Day after day I saw at Jerusalem a Greek boy tending a herd of swine on the filth-heap outside the Jaffa gate. Hard by, against the wall, were sitting a row of noseless, toothless, handless, footless lepers. It was a sight, this combination of animal and human debasement, to make one shudder. But as to those ordure and garbage consuming organisms on the filth-heap: the chemistry of nature can work wonders, but those wonders have a limit. It cannot transmute that filth into human food. As well might you dine on a rat taken from a sewer, or a vulture caught in the ribbed cavity of a camel it was busy in eviscerating. It were all one to sup with the ghouls.

In this matter it is entirely, from first to last, a question of climate, and, through climate, of vegetation. In this part of the world we have a moist climate, and, as a consequence, we have woods, supplying acorns, beech-mast, and other sylvan fruits; and the same cause gives us grassy meadows, and clover-fields, where pigs can graze. And we have abundance of roots and corn, and much refuse garden-stuff; which all comes to this, that in these latitudes nature and man supply the pig, all the year round, with abundance of clean and wholesome food. In the East nature has withheld every one of these gifts. There are no woods, no meadows; and for him no roots, no fruits. Throughout Egypt, with the small exception of some uncultivated marshes in the Delta and Faioum, there is not a mouthful of food for pigs. They must, therefore, become scavengers of towns, or make their exit altogether from the scene. People are very poor in these parts; and those among the Greeks whose poverty suggests to them the idea of making a few piastres by keeping pigs cannot, of course, be well off. The supposition, then, that such people will always buy corn, costly to them, and of which they are in need themselves, for pigs that other people are to eat, is Utopian.

America could not have been settled without the pig; but then the pig has in America a perennial feast of good things. It is the pig’s paradise. The country is under forest. Wood-nuts, and wild fruit of several sorts, are everywhere. Peaches, and maize, and many other things good enough for his betters, are in inexhaustible abundance. Here in England it is one of the luxuries of having a little bit of land, that you never need be without pig, in one form or another, in the house. Besides it is the only animal a cottager can keep. Nothing else is within his reach. Liebig tells us, too, that for those who are exposed to the cold and damp climate of this part of the world, no food is so suited as bacon; and the more oleaginous the better.

In the East the law-givers were right who made religion ban piggy. They could not reason with the multitude on a point of this kind. They could not make distinctions and exceptions. When you have to do with a hungry stomach reason does not go for much. Of course they did not take into consideration the opposite circumstances of other parts of the world. What would be good for us here was no concern of theirs.

The buffalo, if it were only for his uncouthness, ought not to be unnoticed here. He has, however, another claim to a place in our picture, from his so frequently coming into view. He is hardier, and heavier, than the ox, and has, therefore, to a great extent, taken its place both at the plough, and at the water-wheel. The Egyptian buffalo has no resemblance to the brawny-shouldered, shaggy-maned, clean-legged, American prairie bison, injuriously miscalled a buffalo. What our Egyptian’s hairless, slate-coloured carcass is most like is that of some ill-shaped primæval pachyderm. You would hardly take him for a congener of the ox, even after you had noticed his horns; such horns as they are, for they are so reflexed, and twisted, as to give you the idea that something must have gone wrong with them, till you find that they are alike in all. The little buffalo calf, by the side of its ugly, dull, soulless dam, seems a far more creditable piece of nature’s handicraft. You can hardly believe that a few months will metamorphose it into such ugliness.

Of the existing ox so little is seen that nothing need be said here, except that it is a diminutive specimen of its kind; and that it gives dry, stringy beef. It was different in the time of the old Egyptians. They had (what had they not?) a polled breed as well as long-horns, and also some breeds that were curiously-marked. But both bull and cow were then divine. The latter was sacred to Athyr, the Venus of Egypt. The former was worshipped as the symbol of strength, and of the generative powers of nature; and, besides, his quiet rumination suggested the idea of the sufficiency, and wisdom, of reflective meditation. Since they ceased to be divine the couple have much degenerated.

In Egypt the goats and the sheep, as is the case with their betters, are not separated from each other. In outward appearance, too, as respects size, colour, shape, and coat, there is not much difference between them, nor is there much difference between their mutton. This is not an instance, as some have suggested, of evil communications having corrupted good mutton, but the result of similarity of food. The Egyptian sheep have no mountain wild thyme, and no short sweet herbage to crop. The weeds, and the dry acrid plants on the edge of the desert, are all that Nature provides for them, and these they have to divide with the goats. The sourness of the food is what imparts to the mutton its twang; and then their wool is long and oily, and this oiliness of the wool must aid the ill effects of the food. I found, however, little reason to complain of the mutton, when I compared it with the beef. The goats supply the greater part of the milk, and of the butter, used in the country. Goats’ butter is as white as paper; in this respect resembling the butter of the cows of the American prairies. Neither sheep nor goats are larger than an ordinary-sized Newfoundland dog. They are generally of a rusty black, or smutty red colour.

As to the Feræ Naturæ, Egypt offers little cover or feeding-ground for them. I saw none but jackals and foxes. They can, therefore, have no place in a traveller’s sketch of the country. The crocodile is all but extinct below the cataract. The steamboat it is, which in this part of the river, is scaring it away.[9] Formerly, both the crocodile and the hippopotamus appear to have disported themselves even in the Delta.

CHAPTER LIII. BIRDS IN EGYPT.

In the picture of Nature the birds’ place must not be left quite in blank. The first to greet you in Egypt are two familiar home companions. As you near the harbour of Alexandria—and even sometimes before you sight the land—the wagtail comes on board, and, without a moment lost in reconnoitring, begins to look about the deck for crumbs. He flirts his tail as usual. Here, in our bird-persecuting part of the world, it means that he is on the alert; but on the deck of the steamer, that is entering the harbour of Alexandria, it means, ‘All right. I am not afraid: I am quite at home. Every one here is glad to see me, and I am glad to see you. Here no boys throw stones at me.’ Every flirt of his tail sends a little ripple of pleasure over your heart.

On entering Alexandria your only thought is of what is new and strange: the last that would occur to you would be that you were about to encounter an old friend. But the first object that meets your eye, as you step through the custom-house gate into the street, is a very old cosmopolitan friend you left in London a few weeks back—the house sparrow. ‘What!’ you exclaim. ‘You here, you ornithological gamin?’

As you go by rail to Cairo, and as you ascend the river, you are never long out of sight of a mud-built village. The saddest and sorriest of habitations for men and women are these Egyptian villages I have ever anywhere seen. West India negro huts are better-furnished abodes. Their best-lodged inhabitants are the pigeons. The only storey that is ever raised above the ground-floor—which is of the ground as well as on it—is the dovecot. This, therefore, is the only object in a village which attracts the eye of the passer-by. In the Delta the fashion appears to be to raise a rude roundish mud tower, full of earthenware pots for the pigeons to breed in. These are inserted—of course, lying horizontally—in the mud of which the tower is built. In Upper Egypt these towers have assumed the square form, about twelve feet each side. Three or four tiers of branches are carried round the building for the pigeons to settle on; these are stuck into the wall, and as the branches depart from the straight line, each according to its own bent, each belt of branches presents a very irregular appearance. No village is without its dovecotes. From the summit of the propylæa of the grand Ptolemaic temple of Edfou, I counted about forty of these dovecotes on the tops of the mud hovels below me. The number of domestic pigeons in Egypt must be several times as great as that of the population. I suppose if they kept pigs they would not keep so many pigeons. They must consume a great quantity of corn—more, perhaps, than would be required for the pigs of a pig-eating population as large as that of Egypt.

In going up the river from Cairo, the first birds that put in their appearance are the pelicans. They are generally in parties of eight or ten. They are fishing, in a line across the stream. They always keep out of gun-shot. They loom large, showing about the size of swans, and, as seen from a distance, of the colour of cygnets. They do not care to go more than about two hundred miles above Cairo.

All up the river you see herons of several species: like their English congeners, they are patient watchers for passing fish; and when watching, more or less solitary.

The wet sand and mud banks are thronged with countless mobs of ducks of various kinds, of geese, and of other aquatic birds. Experience has taught them also how far guns carry.

As to the geese, you frequently hear and see overhead large flights of them. Sometimes as many as four or five flocks are in sight at one time. They are going to and from their feeding grounds. When aloft they are generally in some figure; but very far from always, as some say, in the form of a wedge. Perhaps the figure in which they place themselves depends on the currents of wind where they are. If they are driving against the wind, the wedge would of course be the best figure for them to move in; but if they are going down the wind a line one deep would be better, as it would give the full help of the current to every individual of the flock; and this is a figure they are often seen in. In the lately disinterred temple of Serapis, between the dilapidated pyramids of Sakkarah, and the marvellous catacomb of the sacred bulls, I saw, in painted relief, a scene which tells us how geese were fattened in old Egypt. Men are seated at each end of a table which is covered with pellets, probably of some kind of meal. Each man has a goose in his lap, down the throat of which he is cramming one of these pellets. The priests of Serapis liked their geese fat.

In the neighbourhood of Siout I saw several flocks of flamingoes on the wing. As they approached with the sun upon them, they showed like discs of silver, supported on black wings. When they had passed, the eye was charmed with their backs of rosy pink.

Among the land birds the commonest in the village palm groves are the Egyptian turtle-dove, and the hopoe. Where there are so many pigeons you might expect a great many hawks: these you see of several species. Larks are everywhere in the fields. You frequently fall in with bevies of quail, and with plovers. A small owl is common: I heard and saw it during the day-time, in the tamarisks near the pool in the sacred enclosure of Karnak, and elsewhere.

Our English rook—it has a wide range, being a denizen of Africa as well as of every part of Europe—appears among the birds of Egypt. My bedroom at Zech’s, late Shepheard’s, Hotel at Cairo was off the back gallery, looking across a road on to a large garden. Exactly opposite the window was the sakia which supplied the garden with water. The creaking and shrieking, every morning, of its lumbering wooden wheel whilst it was being worked by a patient, plodding bullock, was far from unpleasant to one who wished to become acquainted with the sights and sounds of Egypt. In this garden were many palms. These were tenanted by a colony of rooks. I was, day after day, interested in noting that they had just the same bearing and manners as their English relatives. Like them, they sought the society of man, and seemed to watch his doings with the same kind of satisfied observation, accompanied with the same harsh cries, expressive of security and confidence. They were in every respect quite undistinguishable from our London rooks, and those that affect our rural homesteads. I looked upon them with the thought that just as we, at this day, are pleased with their social and familiar ways, so must, many thousand years ago, have been the old Egyptians.

The banks of the river are full of bird life, as every bird in Egypt must daily come to the river to drink.

CHAPTER LIV. THE EGYPTIAN TURTLE.

It is hard lines for an Egyptian turtle when he once gets turned on his back in Aboukir Bay. After that, for the remaining term of his natural life, it is all Ramadan with him, after sunset as well as after sunrise. He is carried to Alexandria, and sold there, if a fine well-grown reptile, for half a sovereign: the smaller reptiles go for less. He is put on board a P. and O. boat, and carried to Southampton, all the way on his back, for another half sovereign. Add to this whatever one may have to pay for his railway journey, and you may take him home with you, and two or three more with him for your friends, at no great cost. Though perhaps it would be hardly worth while to give a turtle to one who knows no other way of having him cooked than converting him into soup.

Something ought to be done, and might be done to mitigate their long fast from Aboukir Bay to London. At sea, gourmandizing is the order of the day; but the turtle on board are famishing all the while. It might not be ill done, if those, whose only occupation is eating, and then eating again, were to give a thought to the difference in this matter between themselves and those of their fellow-travellers who are getting nothing at all to eat. It makes the matter worse that we inflict starvation on the very creature we are contemplating as a feast for ourselves. It is no justification to say, learnedly, that Chelonians can dispense with food for long periods. It is bad for all concerned. It is morally hardening to those who inflict unnecessary suffering, and to those—the passengers on the P. and O. boats—who witness its effects, progressing regularly from day to day. As the poor wretches lie on their backs—there were about fifty on board the boat I came home by—you see that the plastron, that is the name the belly shell goes by, is changing its shape. At first it is convex. It gradually, as the fasting is prolonged, loses its convexity, and becomes flat. This must be bad, but there is worse yet to come. Times goes on, and what had become flat, begins to sink, and becomes concave. The fifty owners of these shrinking and subsiding stomachs must have found the process very pinching: and the more so as they had nothing else in particular to think about while lying all this time on their backs. The alterations of shape they have been passing through measured their sufferings. They had never themselves done anything so bad to what they had fed on. How could they without reason?

CHAPTER LV. INSECT PLAGUES.

As to the insect plagues of Egypt, I found the mosquitoes alone annoying. Had I been in the country in the summer or autumn, my experience would, I have no doubt, have been different. And as to the mosquitoes, I found them seriously annoying only at Alexandria. At one time I had my face, hands, and ankles very badly bitten. My own carelessness, however, was the cause of this, for I was at that time in the habit of reading and writing at night with open windows. This was giving my bloodthirsty assailants, who had been attracted by the candle, every facility. They had free ingress, and found their victim off his guard and exposed to their attacks. At Zech’s hotel at Cairo, I found no mosquitoes. In going up the river I had a chasse every night, before I turned in, to clear off the few that might be in my berth. I generally found one or two. Herodotus mentions the use by the Egyptians of the mosquito net.

In a Belgravian hotel I have been badly bitten, and by a larger, blacker, and more venomous kind of mosquito than those that forced themselves on my notice in Egypt. On the same occasion I saw ladies who were suffering so much from their attacks that they were obliged to have recourse to medical treatment. This ferocious species is supposed to have been imported to Thames-side in some one or other of the earlier stages of insect existence, through the medium of the water-tanks of our West African palm-oil traders.

It is curious that fleas, which so abound in Egypt, are not found in Nubia. Many insects are very local: but one is surprised at finding such a cosmopolite as the flea conspicuously absent in a country, which might have been supposed especially adapted to his manners and customs. In Egypt, as has been the case elsewhere, I often felt industrious fleas at work upon me; but I am not aware that a flea ever yet succeeded in biting me. Others I heard complaining much of them.

The boat in which I went up the river had just been painted, and so I saw nothing in it of the Egyptian bug; but I heard that they abounded in other boats. I found the Hotel d’Europe, at Alexandria, and Zech’s, at Cairo, quite free from them.

The domestic fly is about as troublesome in Egypt in winter as it is in this country in autumn.

CHAPTER LVI. THE SHADOOF.

In Egypt, where mythology, manners and customs, writing, and all the arts appear never to have had a period of infancy, or of adolescence, but to have come into being all in a perfected state and all together, it is hard to say what is older than other things. It is so with everything Egyptian; and so, of course, with the shadoof, the machine used in raising water, by human labour, for irrigating the land. It is the oldest machine with which we are historically acquainted: though, of course, it implies the use of the plough, which, as well as the hoe, must have been brought into the valley of the Nile by the immigrant ancestors of the Egyptians.

Mechanically, the shadoof is an application of the lever. In no machine which the wit of man, aided by the accumulations of science, has since invented, is the result produced so great in proportion to the degree of power employed. The lever of the shadoof is a long stout pole poised on a prop. The pole is at right angles to the river. A large lump of clay from the spot is appended to the inland end. To the river end is suspended a goat-skin bucket. This is the whole apparatus. The man who is working it stands on the edge of the river. Before him is a hole full of water, fed from the passing stream. When working the machine, he takes hold of the cord by which the empty bucket is suspended, and, bending down, by the mere weight of his shoulders dips it in the water. He then rises, with his hand still on the cord. His effort to rise gives the bucket full of water an upward cant, which, with the aid of the equipoising lump of clay at the other end of the pole, lifts it to a trough into which, as it tilts on one side, it empties its contents. The man continues bending down and rising up again in this manner for hours together, apparently without more effort than that involved in these movements of his body. What he has done has raised the water six or seven feet above the level of the river. But if the river has subsided twelve or fourteen feet, it will require another shadoof to be worked in the trough into which the water of the first has been brought. If the river has sunk still more, a third will be required before it can be lifted to the top of the bank, so as to enable it to flow off to the fields that require irrigation. I sometimes saw as many as twenty series of shadoofs at work, two or three in each series, within a range of half a mile. The poor fellows who work them are, except for the barest decency, completely divested of every article of clothing: an almost invisible loin cloth, and a tight-fitting cotton skull-cap, are the whole of their apparel. They work all day in the wet, and in the sun. As the materials for the shadoof—the pole, the prop, the skin, and the clay—are all to be had on the spot, the poor fellah is able, in a few minutes, to set up a machine that is of great service to him, at little or no cost.

The other machine used in Egypt for raising water is called the sakia. This is the Persian water-wheel. It is a large wheel with a continuous row of jars arranged on its tire, something like the buckets of a dredging-machine. These jars dip up the water as the wheel revolves, and empty it, as the further revolution of the wheel brings their mouths downwards, into a trough. It is worked by bullocks, or buffaloes. A few years back there were many more of these at work than there are at present. A murrain, or rinderpest, having destroyed the cattle, the fellahs were obliged to take their place, and revert to the old shadoof of the early Pharaohnic times.

CHAPTER LVII. ALEXANDRIA.

Ancient Alexandria left its mark on the world. Its history, however, appears to connect it rather with great names than with great events. Fancy is pleased with the picture of the greatest of the Greeks, Philip’s godlike son, Aristotle’s pupil, who carried about with him his Homer in a golden casket, the Conquistador of Asia, and the heir of the Pharaohs, tracing, with the contents of a flour-bag, the outlines of the nascent city, which was to bear his name of might, and to sepulchre his remains.

The trade of Phœnicia revived in its harbours, and on its quays. It became the Heliopolis, as well as the Thebes, of Hellenic Egypt. Even the Hebrew part of the population caught the infection of the place, and showed some capacity for philosophy and letters. Here it was that their sacred Scriptures were, in the Septuagint translation, first given to the educated world. And Plato, too, was soon more studied in the schools of Alexandria than in his native Greece.

Here fell the Great Pompey. And here, in pursuit of him, came the Cæsar, who bestrode the world like a Colossus; to be followed in our own time by the only modern leader of men, whose name, if he had possessed the generous magnanimity of the two captains of Greece and Rome, history might have bracketed with theirs.

Here ‘the unparalleled lass,’ rather, perhaps, of the greatest of poets than of history, having beguiled to his ruin the soft triumvir, preferred death to the brutalities of a Roman triumph.

Matters, however, of this kind—and they might be multiplied—are only bubbles on the surface. They interest the fancy, but have no effect on the great current of events. We, at this day, are neither the better nor the worse for them. But of the theology of Alexandria we must speak differently. It is through that that it affected, and still affects, the whole of Christendom. Sixteen hundred years have passed, and Alexandrian thought still holds its ground amongst us.

It would help us to a right understanding of what this thought was, and how it came to be what it was, if we knew something about the city, the times, the country, and the mental condition of its inhabitants. Alexandria, like Calcutta and New Orleans, having been called into existence by the requirements of commerce, had been obliged, for the sake of a harbour, to accept a singularly monotonous and uninteresting site. This alone must have had much influence on the cast of thought of its inhabitants. All who visit it will, I think, feel this. One cannot imagine a healthy and vigorous literature springing up in a place where Nature has neither grandeur nor beauty. Being mainly a commercial city, its inhabitants—as must be the case in all large commercial cities in the East—were composed of many nationalities. They had brought with them their respective religions and literatures, as well as manners and customs. It also contained the most brilliant Greek Court in the world, in which we might be certain that Greek inquisitiveness, and mental activity, would not be extinguished. This will account for the libraries and the schools of Alexandria.

We must understand why it never could become anything in the world of action. It was not because the Egypt of the Ptolemies was inferior to the Egypt of the Pharaohs. It might have been its superior in every particular of power and greatness, and yet have been unable to do anything in the outer world. What kept it quiet was a consciousness of moral and intellectual inferiority to the people time had at last educated and organized on the northern shores of the Mediterranean.

The mental activity of the Alexandrians was all connected with their libraries and schools. The work they did belongs to a condition of mind which can use libraries and schools, but which really originates nothing. It was all work upon other people’s work. They never produced anything of their own. They never could have had an Æschylus, or an Aristophanes; a Thucydides, or an Aristotle. The genius that can originate implies vigour, freedom, individuality, irrepressible impulse—in two words, expansive humanity. Nothing of this kind could have been the growth of Alexandria. The possession it was of these qualities which made the Greeks original, and great in everything they undertook: in art, in war, in government, in colonization, in philosophy, in poetry, in history. The genius which showed itself in their literature was only the same genius which showed itself in other forms and directions, as needs required: which showed itself in everything Greek. Alexandria could not have produced a Pericles, or a Phidias, or an Alexander, any more than a great writer. It would have taken the same mental stuff to make one of these, as to make a poet, an historian, or a philosopher. They all work with the same motive power. The main conditions, too, are the same in all. It is the object only to which the work is directed that varies. The Greeks were, emphatically, men. It was this that made them creative. Humanity was the soul of everything they created; the stamp upon everything they did; and this it is that gives to their work its eternal value.

The mind of Alexandria was a parasitical plant. It fastened itself on the work of others; and endeavoured to extract from it what they had already assimilated, and which its own limited capacities disqualified it from extracting, first hand, for itself from the rich store-house of Nature. It could live upon their work, and turn it to its own narrowly-bounded purposes. For instance, the Greek language had been perfected by the long series of generations who had used it, and who had known nothing of grammars and dictionaries: but at Alexandria it was studied for the sake of the grammar and of the dictionary. Homer had been loved in the Greek world, because he spoke, as a man, to men’s hearts and imaginations. He was valued at Alexandria, not for his poetry—the men and women he had created—but because he supplied a text to comment on. So with the divine dreams of Plato: their use, at Alexandria, was that they supplied some materials for the construction of systems.

It was exactly in this spirit that the Gospel was laid on the dissecting tables of Alexandria. The object proposed was to set up a skeleton to be called Christian Theology; and to inject and arrange certain preparations, to be called Christian doctrines. Here was a strange perversion. Never were the uses to which a thing had been ingeniously turned so thoroughly alien to its real nature and design. The objects of the Gospel were moral and religious. Its appeals were addressed to the ordinary conscience, and to the ordinary understanding: in them its philosophy is to be found. But the systematizers of Alexandria had no taste for dealing with such materials. The Christian religion, as presented to us in their theology, has not one particle of the Gospel in it: no heart, no soul; no human duties, no human motives—nothing human, nothing divine. It is something as hard, and as dry, as a mummy; and would be as dead, were it not for its savage, truculent spirit. It is an attempt to construct a material god, mechanically, of body, parts, and passions—the Egyptian passions of the day; such as burnt, volcanically, in the hearts of the crocodile haters, and crocodile worshippers, of Ombos and Tentyra, and impelled them to eat each other’s still quivering flesh, and drink each other’s blood hot. The watch-word, the source, the main-spring, of Christ’s religion, the one word that fulfils it, is absent from this travesty of it.

This anatomical Christianity, in which there is no Gospel, this systematic divinity, in which there is nothing divine, this mechanical theology, which contradicts the idea of God, Alexandria had the chief hand in inflicting on the world, and a grievous infliction they were. Christendom is still suffering from it. It is the anatomy of a body from which the heart, the blood, the flesh, the muscles, all that rendered it a living power, and made it beautiful and beneficent, have been removed. It is the systematization of a Hortus Siccus. It is a theology that kills religion, in order that it may examine it. The religion that is fixed and formulated; a matter of definitions, and quantitive proportions; that can be handled, and measured, and weighed; that can be taken to pieces, and put together again by a monk in his cell, just as if it were a Chinese puzzle; cannot be the living growth of minds whose knowledge is ever being extended, and of consciences that are ever becoming more sensitive. It cannot indeed, as far as these things go, be a religion at all. A religion, though burdened with them, and perpetually dragged by them into the sphere of formalism, controversy, and passion, may, and will, live on in spite of them; for nothing can kill religion: still the two are antagonistic and incompatible.

The Alexandrian theologians interpreted Christianity in accordance with the criticism, the knowledge, the ignorance, the mind, and the conscience of their day. They could hardly have done otherwise. They came from caves in the desert, and from old tombs, and they returned to them for fresh inspiration. They had a right to interpret things according to the light that was in them. So have we. Our light, however, is somewhat different from theirs. ‘The New Commandment’ was not one that at all commended itself to their sepulchral, troglodytic minds. It finds no place in their creeds. We, however, give it the first place in ours. The perfect law of liberty was unintelligible to them: their only thought about it was to make it impossible: to us it is as necessary as the air we breathe. They held that man is for the creed: we that the creed is for man. Which is right makes much difference.

For the traveller who is desirous of seeing the present in connexion with the past, Alexandria has many other reminiscences. Homer mentions the Isle of Pharos, which formed the harbour. On this classic rock Ptolemy Philadelphus built a magnificent lighthouse of white marble. This was reckoned one of the seven wonders of the world. Its name, which was borrowed from the rock on which it had been placed, has passed into most of the languages of Europe, as the appellative of these useful structures. We, however, who employ them more largely than any other people, and who have in our Eddystone the finest and most interesting structure of this kind in the world, built under widely different conditions from those of the tideless middle sea, very properly give to them a name of our own.

The causeway, three-quarters of a mile in length, which was formed for the purpose of connecting Ptolemy’s Pharos with the mainland, having been enormously expanded, in the course of two thousand years, by the same process, which, in the same period, has raised the present to more than twenty feet above the original level of Rome, is now the Frank quarter of the city. The whole of this space must, therefore, in the time of Homer, and down to the time of Alexander, have been under water.

The city, having become the capital of Egypt, grew rapidly in population, wealth, and splendour. The Ptolemies disposed of the revenue of Egypt, which had now become the chief entrepôt of the commerce of the world; and they spent it with no niggard hand in embellishing their capital. Few great cities have had so large a proportion of their space occupied by magnificent public buildings. Nothing, however, need be said here of its palaces, theatres, and temples, except that they were worthy of the city which filled the first place in the cities of the Greek world, and in the universal empire of the Cæsars was second only to Rome.

Pompey’s Pillar, as the inscription upon it informs us, was erected in honour of Diocletian.

Cleopatra’s Needle had originally stood at Heliopolis, where it had been set up by Thuthmosis III., and afterwards seen by Joseph and Moses. It was transplanted from Heliopolis to Alexandria by one of the Roman Emperors, after the time of Cleopatra. It had been cut from the granite quarries of Syené. It has, therefore, travelled from the John o’Groat’s House to the Land’s End of Egypt.

Its deservedly world-famous library recurs to every one who thinks about Old Alexandria. No other library had ever such a history. It was founded two hundred and eighty-three years before the Christian era; that is to say, before Rome had entered on her Punic wars. While those wars were raging the Alexandrians must, within the walls of this library, have canvassed the news of the day with much the same feelings with which we were ourselves, but just now, talking over the last intelligence from Sedan and Metz, from the Loire and the Seine. In the Greek world a public library had never before been heard of. It was connected with a great mass of buildings called the Museum, which was a kind of institution for the promotion of study, discussion, and learning. Eventually it contained 700,000 volumes. Of these 400,000 were at the Museum; the remainder were in a building connected with the great Temple of Serapis. With the Ptolemies the enrichment of this library was always a great concern. They dispersed their collectors wherever books were to be obtained; and were ready to pay the highest price for them. It was the boast of the city that the library contained a copy of every known book. At last it was overtaken by the fate which awaits all the works of man. In Cæsar’s attack on the city the great library of the Museum was accidentally burnt. The library, therefore, which is supposed to have been destroyed by the command of the Caliph Omar, could only have contained the books, that might have remained to his time, of the inferior library of the Serapeum. This we know had been very much dilapidated by neglect, and in other ways, during the intervening seven centuries of occasional violence, and of constant decay. One, however, is hardly disposed to acquiesce in the opinion on this subject of the historian of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; for, among so large a collection of books, there must, one would suppose, have been some precious works of antiquity, which we should now value highly, but which were then lost to us irreparably.

While we regard with reverence this great library, both for the antiquity of the date of its establishment, and for the useful and noble purposes it was intended to serve, those of perpetuating, and of extending, knowledge, we should be guilty of an injustice if we were to forget that it was not the first institution of its kind. The idea of establishing a public library, which the Ptolemies deserve much credit for carrying out liberally and thoroughly, had nothing original in it in one country, at all events, of the world, and that one was Egypt. Eleven centuries before their time, as we have already seen, the Great Rameses, in his temple-palace at Thebes, had erected a public library. The walls of it are still standing. We need not repeat what we have said elsewhere about the sculptures on its walls, the inscription over its doors, the manuscripts dated from it still in existence, and the tombs of its librarians. This was done more than three thousand years ago. Perhaps, then, other ideas and practices, we may be in the habit of regarding as modern, were also familiar to the Egyptians of that remote day. Those times, indeed, may, in some not unimportant matters, be virtually nearer to us than the times of our Edwards and Henries.

CHAPTER LVIII. CAIRO.

Just as the interest of Alexandria belongs to what we call antiquity, so does Cairo derive the whole of its interest from existing sources. I say what we call antiquity, for by that word we mean the classical period of Greece and Rome; but this classical period is, in reality, only the connecting link between our modern world and the old primæval world of Egypt; it is thus the true middle ages of universal history; while true antiquity is the domain of Pharaohnic Egypt. But as to Cairo: El Islam is of the things that now are, and Cairo was never anything but a Mahomedan city. Its most interesting memories are of the mighty Saladin, who fortified it, and preferred it to all other cities. It is the true capital of Arabdom. Not its holy city, but its Paris. Its history is all of Caliphs and Khedivés.

But the first thing to understand about any famous city is how it came to be where it is. Cairo is where it is, because Memphis was where it was. Its site is the natural centre of Egypt. It occupies, by the dispensation of Nature, the place in Egypt which the heart does in the human body. Being situated at the apex of the Delta, it commands the axis of communication throughout the whole of the upper country, and all the divergent lines of communication which traverse the Delta. He who establishes himself here has cut the country in two; and can concentrate all its resources, or assail any point, at his will. It is the vital centre. Just so was it with Memphis under the old Monarchy, and the Hyksos, and during the subsequent history. No sooner had an invader got a firm footing here than the rest of the country was prostrate, and helpless. The master of Cairo is the master of Egypt.

The city is situated on the right bank of the river, at the foot of a spur of the Mokattam, or Arabian, range of hills. In order to get drinkable water it was necessary that it should be placed so low as that the water of the river might be brought into it. The reader is now aware that there are no springs in Egypt, and that the water of the wells, from the nature of the soil, is brackish and undrinkable. There is, however, in the citadel of Cairo a well of sweet water; the well is sunk through the limestone, of course to somewhat below the depth of the height on which the citadel stands; and so it came to suggest to me the thought that, if borings were made of sufficient depth to pass completely through the nitrous alluvium of the valley, and to perforate the subjacent strata, it might be possible to find water fit for drinking anywhere, and everywhere. It might not often be worth while to go to this expense, because in most places it would still be cheaper to get water from the river; but it would be interesting to ascertain whether or no good water could be obtained in this way. If so, there would then be one small matter, at all events, which had escaped the sagacity of the old Egyptians.

But to return to the site of Cairo: the level ground, on which it stands, beginning at Boulak, its harbour on the river, reaches back about a mile, where it is met by the high ground, which enters the city at the south-east angle. On this point stands the citadel commanding the city. The hills of the range which throws out this spur are seen rising, to a considerable height, on the east of Cairo. They are utterly devoid of vegetation; and being of about the colour of the sand of the desert (they are of limestone), they glare in the sun, and are very striking and conspicuous objects in the scenery of the place. Wherever you leave the city, except at its north-west angle, and in the direction of the river, you enter at once on the absolute desert.

There is no view in Egypt to be compared with that from the Citadel of Cairo. The city, with all its oriental picturesqueness, is at your feet. Domes and minarets are everywhere. You look over it, and your eyes rest sometimes on the green culture, sometimes on the drab desert of Egypt. Beyond, stretching away till it is lost in the haze of distance, is the Valley of Egypt. Through it winds old Nile. It is closed on either side by the irregular ranges of the Libyan and Arabian hills. You know that these pass on through Egypt into Nubia, as the boundaries of the valley. Beyond the river, at the distance of eight or nine miles, on the lower stage of the Libyan range, stand the Great Pyramids of Gizeh. Further off, at about double the distance from you, stand the older Pyramids of Abouseir. Seen from no other point are the Pyramids so impressive. There they stand, at the entrance of the valley, and have stood for more than five thousand years, to tell all who might come down into Egypt of its greatness and glory. They have none of the forms, or features, of architecture. They are mountains, escarped for monuments, by Titan’s hands.

And a little further on are the mounds of Memphis. There lived the men—one would give something to see a day of the life of that old world—who imagined, and made these mountains. You remember that all you saw of them at Memphis was a colossal statue prostrate on the ground. As you look now on the Pyramids you understand that Colossus. These Titan builders felt themselves more than men.

You think how pleasant it would be to sit here, on the parapet of the citadel, inhaling the calumet of memory and imagination; your dear friend, however, who is with you, and who is the most patient and best fellow living, has had enough of it; and he summons back your thoughts from their flight into the far-off tracts of antique time, by a proposal to take another look at the Khan Khaleel Bazaar. As you move away you tell him, to be revenged, ‘that history, like religion, has no power over those who have no imagination; or an imagination furnished only with the images of their own sight-and-self-bounded world.’ ‘Nonsense,’ he replies; and you find yourself again jostling your way through the narrow, crowded, irregular streets of Cairo, upon an ass, with a little swarthy urchin running before you to clear your path. And though everybody seems to submit to him, and to attend readily to his shouts of ‘Right,’ ‘Left,’ ‘Mind your legs,’ you will always have to keep a sharp look-out yourself. You will often be brought to a standstill. There are no trottoirs. The people on foot, the camels, and donkeys, are all jumbled up together. The projecting loads on the camels’ sides seem almost arranged for giving you a lick on the head, and knocking you off your ass.

At last you emerge from the side streets into the Mouské. This is the main artery of the city, and here is the full tide of Cairene life. It is now between four and five o’clock, and the tide is at the top of the flood. The street is straight, and, for a Cairene street, wide enough; the crowd is great; but here everybody, as a matter of course, endeavours to make way for everybody. What you first notice is the abundance of colour. The red tarboosh is perhaps the commonest covering for the head. The turbans vary much; some are of white muslin; some of coloured shawls. The variety of dress is great. Nineteen-twentieths of the passers-by are clad in some form or other of Oriental costume. Their complexions vary as much as their dress. There is every shade, from the glossy black of the Nubian to the dead white of the Turk. The predominant colours are the different shades of yellowish brown which have resulted from the varying degrees of intermixture of Arabs and Copts. Here, at home, the men being at work during the day, it often happens that there are as many women in the street as men. In Cairo the former are often entirely wanting in the street scene, and are never seen in a large proportion. In stature the men are almost always above what we call the middle height, well proportioned, and never fat or pursy, like our beef-eating and beer-drinking people. Their features are regular and pleasing. Their bearing staid and dignified.

There are in the crowd men with water-skins and water-jars. For some insignificant coin—there are four hundred paras in a shilling—they sell drinks to thirsty souls. There are hawkers of bread, of fish, of vegetables, of dates, of oranges, and of a multitude of other matters. These articles are generally cried, if not in the name of the Prophet, still with some pious, or, if not so, then with some poetical, formula. Perhaps a carriage of the Viceroy passes containing some of the ladies of the hareem. They will be escorted by two black guardians of the hareem on horseback, one on each side of the carriage, and preceded by two runners carrying long wands, and dressed in spotless white, with the exception of their red fezes and gaily-coloured shawls. The latter they use as sashes. Each will have cost them fifteen pounds, or more.

When you have become accustomed to the people in the streets, you look at the people in the shops; of course not the Frank, but the native shops. These are merely recesses in the walls of the houses, which form the street. The merchant, or shopkeeper, seldom lives in the house, in the ground floor of which his shop is situated, but generally somewhere at a distance. He has no shopmen, or assistants. The recess, in which he carries on his business, if large, is about in space a cube of ten or twelve feet. It has no door or windows, but is closed with shutters, which the shopkeeper takes down when he comes to do business. He puts them up whenever he wants to go to Mosk, or elsewhere. When his shop is open for business he will be seen seated, cross-legged, on the floor in front of his goods. Every shop being a dark hole, and having its owner seated in front of it, reminded me of a prairie-dog village, where every hole has a prairie-dog seated in front of it, much in the same way; and, too, on the look out. These traders appear to have no Arab blood in them, but to be Greeks, Jews, Turks, Syrians, anybody and everybody except the people of the country. Many of them have an unhealthy appearance. Few of them are good-looking.

As to the houses, what most frequently attracts the eye is the carved wood lattice of the windows. The first floor is frequently advanced beyond the ground-floor. The archway of the door is, in the better class of houses, often ornamented with carved stone-work; and the door itself decorated with a holy text—reverently; perhaps, also, with some lurking idea of excluding evil influences.

But this style of building is now becoming obsolete; and the new houses in and around the Esbekeyeh, and between the Esbekeyeh and Boulak, are being built in the Frank style. The Viceroy has here, for the space of about a square mile, laid out broad macadamized streets, with broad trottoirs on each side, as if he were contemplating an European city. Not much, however, with the exception of these roadways, has yet been done towards carrying out his grand designs, except around the Esbekeyeh. This is the grand place, or square, of Cairo. It now contains a public garden, that would be an ornament worthy of any great European city. It is well lighted with gas made from English coal. As you go to the opera—for there is an opera, too, in Cairo—and return after it is over to your hotel, you are glad of the light; but you are, at the same time, conscious of a little sentimental jar. You did not go to Egypt to find coal gas, and London gas-lamp-posts in the city of Saladin, and of the Caliphs, and in the land of the Pharaohs. You are no longer surprised that the new houses are built in the Frank style.

The Mosks of Cairo may be counted by the hundred. Some have great historical interest; some great artistic merit; some are the great schools of the country.

The old Mosks of Cairo throw much light on the history of the pointed arch, particularly the oldest of them all, that of Ahmed Ebn e’ Tooloon; which, however, is in so ruinous a condition that it is no longer in use. Its date, as recorded in two Cufic inscriptions on the walls, is 879 A.D.—that is to say, three hundred years before the pointed arch was adopted in this country. It is very improbable that this Mosk of Tooloon was the first building in which it was used, because it is not introduced here hesitatingly, as would have been done had it been struggling for recognition, but is boldly and firmly carried out in every part of the structure, and even with some combination of the horseshoe shape, as if it were a form with which the architect had become so familiar that he had even begun to modify it. So great a change in construction, and in the effects produced by form, must have had to fight for some time against previously-established forms. We may, therefore, safely decide that its introduction reaches further back than the date just given. This is saying that the world is indebted for it to Saracenic thought, and taste. This need not surprise us, because at that time there was no other people whose thought was so prolific; and theirs was prolific because it had been aroused to effort by their great achievements. Just as we learn to walk by walking, and to talk by talking, so do men learn how to do great things by doing great things. Other Cairene Mosks continue this history of the pointed arch.

The Mosk of Sultan Hassam has features that are worth noticing. Few buildings exhibit greater freedom of design, which comes, I suppose, of that depth of feeling, which is able to break the fetters of thought. Such a structure could have been the product only of a time when mind was deeply moved, and had become conscious of its power. Men knew then what they wanted, and believed in themselves, that they could satisfy their want. In such times servile imitations, and reproductions are impossible. They do not express what all feel. They do not supply what all are asking for. In this Mosk the porch, the inner court, the astonishing height of the outer wall, springing from the declivity of the hill-side, all the details, and the whole general effect, show that those who built it were conscious of real, deep aspirations, and were not acting under factitious ones; and that they were conscious also of possessing within themselves the power of giving form to their aspirations. It interprets to us the mind of its builders. They were full of vigour, and self-reliance. They yearned to give expression, in forms of beauty, and grandeur, to what was stirring within them.

As I was thus communing, historically, with the intense Mahomedan feeling, which had given a voice to every stone in the building, I was interrupted by another voice, but it was one of a kind, which, we may presume, will never have a thought of clothing itself in forms of beauty, and grandeur. ‘Look,’ it said to me, ‘up there at those crosses.’ ‘No,’ I replied. ‘It is impossible. There can be no crosses here.’ The objects I was invited to look at crown the cornice of the central, hypæthral court. They bear some kind of resemblance to fleurs de lis. ‘Yes,’ the voice continued. ‘Any one can see now just how it all is. These are the old places from which those ritualists get their mediæval crosses, and all that kind of thing.’

The great Mosk of El Azar is the university of Egypt, and of the surrounding countries. The foreign students are divided according to nations. Those of Egypt according to the provinces they come from. The cycle of religion, law, science, and polite learning, as these words are understood in the East, is here taught. Some come merely to qualify themselves for professions, or occupations, in which what they may acquire here will be needed. Others come with the intention, as was contemplated in our own universities, of life-long study.

Some of the tombs of the Memlook, and of other dynasties, that have ruled modern Egypt, are good examples of oriental taste, and feeling. These tombs are generally connected with Mosks. This connexion was intended to add dignity to the tomb, and to enhance its sacredness. The Mosk and tomb together are regarded as the monument of the deceased prince. The desire to honour the dead has, in many of these monuments, produced admirable work, the beauty of which is proportionate to the depth of the desire which prompted it. Sad, however, is it to see such beautiful work now falling into decay. New dynasties in the East care nothing for the monuments of the dynasties that preceded them.

The money spent in building the utterly useless Mosk of Mohamed Ali in the citadel would have put into repair all these monuments, which abound not more in exquisite work than in historical interest; and which, then, would have been secured to the world for some centuries longer at least. But nothing of this kind can be expected of Orientals. To repair and maintain the monuments of past generations is not an idea that has ever commended itself to their minds. People build there to show forth their own greatness, and to perpetuate their own names. If, therefore, I have money to spend on wood and stone, why should I so spend it as to perpetuate another man’s name, and to set forth the greatness of some other builder? For this is what I should do if I repaired his Mosk, or palace. Would it not be wiser for me to spend it in perpetuating my own name, and setting forth my own greatness?

To us there occurs the thought of the historical value of the monuments of the past. This, however, is not an idea than can have any place in the mind of an Oriental. He has no conception of the historical value of anything; nor has he any idea of what history itself is. There can be no history where there is no progress; and his religion, by settling everything once for ever, excludes from his mind the idea of progress, and with it goes the idea of history.

But still, from our point of view, it is a waste of money and labour to build when you might repair. To repair is cheap, to build is costly. But this is precisely what commends the Oriental practice to the Oriental’s mind. That it will cost much money, and much labour pleases him. In matters of this kind, ideas of prudence and utility have no place. An hundred kings of England, we can imagine, occupying in succession Windsor Palace, and preferring it, simply on account of its antiquity, to anything they might be able to build themselves. Every one of them would think it a folly to entertain the idea of building another palace. But every Khedivé of Egypt, just like every King of Nineveh, must build a new one.

Private houses in Cairo appear to be in the same predicament as the Mosks. None are kept in a state of repair. Everything is either being built, or is falling into decay.

Every other Englishman you meet in Cairo, and it is more or less so throughout the East, has some story to tell you of the rapacity, and roguery of the bazaars. The complaint is made somewhat in the following style:—‘What do you think of that slippered, and turbaned old villain, of whom I bought this amber mouthpiece, and this kafia, having had the conscience to ask me four napoleons for each of them? I was not going to be done in that way, so I said to him, “You shocking cormorant, I’ll give you four napoleons for the two: not one para more. Four napoleons is my figure.” “Four napoleons!” he said, with a shudder, “I give you the things for nothing. Take them away with you.” And he pretended to put them into my hand. But I showed him the money. He could not stand the sight of the gold; and so you see I have got the amber, and the silk, at a fair price?’ Well: perhaps you have; or, perhaps, you have given too much for them, after all. But your story is no proof that the old fellow in slippers and turban was a rogue. It is you who do not know the circumstances and the customs of the country: and in this matter theirs differ from ours. With us there is so much competition in trade, that all the leaning is the other way. Every trader wishes to attract by the lowness of his prices. But still, here as there, the rule is to buy as cheap, and sell as dear as you can. This is the rule on which the slippered, and turbaned old fellow acts. He knows, though it is very hard for him to admit the idea—yet he admits it without understanding how it can be so—that you are travelling for your amusement. He, therefore, infers that you must have plenty of money to spare: otherwise you could not be travelling in this way. You want this kafia, or mouthpiece. There is no regular market-price, where there is so little competition. So he will try to get for it as much as he can. Small blame to him for that. When you command the market at home for any article, what do you do yourself? You ask for it what you can get, without reference to cost price. You sell a good weight-carrying hunter at a fancy price. You sell a piece of land to a neighbour at an accommodation price. If you can’t get what you asked at first, you abate something, and take less. He does the same.

You go into a shop anywhere in Italy, say a bookseller’s, and ask the price of a book. ‘So many lire,’ he replies: several more than he intends to take. He will receive it, if you give it; but he does not expect you to give it. He is very fond of a little talk; and to have a little talk with you is an agreeable addition to the pleasure of selling the book. You call this, contemptuously, chaffering; or, angrily, cheating. It is detestable to you, but the reverse of detestable to the Italian bibliopole. You are annoyed at it. He can’t understand why.

But to go back to our friend in the slippers and turban. The seat he invites you to take, and the coffee and pipe he offers to you, imply that he supposes you will not give what he asks at first; and that the price ultimately agreed upon will be the result of a long negotiation. He is in no hurry; nor, as I can show, is he without conscience. I bought a pair of bracelets of one Mohammed Adamanhoury, in the Khan Khaleel. I had liked the appearance of the bracelets, and I had asked the price. It did not occur to me at the moment that I was in Cairo, or perhaps what was the regular practice in transactions of this sort in Cairo. Perhaps I had fallen into this temporary oblivion, because the conversation and bearing of Mohammed were pleasant. I had brought him a little souvenir from an Englishman who had travelled throughout Syria with him, and knew his many estimable qualities. Mohammed’s beard was just beginning to be grizzled with age, so he had had time to see the world, and to know it. His complexion was fair for Egypt, a pale yellowish brown. His features, singly, and in their general expression, were good. His shawl-turban, and shawl-sash, and all his get up were unexceptionable. His voice and manner were as smooth as oil. His style of conversation perceptibly flowery and complimentary; but that is the manner of his people. I should myself of all things have liked to have travelled through the East with him. It would have been very pleasant at the time; and not unpleasant afterwards to be one’s self remembered, and talked of, as he talked of my friend whom, a year or two back, he had accompanied in his wanderings. But about the bracelets: I had given, without hesitation or comment, what he asked. A friend, I was travelling with, finding me at his shop, and seeing what I had bought, would like to have a pair of the same kind of bracelets. He asked the price. I told him. ‘No,’ interposed Mohammed, addressing himself to my companion, ‘your friend gave all I asked; and, therefore, I must name a less price to you.’ Conscience is then not extinguished utterly in those who ask, at first, for the goods they are selling more than the cost price, plus the legitimate profit (if there be such a thing as legitimate profit). Mohammed Adamanhoury of the Khan Khaleel is my demonstration.

CHAPTER LIX. THE CANALIZATION OF THE ISTHMUS.

I went from Cairo to the Suez Canal by the new branch railway from Zakazeek to Ismailia. The original direct line from Cairo to Suez has been abandoned on account of the expense both of working the inclines over the intervening high ground, and of supplying a line through the desert with water, a great part of which had to be carried in skins on camels’ backs.

As you pass along the rails you see, in the occurrence, here and there, of patches of alluvial soil in the desert, indications of former cultivation. This cultivable soil must have been created by the water of the old Bubastis Canal. You see, also, that cultivation is now re-establishing itself all along the Sweet Water Canal, which supplies the towns and stations of the Suez Canal with drinking water as it did, from the first and throughout its excavation, the army of fellahs that was employed on the work. The fact is that there is a great deal of argillaceous matter in what appears to be merely the grit, and siliceous sand, of the desert: all, therefore, that is requisite, in many places, for at once rendering it fertile is a sufficiency of water.

The history of the canalization of the desert is full of interest. The earliest attempt of the kind with which we are acquainted is that ascribed to the Great Rameses. That first Canal was between fifty and sixty miles in length. It left the Nile at Bubastis, and reached the neighbourhood of Lake Timsah. Upon it Rameses built his two treasure cities Pithom, and Ramses, mentioned in the first chapter of Exodus. By treasure cities is probably meant strongly-fortified places, in which were caravanserais for the trade with Asia, and large depôts of the warlike materials kept in store by the king for his Asiatic campaigns. That they could have been treasure cities, in the ordinary acceptation of the word treasure, is impossible. That would not have been kept on the most exposed border of the kingdom; and the treasury of Rameses must have been at Thebes, his capital, at the other extremity of Egypt. Herodotus, and others mention Pithom. The site of Ramses, though its name occurs nowhere, excepting in Exodus, has been ascertained by the discovery of a granite statue of Rameses, between the figures of the two gods, Ra and Atmu, with the name of the king several times repeated in the inscription upon it. This was found at the time of the French expedition. Rameses must have been worshipped in his own city; and his being placed between these two gods, in this piece of sculpture, shows that it belonged to a temple. The mound, therefore, of rubbish from which was disinterred this group of figures in which the king is presented as an object of worship, must be the débris of the city of Ramses. There is no doubt about the site of Pithom.

Especial interest is attached to these cities. We know that the Israelites were employed in building them: and, as it seems probable that the cities and Canal were parts of a single plan, we may suppose that the Israelites were forced to labour in the construction of the Canal also. Of this a part, that near Bubastis, still remains in use. With how much interest then does it become invested, when we feel that we may regard it as the possible, even as the probable, work of the people Moses led out of Egypt. At all events we can stand on the ruins of the cities they built with the certainty that here was the scene of their labours. But something more remains to be said. We have in this first chapter of the history of the canalization of the isthmus an ascertained date, which enables us to fix the date of the exodus. The oppression took place in the reign of the Pharaoh who preceded the one to whose reign the exodus belongs. As then the oppression took place in the reign of the builder of Pithom and Ramses, the exodus must have occurred in the reign of his son, and successor, Menophres.

The extension of the cultivated soil of Egypt was only a secondary object in the construction of this Canal. Its main object was to strengthen that side of Egypt which was exposed to invasion from the dreaded and hated Hyksos. One of the greatest works of the great Rameses was the covering the whole of Egypt with a network of waterways in connexion with the river. These Canals, or wet-ditches had a double purpose. They would greatly extend the supply of water, in exact proportion to which was the capacity of Egypt for supporting life; and they would also have an invaluable defensive utility, for they would render it impossible for a mounted army, such as that of their north-eastern neighbours would be, to overrun the country. This Canal, then, branching off from the Nile at Bubastis, and running out for sixty miles into the desert, with the strong cities of Pithom and Ramses upon it, would be the first check to an invading army, which would have either to turn the Canal, or to sit down in the desert before those cities. The history, therefore, of the canalization of the desert begins with a work, the first object of which was national defence, and which also greatly promoted the (in its case) secondary object of national extension. To create a means of communication between the two seas is not a purpose we are under any necessity for ascribing to the designers of this first Canal.

We have spoken of Rameses as its constructor, and the reasons for assigning it to him are amply sufficient, still it may be as well to remember that it might have dated far back beyond his time. The Egyptians had been great then for more than a thousand years in Canal making. This implies familiarity with the art of taking levels, and with other branches of hydraulic engineering. The Bahr Jusuf Canal, which ran parallel to the river throughout almost the whole of the valley of Egypt, and was many times as great a work as this Pithom-Ramses Canal, had been constructed at so remote a time that all tradition of its date and construction had been lost. Amenemha, under the old primæval monarchy, had carried out enormous hydraulic works in the Faioum; and Menes, the first human name in Egyptian history, had been great in this department of engineering; for he had, at Memphis, given a new channel to the Nile itself. There would, therefore, have been no difficulty whatever in this particular Canal we are now speaking of having been constructed many ages before the time of the great Rameses; and the district through which it passed was one to which attention must have been directed from very early days, both for the purpose of strengthening it against any sudden inroad, and because it was the necessary base of operations in all Egyptian invasions of Asia. It is, however, easy to wander about in the region of possibilities; what we know with certainty is that this Canal existed in the time of Rameses, that he fortified it, and that he had the credit of having constructed it.

There is no evidence that he seriously entertained the project of connecting the Nile with the Red Sea by the prolongation of the Canal. Some such idea must have occurred to so sagacious a people as the Egyptians of that day, and they would have found no difficulty in carrying it out. They made, however, no attempt of the kind. The reason is on the surface. Defence was what people were then thinking about, and a through water-way would only have been making a road for their enemies; and it would have been one, of which Arabs, as they have always shown a certain kind of aptitude for maritime affairs, and as the inlet to it might have been easily reached by sea, would not have been slow in availing themselves. There can be no reasonable doubt that there was, at that date, a great deal of commerce, on the Indian Ocean, and, therefore, on the Red Sea; indeed, we may be pretty sure that the annual number of clearances in and out of Aden in the time of Rameses would not be looked upon as insignificant at the present day.

Perhaps also the reason given by Aristotle had some weight. It was known that the level of the Red Sea was higher than that of the Bitter Lakes; the influx, therefore, of the salt water, which might take place through the Canal, if it were extended to the sea, might, it was feared, overwhelm a great deal of land which had lately been brought into cultivation by aid of the fresh water of the Canal from Bubastis.

The date of the first Canal, supposing it to be no earlier than the time of Rameses, was the fourteenth century before our era. It was still in use in the time of Herodotus, being then about one thousand years old. Necho, who planned and carried out the expedition that circumnavigated Africa, and who of all the Pharaohs was the one most disposed to maritime enterprise, was naturally inclined to the idea of connecting the Red Sea and the Mediterranean by some system of internal navigation. But whatever his designs were, he does not appear to have gone further in their execution than the extension of the Canal of Rameses, which had then been in existence at least seven hundred and fifty years, as far as the Bitter Lakes. Herodotus was informed that he abandoned the enterprise on having been told by an oracle that he was working for the barbarians.

Darius, in the time of the Persian occupation of Egypt, carried out the grand idea to its completion, by extending the work of Rameses and Necho to the Red Sea. As there had, all along, been an apprehension of the effect upon cultivation of admitting into the land the salt water, we find, as we might have anticipated, that it was not allowed a passage into the Bitter Lakes, but was kept back by a lock. The connexion of the Red Sea and the Mediterranean by an unbroken water-way was now complete. A vessel might leave the Red Sea at the modern Suez, or somewhere in that neighbourhood, and enter the Mediterranean at the Pelusiac mouth of the Nile. This through communication was in actual use in the time of Herodotus. Darius’s completion of the work followed Necho’s extension at an interval of about a century.

The ensuing century and a half was a period of troubles and decadence. We are, therefore, not surprised to hear that when Alexander the Great entered Egypt, he found the Canal no longer open. A larger expenditure may have been required to keep up the banks, and to dredge out the sand that was always drifting into the channel, than could have been commanded in such times; and so it had been neglected and had become impassable.

Another century elapses; order and prosperity have been restored to Egypt; and Ptolemy Philadelphus re-opens the connexion of the Bitter Lakes and the Red Sea. He did not clear out the old Canal of Darius which had been blocked up, and abandoned, but cut a fresh one. He had it constructed of sufficient width and depth to allow ships of war to pass from the Sea to the Lakes, intending to carry it through, on the same scale, to the Mediterranean. But this magnificent project had to wait two thousand years for its realization. It is, however, possible that Ptolemy did not contemplate the direct route. If his war-vessels could have found water enough in the Bubastic branch, he would of course have contented himself with enlarging, and deepening the Bubastic Canal. We are told that his design was that of a Canal 100 feet in breadth, and 40 feet in depth. The latter appears incredible, because unnecessary. He built Arsinöe, the modern Suez, at the Red Sea terminus of his Canal, at which he constructed locks to exclude the salt water, and retain the fresh.

There was also a second Canal from the Nile to the neighbourhood of Lake Timsah in the mid-desert. It was known by the name of the Emperor Trajan. It left the river at Babylon—possibly the Babylon from which the first Epistle of St. Peter is dated—a few miles to the south of the site of modern Cairo. It thus received its supply of water from a higher level than the Canal of Rameses. It watered a new district in its passage through the desert.

The Canals are now lost to sight for several centuries. At last, 644 A.D., they are again rescued from the obscurity into which they had fallen by the Caliph Omar, who repaired, and restored them to use. About a century after his time they were again destroyed.

There was then nothing new in the idea, or in the fact, of a water communication between the two seas. The old Egyptians had fully debated the question of whether it was better to have, or not to have it. If they had thought it advisable to undertake it, they would have engineered it in the completest manner, and on the grandest scale. They, however, rejected the plan from motives of policy. The idea was actually carried out, and through communication kept up by Persians, Greeks, Romans, and Saracens. Apropos, then, to the recent opening of the Suez Canal, we may say that the thing itself is more than two thousand years old: the idea more than three thousand.

That it is direct, that is one hundred miles in length, instead of indirect, which made the navigation nearly double that length, is the difference, and the gain.

The only absolutely new point is that it is a salt water, and not a fresh water Canal; and with respect to this, I think we may feel certain that if old Rameses, or Necho, had engineered it, instead of M. Lesseps, it would not, in this respect, have been as it is. They would have decided in favour of fresh water, because they could then have constructed it at half the cost; and would, furthermore, by so doing, have had a supply of water in the desert, sufficient for reclaiming a vast extent of land, which would have more than repaid the whole cost of construction. Instead of cutting a Canal deep in the desert at an enormous cost, they would, as it were, have laid a Canal on the desert. This they would have done by excavating only to the depth requisite for finding material for its levées, and for the flow of the water which was to be brought to it from some selected point in the river. It is evident that this kind of Canal might have been made wider, and deeper, than the present one at far less cost. The river water would then have filled the ship Canal, just as it now does the sweet-water Canal parallel to it. The sweet-water Canal now reaches Suez. A sweet-water ship-Canal might have done the same. As far as navigation is concerned, the only difference would have been that locks would have been required at the two extremities, such as Darius, and Ptolemy had at Arsinöe. These locks would have been at Suez, and at the southern side of Lake Menzaléh.

But the diminution in the cost of construction, say 8,000,000l., instead of 16,000,000l., would not have been the chief gain: that would have been found in the fact that the Canal would have been a new Nile in a new desert. It would have contained an inexhaustible storage of water to fertilize, and to cover with life, and wealth, a new Egypt. Though, indeed, not new historically; for this would only have been the recovery from the desert of the old Land of Goshen, and the restoration to it, by precisely the same means as of old, of the fertility it had possessed in the days of Jacob and Rameses.

It was natural that the French should have been the most prominent supporters of this scheme. Every Frenchman appeared to come into the world with the idea in his mind that France, by the order and constitution of Nature, was as fully entitled to Egypt as she was to the left bank of the Rhine; and that nothing but an unaccountable combination of envy and stupidity, withheld the human race, especially those to whom these fair portions of the earth belonged, from recognizing the eternal truth, and fitness of this great idea. Here we had a gauge for measuring the moral sense of the educated portion of the French nation. As to the Canal, their idea appears to have been that they were only making improvements in a glorious property, the reversion of which must be theirs. It would give them, too, such a footing in the country, and such materials for the manufacture of pretexts, and claims, that it would enable them, almost at their will, to expedite the advent of the day when the reversion would fall to them.

I heard, while I was in Egypt, that the Imperial charlatan of France had been behaving towards us in the matter of Egypt in the friendly and straightforward manner it appeared he had been behaving in the matter of Belgium. Our discerning friend, and staunch ally, I was told, had been confidentially exhorting the Viceroy to disregard English policy and advice, and to prepare for asserting his independence of the Sultan. Only let Egypt become an independent kingdom, and then there would be a clear field for the realization of the grand French idea M. Guizot declared, some thirty years ago, no Frenchman could ever abandon. Under such circumstances, nothing could be more easy than at any moment to find, in the affairs and management of the Canal, grounds for a quarrel, that is to say, for taking possession of the country: though perhaps the world, taught by history, would predict that the attempt would not succeed. The plan was to have things ready for turning to account, at any moment, any opportunity that might arise.

The catastrophe of the last twelve months would have prevented my making any such remarks as the fore going, were I now thinking of making them for the first time. In that case they would have appeared too much like being wise after the event; and too much, also, like being hard on those who are down. I feel myself, however, at liberty to make them now, for in so doing I am only repeating what I ventured to predict in print four years ago (the fact even then for some years having been manifest to many), that the rôle of the Latin race was played out. People said to me, ‘What can you mean? The French have the largest revenue, and the finest army in Europe, and their military glory is untarnished.’ My answer then was, that the French army appeared to have been changed into a Prætorian guard; and that the French nation appeared to have lost the moral instincts which compact a population into a people. Among those instincts, the sense of right and justice, the absence of which we have just been noticing, holds the first place: without it the formation and maintenance of political society are impossible.

There are three towns on the Canal: Port Saïd, which is almost entirely French; Ismailia, which is so to a great extent; and Suez, which has a French quarter. At these places I heard that the French were far from popular; that they are regarded as arrogant, and illiberal in their dealings with the Arabs they employ; and vicious to a degree which offends even the tolerant natives, who trouble themselves very little about the morality of unbelievers. It would require some familiarity with the life of these places to know how far such accusations are true: they are only set down here because they are current among the non-French part of the population. Certainly, however, at Port Saïd some things are paraded which in most other places an attempt is made to keep out of sight. But Port Saïd is the Wapping of the Canal. This town is built on a reclaimed sand-bar. The hotel is better than one would have expected. The Place, Place Lesseps it is called, is ambitiously large. In some parts of the town the stenches make you feel bad: of course on a low sand-bar there can be no drainage. It seems to do a considerable trade in pilgrims: those we saw were chiefly Russians. On being introduced to the American Consul—he appeared to be an Italian—he offered to show me his garden. It proved well worth seeing. It contained a good collection in a small space, of African, Australian, and Brazilian plants. Many, that with us require almost constant stove-heat, were flowering here, in January, in the open air. Among the inhabitants, as at Ismailia, are to be found many of the (in the East) ubiquitous Greeks.

Ismailia is very preferable every way to Port Saïd. It is in the heart of the desert, and on the shore of a considerable lake. I can imagine a not unprofitable, or over dull, month spent here by a man who finds a pleasure in coming in contact with strange sorts of people; and who also takes an interest in natural history and botany; for the natural history and botany of such a place must be very peculiar. It must, too, be pre-eminently healthy, for it combines the pure air of the desert with that of the sea-shore, for such is now the shore of Lake Timsah. It has a pretty good hotel, a place yclept Champollion, a French bazaar, a promenade, an Arab town, a good house surrounded by a garden belonging to M. Lesseps, and a more ambitious one surrounded by sand, built by the Khedivé, at the time of the opening of the Canal, for the Empress of the French, and his other Royal visitors. Ismailia might also be made the head-quarters for a great deal of very interesting Egyptological inquiry. Within easy distances are Pelusium, the Abaris of the primæval monarchy, Arsinöe, Pithom, Ramses, and Heroonpolis. Persians, Greeks, and Romans alike left their marks on this neighbourhood. Here, too, was the Goshen of the children of Israel. It would be interesting also to ascertain how far into what is now desert reached the land that was then cultivated; and what, relatively to the sea and river, was the level of the bottom of the old Canal.

Suez is in a state of rapid decay. Many houses are untenanted. This has been caused by the diversion of the traffic. What formerly passed through the town now passes by it on the Canal. Here, again, the hotel is good. Its Hindoo waiters are to be preferred to the Italian waiters of Alexandria and Cairo. They are clean, quiet, and alert. Nature seems to have fitted them for the employment, but perhaps you might think they have heads for something better.

I was two days in passing through the Canal from end to end. For this purpose I chartered at Suez, jointly with two friends who happened to be with me, a small steamer. It was an open boat that might have held four passengers. The crew consisted of three men. The distance is about one hundred miles. Herodotus gives it very accurately when he says that the Isthmus has a width of one thousand stadia.

To one who is on the look out for beautiful scenery and stirring life, the two days’ steaming from Suez to Port Saïd will not give much pleasure. As long as you are on the actual Canal, you pass along a straight water-way between two high banks of sand. The sky overhead is the only additional object in Nature. There is no vegetation. There are but few birds. There is no animal on the banks, or insect in the air. At long intervals there are small wooden shanties for watering stations. A great many dredging machines are passed. Some are at work; but the greater part of them are rusting, and rotting. They are large floating structures, moved and worked by steam. Each of them costs between five and six thousand pounds. Their business is to dredge up the mud, or sand from the bottom of the Canal to a lofty stage which each carries, a little above the level of the bank. From this elevation what is dredged up is run down on an incline to the point on the bank where it is to be deposited, and there shot out. They are called mud-hoppers. They are hideous-looking objects; of all the works of man that float the most unsightly: but they are what you here see most of. You occasionally have the excitement of meeting a small steamer, carrying some official on the business of the Canal, or for his own pleasure. The officials have quite a fleet of these little steamers: almost every one his own. The rarest object on the Canal is that for which it was constructed: a vessel of one, or two, thousand tons passing through it. On the first day we saw three. This was a good day. On the second day, our good luck, and that of the Canal, continuing, we saw the same number. But, as the wind was fresh, two of the three had got aground: of these two one was an English troop ship with a regiment for India on board. Three little steam tugs were hauling away at each. It is difficult to say how large vessels, drawing within an inch or two of the greatest depth of water, and which is to be found only in the mid-channel, can manage to keep out of trouble: the margin for inattention, bad steering, for not making proper allowance for wind, &c., being not far from nil. There are mooring posts all the way along to enable one ship to make fast while another goes by. The company’s regulations give them the power of blowing up a vessel they consider hopelessly grounded.

But you are not always in a straight watercourse, between two high mounds of sand. The two Bitter Lakes, and the Lakes Timsah and Ballah, are passed through, and cover nearly half the distance. In the large Bitter Lakes you are pretty nearly out of sight of land. A glass shows you that there is a slight rise in the ground along their shores, upon which are seen, here and there, stunted tamarisks, more like shrubs than trees. The bed of these lakes, before the water was admitted, was full of detached trees of this species. They grew larger on the lower ground. The tops of some are still seen in and above the water. If, therefore, you leave the channel which is buoyed out for you, you stand a chance of being snagged. I take it for granted that in old time when none but sweet water from the Nile, brought by the Bubastis and Babylon Canals, was admitted to this district, much land now under salt water, and much more in the neighbourhood, was then under cultivation.

The evaporation from the surface of the Bitter Lakes, as might be expected in the hot dry desert, is enormous. This I was told had perceptibly affected the climate, making it more cloudy, and more inclined to occasional showers. Of course, whatever effect it has had, must be in this direction; but seeing how small a proportion these lakes bear to the contiguous seas, I am disposed to think the amount of this effect very slight. There is, however, another effect of this rapidity of evaporation, which we may measure, and weigh, and which is felt by the fish. It increases the proportion of salt in the water to such an amount, that in summer one gallon of water yields thirteen ounces of salt: a gallon of Dead Sea water yields eighteen ounces. This, last summer, killed almost all the different species of fish that had come into the lakes the previous autumn, on the first opening of the connexion with the two seas. I was told that at that time, the surface of the water was covered with the dead. It is believed that some species proved, by surviving, that they possessed a power of resisting a degree of saltness they had never been exposed to before.

Lake Timsah is a large natural basin in the very centre of the Isthmus. As its area is much less than the Bitter Lakes, while its shores are higher, and more irregular, it possesses an approach to something like a kind of picturesqueness you might not have been expecting. In this midland harbour we found a fleet of large vessels: some of them men-of-war; some even ironclads. A sense of surprise comes over you at seeing not only a pleasing expanse of water in the thirsty, scorching waste (how one wishes it were fresh water), but in addition a fleet of mighty ships in the mid-desert.

The traffic of the Canal is increasing rapidly; and, I think, for obvious reasons must go on increasing, till it has absorbed the whole of the traffic of Europe with Asia. At first people were not prepared for it. They had not the data requisite for their calculations, and so they would hardly have been justified in building steamers in advance of the demonstration of the practicability, and advantages of the route. That demonstration is now complete: and I suppose there are now very few sailing vessels being built in this country, or anywhere else, for trading with the East. This part, therefore, of the question, may, I take it for granted, be regarded as settled. I saw one of the P. and O. boats, the Candia, passing through the Canal. The whole of its fleet must eventually make use of it. The only wonder is that they do not do so at once; for, while they are hesitating, multitudes of other steamers, built for the India and China trade, and in which every improvement for economizing coal, and for the convenience and comfort of the passengers, has been adopted, have been put upon the line of the Canal. And as the majority of passengers object to the trouble and expense of being hurried overland from Suez to Alexandria, a great many of the old customers of the P. and O. Company, and of travellers who would have been glad to use the boats of so well-known a concern, are now going by these new boats which take the through route. And this is only what the P. and O. Company must, like the rest of the world, come to at last. Their delay is only driving the custom into the hands of their rivals. It is in fact creating, and maintaining those rivals. When, however, they have taken to the Canal, this single company will pay for its use more than 100,000l. a year: for they will be bound to despatch, as they do now, a vessel each way each week. The tonnage of their vessels will not be less than two thousand. The Canal charges are 8s. a ton, so much for each berth for passengers, and some other items, which together bring up the total to not far short of 10s. a ton. This on a vessel of not less than 2,000 tons, will not be less than 1,000l.[10] Each way this will have to be paid. But it is what others are doing; and it will be, on the whole, a gain over the present system of land-transport, for passengers and cargo from Suez to Alexandria, and vice versâ; and practically, whatever it may be on paper, at no loss of time.

For the Canal to take 100,000l. a year from one company would seem a great deal: but it is a sum that is soon absorbed in the expenses of so big a concern. I understood that at the beginning of this year: it was February when I was there: they were taking about 1,000l. a day. This was a great advance on what had been done previously; but it implies only one ship of 2,000 tons through in the twenty-four hours. And is very far short of what is indispensable for completing and keeping up the works. This at present demands 3,000l. a day, or about 1,000,000l. a year. It seems imperative that, even if a few more inches are not added to the depth of water, the deep mid-channel should be widened.

The traffic is increasing so fast, and it is so certain, that all who can come this way will, that we may believe that the Company, whether the existing one, or some new company to which the existing one may be obliged to sell the concern, will somehow or other find the means for carrying out the necessary completions, and for maintaining the affair; but it is hard to believe that, even if every keel that cuts the Indian Ocean were, going and coming, to take this route, anything could remain over for dividend in the lifetime of the present shareholders; for even should a dividend be declared, the incredulous world will surmise that it is paid, not because there are net profits to justify it, but with a view to enabling the Company to raise loans needed for necessary completions, for which the revenue would be inadequate.

It is natural to ask of what advantage to Egypt is this Canal? We might answer, and perhaps rightly, that if the Isthmus had been divided by the wand of a magician, and the Canal thus made at the cost of a word, or of the waving of a hand, presented to the country, the advantage would not have been very considerable. But we will take things as they are: Suppose the case of the P. and O. boats. They have hitherto discharged everything at Suez, and at Alexandria; and their passengers and cargo have been carried across Egypt. We will suppose that the cost of this operation has been for each boat 1,000l. The whole of this 1,000l. has been left in Suez and Alexandria. It was so much toll paid to Egypt for so much work done in helping passengers and cargo through. But how would it stand with the same boats going through the Canal? We will suppose that they will pay precisely the same amount. But the question is, into whose hands will it go? Primarily to the account of the Company. If it should so happen that the concern has reached the point of paying dividends, a great portion will then be remitted to Europe for dividends. From that Egypt will derive no benefit; nor from that portion of the salaries of officials they may save, and remit to Europe; nor from what will be paid in Europe for materials, and machinery. The officials, too, being Europeans, and always in the end returning to Europe with their families, will not at all increase, or improve, the human capital, or human stock, of the country. In fact, Egypt would gain little except from the small amount of native population that would be brought into being to supply the food, and some of the other wants of the officials, and others employed on the Canal. Some of these latter also, being natives, must be reckoned as part of the gain accruing to Egypt. With these small exceptions, Egypt is no more benefited by English ships passing through the Canal, than it would be by a flock of wild geese flying over the Isthmus.

But the question which concerns us is, of what use will the Canal be to ourselves? To us it will be of very great use. First to our commerce. As our trade with the East is taking this route as fast as steamers—which alone can pass through the Canal and Red Sea—can be substituted for sailing-vessels, there can be no doubt but that, on the whole, it is advantageous for them. For this trade all kinds of sailing-vessels are now antiquated. That it would have been better to have left things as they were, the owners of these sailing-vessels will naturally think: but this is a rococo thought. The P. and O. Company also will, of course, have to accommodate their business to the new order of things. This will be costly and inconvenient to them: and they, too, will grumble; and, for a time, endeavour to fight against necessity. The world, however, will not be convinced with the logic of either; nor will they be convinced themselves with their own arguments.

The new order of things is superseding the old only for one reason, and that reason is that the preponderance of advantages is on its side. It does not claim the advantage in every respect. So much for the commercial side of the question, as far as we are concerned.

It is manifest that for Southern, and Central Europe the Canal is, in proportion to the amount of their trade, a still greater advantage than to ourselves. It will be a great lift to Marseilles; and even in a higher degree to some port on the Adriatic, whichever it may be that will be found most convenient for Central Europe. It may be Trieste. It may be Venice. It is a question of harbours, railways, and policy conjointly considered. If it be Venice, the channel from the sea to the quays of the Grand Canal will have to be deepened. If the German provinces of the Austro-Hungarian empire should eventually gravitate towards Northern Germany, it will, I suppose, be Trieste. Or, should a mid-European railway be completed from Hamburg to Constantinople, much of the traffic of East with West may again be attracted to the quays of the old world’s Imperial centre.

But there is for us another question besides the commercial one: that is the naval one. Suppose England at war with some maritime power. It is obvious that in these times it would be impossible for us to protect our vast eastern commerce on the open ocean. But if the whole of this commerce be carried on through narrow seas it may be possible. These narrow seas for the whole distance is precisely what the Canal gives us. After having left the extreme point of China, where we have the naval station of Hong Kong, our trade will enter the Straits, where we have Singapore. It will then pass by Ceylon, another naval station. Here, whatever may be coming from Calcutta and Madras will join the main stream. It will then be forwarded to Aden, which will guard the Red Sea; and which is, in fact, the key of the Canal. Malta will make the Mediterranean safe. The short remainder of the voyage will be to a great extent protected by Gibraltar, and Plymouth. Nothing could be more complete. The Canal gives us the very thing we want: a defensible route. From a naval point of view, a defensible route is a great gain; but very far from being all the gain. The whole trade with Europe of India, China, and the Straits, and a great part of that with Australia must take the line of the Canal; and all of it must be carried in ocean steamers; that is to say, four-fifths of all these steamers will belong to England. This will give to us a fleet of ocean steamers outnumbering those of all the rest of the world combined; and these will always be at our disposal for, to say the least, the transport of troops, and of the materials of war. Of the remaining fifth a large proportion will be built in this country, as our resources and arrangements for the construction of iron ships and marine engines are superior to those of any other country.

If, then, it should prove that this forecast of the advantages of the Canal to us in war is correct, it would seem to follow that, in time of war, we should be under the necessity of holding it ourselves; or, at all events, of occupying its two extremities. We should be obliged to take care that neither an enemy blocked it up, nor a friend permitted it to go out of repair.

CHAPTER LX. CONCLUSION.

No one can see anything in Egypt except what he takes with him the power of seeing. The mysterious river, the sight of which carries away thought to the unknown interior of the great Continent, where solar heat, evaporation, and condensation are working at their highest power, giving birth abundantly to forms of vegetable and animal life with which the eye of civilized man has yet to be delighted, and instructed; the lifeless desert which has had so much effect in shaping, and colouring, human life in that part of the world; the grand monuments which embody so much of early thought and earnestness; the contrast of that artistically grand, morally purposed, and wise past with the Egypt of to-day; the graceful palm, and the old-world camel, so unlike the forms of Europe; the winter climate without a chill, and almost without a cloud; all these are certainly inducements enough to take one to Egypt; but how differently are they seen and interpreted at the time by the different members of the same party of travellers; and with what widely different after-thoughts in each!

And just as many of us are dissatisfied with life’s journey itself, if we can find no object in it, so are we with the travel to which a fraction of it may have been devoted, if it be resultless. Should we, when we look back upon it, be unable to see that it has had any issues which reach into our future thought and work, it seems like a part of life wasted. For, whatever a man may have felt at the time, he cannot, afterwards, think it is enough that he has been amused, when the excitement of passing through new scenes is over, and he is again in his home,—that one spot on earth where he becomes most conscious of the divinity that is stirring within and around him, and finds that he must commune closely with it.

But as to particulars: that which is most on the surface of what Egypt may teach the English traveller is the variety of Nature. It has not the aspects of the tropics, in which the dark primæval forest, and tangly jungle, are the predominant features; yet its green palmtufted plain, and drab life-repelling desert, are a great contrast to our still hedge-divided corn-fields, and meadows; to our downs, and heaths, and hills, and streams; and so are its clear sky, and dry atmosphere to our clouds and humidity. To see, and understand something about such things ought, in these days, to be part of the education of all who can afford the time and money requisite for making themselves acquainted with the riches of Nature; which is the truest, indeed the only, way to make them our own. In saying this, I do not at all wish to suggest the idea that in variety, and picturesqueness of natural beauty, the scene in Egypt is superior to what we have at home. The reverse is, emphatically, the case. Every day I look upon pleasanter scenes than any Egypt can show: scenes that please the eye, and touch the heart more. Nature’s form and garb are both better here. So, too, is even the colour of her garb. To have become familiar, then, with the outer aspects of Egypt, is not only good in itself, as an addition to our mental gallery of the scenes of Nature, but it is good also in the particular consequence of enabling us to appreciate more highly the variety and the beauty of our own sea-girt home.

Of course, however, the source of deepest interest in any scene is not to be found in its outer aspect, but in its connexion with man. If we regard it with the thought of the way in which man has used, modified, and shaped it, and of how, reversely, it has modified, and shaped man, how it has ministered to his wants, and affected the form, and character of his life; or if we can in any way associate it with man, then we contemplate it from quite another point of view, and with quite different feelings. Indeed it would almost seem as if this was the real source of the interest we take even in what we call the sublime and beautiful in nature. Man was only repelled from snow-capped mountains, and stormy oceans, till he had learnt to look upon them as the works of Intelligent Mind akin to his own. Conscious of intelligence within himself, he began to regard as grand and beautiful, what he had at length come to believe Supreme Intelligence had designed should possess these characteristics. This is, perhaps, the source of the sentiments of awe, and admiration, instead of the old horror, and repugnance, with which we now contemplate cold and inaccessible barrier Alps, and angry dividing Seas. To Homer’s contemporaries, who believed not that the gods had created the visible scene, but that, contrariwise, they were posterior to it, and in some sort an emanation from it, the ocean was only noisy, pitiless, and barren. And the modern feeling on these subjects has, of late, been greatly intensified, and become almost a kind of religion, since men have come to think that they have discovered that these grand objects were brought into being by the slow and unfailing operation of certain general laws which they have themselves ascertained. So that now, to some extent, they have begun to feel as though they had themselves assisted at their creation: they stood by, in imagination, as spectators, knowing, beforehand, the whole process by which Alps and Oceans were being formed. That they were able to discover the laws and the steps by which Omnipotent Intelligence had brought it all about, alone and sufficiently demonstrates the kindredness of their own intelligence. It is the association of these ideas with natural objects that causes the present enthusiastic feeling—almost a kind of devotion—they awaken within us, and which would have been incomprehensible to the ancients, and even, in a great measure, to our forefathers. They seem like our own works. They were formed by what is, in human degree and fashion, within ourselves. We know all about them; almost as if we had made them ourselves.

Regarded, then, in this way, it is not the object itself merely that interests, but the associations connected with it. Not so much what is seen, as what is suggested by what is seen. The object itself affects us little, and in one way; the interpretation the mind puts upon it affects us much, and in quite a different way. In this view there are reasons why the general landscape here, at home, should be more pleasing to us than it is in Egypt. It is associated with hope, and with the incidents and pictures of a better life than there is, or ever has been, in Egypt. I have already said that the natural features are not so varied and attractive there as here; their value to us, in this respect, consisting in their difference. But what I now have in my mind is the thought of the landscape as associated with man; and in this other respect also I think the inferiority of Egypt great.

The two pre-eminently grand and interesting scenes on this kind in Egypt, where our Egyptian associations with man’s history culminate, I have already endeavoured to present to the imagination of the reader. They are the scene that is before the traveller when he stands somewhere to the south-east of the Great Pyramid, looking towards Memphis, and commanding the Necropolis in which the old Primæval Monarchy is buried, the green valley, the river, and the two bounding ranges; or, to take it reversely, as it appears when looked at from the Citadel of Cairo; and the scene, for this is the other one, which is presented to the eye, again acting in combination with the historical imagination, from the Temple-Palace of the great Rameses at Thebes, where you have around and before you the Necropolis, and the glories of the New Monarchy.

What, then, are the thoughts that arise in the mind at the contemplation of these scenes? That is precisely the question I have been endeavouring to answer throughout the greater part of the preceding pages. My object now, as I bring them to a close, is somewhat different; it is to look at what we have found is to be seen in Egypt from an English point of view; with the hope that we may thus be brought to a better understanding, in some matters, both of old Egypt and of the England of to-day. This will best be done by comparing with the Egyptian scenes, which are now familiar to us, the English scene which in its historical character, and the elements of human interest it contains, occupies, at this day, a position analogous to that which they held formerly. These are subjects that are made interesting, and we may say intelligible, more readily and completely by comparisons of this kind than by any other method. Anatomical and philological comparisons do this for anatomy and philology, and historical comparisons will do the same for history. We shall come to understand Egypt not by looking at Egypt singly and alone, but by having in our minds, at the time we are looking at it, a knowledge of Israel, Greece, Rome, and of the modern world. Each must be set by the side of Egypt.

We will come to ourselves presently. We will take Israel first. It proposed to itself the same object as Egypt, that of building up the State on moral foundations, only it had to do its work under enormous disadvantages. Considering, however, the circumstances, it attained its aims with astonishing success. We must bear in mind how in the two the methods of procedure differed. So did their respective circumstances. Egypt had the security which enabled it freely and fully to develop and mature its ideas and its system. This precious period of quiet was no part of the lot which fell to Israel. It had to maintain itself and grow up to maturity under such crushing disadvantages as would have extinguished the vitality of any other people, except perhaps of the Greeks, the periods, however, of whose adolescence and manhood were also very different from those of Israel. At those epochs of their national life they had freedom, sunshine, and success. Israel, on the contrary, had then, and almost uninterruptedly throughout, storm and tempest; overthrows and scatterings. The people never were long without feeling the foot of the oppressor on their necks. Still they held on without bating one jot of hope or heart; and by so doing made the world their debtors, just as did the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans. Regarding the point historically, we cannot say that one did this more than another; for, where all are necessary, it would be illogical to affirm that one is greater or less than another. Neither the seeing nor the hearing, we are told, can boast that it is of more importance than the other; for, were it not for the seeing, where would be the hearing? and, were it not for the hearing, where would be the seeing? In the progress of man the ideas, and principles, and experience contributed by each of these constituent peoples of humanity were necessary: and if the contribution of any one had been wanting, we should not be what actually we are; and that something that we should be then would be very inferior to what we are now. We could not dispense with the gift of any one of the four. Egypt gave letters, and the demonstration of the fact that morality can, within certain limits, be deliberately and designedly shaped and made instinctive. Greece taught the value of the free development of the intellect. Rome contributed the idea of the brotherhood of mankind, not designedly, it is true, but only incidentally, though yet with a glimmering that this was its mission. Without Rome we might not yet have reached this point. Israel taught us that, if the aims of a State are distinctly moral, morality may then be able to maintain itself, no matter how great the disadvantages, both from within and from without, under which the community has to labour; and even when morality is unsustained by the thought of future rewards and punishments: a lesson which has thrown more light on the power the moral sentiments have over man’s heart than perhaps any other fact in the history of our race.

I bow down before the memory of the old Israelite with every feeling of the deepest respect, when I remember that he abstained from evil from no fear of future punishment, and that he laid down his life for truth and justice without any calculation of a future heaven. In this view the history of the world can show no such single-minded, self-devoted, heroic teachers as the long line of Hebrew Prophets. They stand in an order quite by themselves. Socrates believed that it would be well with him hereafter. They did not touch that question. Sufficient unto them was the consciousness that they were denouncing what was false and wrong, and that they were proclaiming and doing what was true and right.

We will now turn to the Greeks. The interest with which they contemplated the antique, massive, foursquare wisdom of Egypt is well worthy of consideration. It is true they did not get much from Egypt, either in the sphere of speculation or of practice: still for them it always possessed a powerful attraction. The reason why it was so is not far to seek. The Egyptians had done great things; and they had a doctrine, a philosophy of human life. This was that philosopher’s stone the Greek mind was in search of. And they inferred from the great things done by the Egyptians (and this was not a paralogism) that there must be something in their doctrine. In fact, however, they learnt little from Egypt: for if it was the cradle, Greece itself was the Holy Land of Mind. Nor was it possible that they could learn much from it, for the two peoples looked upon society and the world from quite different points of view. Greece acted on the idea that in political organization, and in the well-being of the individual, man is the arbiter and the architect of his own fortune. Egypt acted on the supposition that these things rested on an once-for-all heaven-ordained system. Greece believed that truth was to be discovered by man himself, and that it would, when discovered, set all things right; and that freedom, investigation, and discussion were the means for enabling men to make the needed discovery. Egypt thought that truth had been already communicated; and that freedom, investigation, and discussion could only issue in its overthrow. What Greece regarded as constructive, Egypt regarded as destructive. It could not therefore learn much from Egypt.

Rome we will now set by the side of Egypt. It will bring the two into one view sufficiently for our purpose, if we endeavour to make out what Germanicus must have thought of old Egypt, when he was at Thebes. He must often have compared it with Rome; in doing which he could, of course, only view it with the eyes of a Roman. And the time for such a comparison had arrived, for the work of Rome, and the form and pressure of that work upon the world, were then manifesting themselves with sufficient distinctness. What he was in search of was light that would aid him in governing the Roman world. Probably he came to the conclusion that the wisdom of Egypt could be but of very little use to him. The aim of Egypt had been all-embracing social order, maintained by morality, compacting the whole community into a single organism, in which every individual had his allotted place and work, neither of which he could see any possibility of his ever abandoning, or even feel any desire to abandon. Egyptian society had thus been brought, through every class and member, to do its work with the regularity, the smoothness, the ease, the combined action of all its parts, and the singleness of purpose of a machine. I need hardly repeat that they had understood that the morality by which their social order was to be maintained must be instinctive, and that they had made it so. The difference between them and other people in this matter was, that they had understood distinctly both what they wanted for their purpose, and how to create what they had wanted. Germanicus must have been aware, if he had seen this point clearly, that no government could frame the general morality of the Roman Empire; and that the single moral instinct upon which he would have to depend, if he could create it, must be the base and degrading one of obedience and submission brought about by fear. No attempt could be made, in the world he expected to be called to govern, to cultivate an all-embracing scheme of noble and generous, or even of serviceable, morality. Much, indeed, of what was best would have to be repressed, and stamped out, as hostile and subversive; as, for instance, the sentiment of freedom, and the consciousness that the free and full development of a mans inner being (in a sense the Athenian and the Christian idea) is the highest duty. He would have to provide not for what would encourage his future subjects to think for themselves, and to make themselves men, but for what would indispose them to think for themselves, and would make them only submissive subjects. He had to consider how many abundant and virulent elements of disorder, discontent, and corruption could be kept down: under such a system an impossible task. These evil growths of society had, each of them, been reduced to a manageable minimum, spontaneously, by the working of the Egyptian system; but, under the circumstances of the Roman world, they were inevitably fostered and developed. The application, however, of the Egyptian system to that world was out of the question and inconceivable. So, here, Egypt could give him no help. It could not show him how he could eliminate or regulate these evils. He would not be able to get rid of the elements of discord and discontent in the Egyptian fashion, by creating such instincts of order and submission as would dispose every man to accept the position in which he found himself as the irreversible appointment of Nature. Nor, again, would he be able to counteract social corruption, in the Egyptian fashion, by making virtue the aim of the state, of religion, and of human life.

There were also two other problems to the solution of which he would have to attend. How was the ring of barbarians that beleaguered the Empire to be kept in check? and how was the enormous military force that must be maintained for the internal, as well as the external, defence of the Empire to be prevented from knowing, at all events from using for its own purposes, its irresistible, unbalanceable power? For doing every thing of every kind he had to do, he had but one instrument, and that was force, law being degraded into the machinery through which that force was to act; and being also itself at discord with much that was becoming the conscience of mankind, that is, at discord with its own proper object. He could make no use of the Egyptian instruments, those, namely, of general morality, of religion, and of fixed social order. The task, therefore, that was before him, however strong the hand and clear the head might be which would have to carry it out, was ultimately hopeless. For one of two things must happen: either men must rebel against the order he would have to maintain, and overthrow it, or it must corrupt and degrade men. For, in the long run, nothing but law and religion, both in conformity with right reason, and aiming at moral growth, can govern men; that is to say, government must aim at human objects, to be attained by human means. Men, of course, can be controlled otherwise, as, for instance, by armed force, the only means that would be at the disposal of Germanicus; but then the product is worthless. Egypt, therefore, could give him no assistance. It could only tell him that the task before him was to him an unattainable one. It was not the one the Egyptians had taken in hand, nor could it be carried out by Egyptian means. A great fight had to be fought out in the bosom of Roman society, and under such conditions that its progress and issue would be the ruin and overthrow of society, as then constituted.

We all know that the man who, in a period of dearth, withholds his corn for a time, is thinking only of himself, though it eventually turns out that what he did was done unintentionally for the benefit of the community: a law, above and beyond him, had been working through him, and shaping his selfish act so that it should contribute to the general good. So was it with the Roman Empire. It subjugated and welded together all people merely to satisfy its own greed, but in so doing it had further unfolded and advanced the world-drama of human history. When it had played out its part, it was seen that that part could not have been dispensed with, because, though so hard for those times, it was essential to the great plot, for it was that that had given birth to, and brought to maturity, the sentiment of the unity and brotherhood of mankind.

And now at last we come to ourselves. All, including Egypt, have become teachers to us. We are the inheritors of the work of all. To us—and how pleasant is it to know this—the wisdom even of old Egypt is not quite a Dead Sea apple, something pretty to look at, but inside only the dust of what had been the materials of life. We can feel our connexion with Egypt, and that we are in its debt; and we shall not be unworthy of the connexion, and of the debt (a true debt, for we are benefited through what they did), if we so make use of them as that those who shall come after us shall have reason to feel that they, too, are, in like manner, debtors to ourselves. Inquiries of this kind enable us to discover what are the historical, which means the natural and actual, bases of our own existing civilization.

What we now have to do is to compare ourselves with old Egypt. Things of this kind become more intelligible when made palpable to sense by being taken in the concrete. We have looked on the scenes in Egypt which are invested with an interest that can never die, because it is an interest that belongs to the history of humanity. By the side of them we must set the scene in the England of to-day, which holds the analogous position. Of course it must be in London. And as it must be in London I know no better point at which we can place ourselves than on the bridge over the Serpentine, with our back upon Kensington, so that we may look over the water, the green turf, and the trees to the towers of the old Abbey and of the Palace of Westminster. The view here presented to us is one which obliges us, while looking at it, to combine with what is actually seen what we know is lying behind and beyond it. It is not a scene for which an otiose glance will suffice, because it is precisely the connexion between what is before the eye, and what is to be understood, that gives it its distinguishing interest.

What is immediately before you, in its green luxuriance of turf and leaf, is peculiarly English; you might imagine yourself miles away from any city, and yet you are standing in the midst of the largest collection of human beings ever brought together upon the earth: what is around you is hardly more the capital of England than of the world. Strange is it to find yourself in the midst of such an incomprehensible mass of humanity, and yet at the same time in the midst of a most ornate scene of natural objects—water, trees, turf. Just as in the Egyptian scenes, where the interests of its history are brought to a focus, the preponderant objects presented to the eye are graves and temples in the desert, which tell us of how religious and sombre a cast was the thought of the Egyptians, who could see nothing in the world but God, and could regard life only in connexion with death; so here, too, we find, as we take our stand in the midst of this English world-capital, that we can see nothing of it; that it is hid from our eyes by the country enclosed within it. This alone tells us something about the people. It intimates to us that those who have built this world-wonder have not their heart in it; that it is against the grain for them to be here: they do not love it: they do not care to make it beautiful: that, unlike their Latin neighbours, they are not a city-loving people; that the first and strongest of their affections are for the green fields, the wavy trees, and the running streams; and that they have, therefore, reproduced them, as far as they could, in the midst of the central home of their political life, to remind them of what they regard as the pleasanter and the better life. But it is strange that this very fondness for rural life is one of the causes that have contributed to the greatness of this city. It has been the love of Nature, and the hardihood of mind and body the people have acquired in their country life, which have disposed them to go forth to occupy the great waste places of the earth; and so have helped in enabling the Nature-and-country-loving English race to build up an Empire, out of which has grown this vast, but from the spot where we are standing in the midst of it invisible, city.

Each also of the two great buildings, whose towers are seen above the trees, has much to tell us about ourselves. There is the old Abbey, reminding us of the power religion has had and will ever have over us, though not now in the Egyptian fashion of something that has been imposed upon us, but rather of something that is accepted by us; and of our determination that it shall not be constructed out of the ideas and fixed for ever in the forms which belong to ages that, in comparison with our own really older and riper times, had something to learn, and not everything to teach. It is precisely the attempt to invest Christianity with Egyptian aims and claims, fixity and forms, which is arraying men’s minds and hearts against it; and, in some parts of Christendom, making the action of society itself hostile to it. It is this attempt which is in a great measure depriving it of the attractiveness and power it possessed in its early days when it was rightly understood: though then it was, necessarily, not only a private care, but one that had also to strive hard to maintain its existence against the fierce and contemptuous antagonism of the collective force of the old pagan form and order of society. If men are now turning away from what they once gladly received, it can only be because what is now offered to them has ceased to be what it was then—the interpretation, and expression, and the right ordering, of all that they knew, and of the aspirations of their better nature. The phenomenon is explained, if we have reason for believing that men then regarded Christianity as an honest organization of knowledge, thought, and morality, for the single purpose of raising and bettering human life, but now regard it as, in some measure, their priestly organization for the purpose, primarily, of maintaining priestly domination, through the maintenance of a system which was the growth of widely different times and circumstances.

It cannot be seen too clearly, or repeated too often, that Christianity did not originate in any sense in priestly thought, but was, on the contrary, a double protest against it, first in its own actual inception, which included a protest against priest-perverted Judaism, and antecedently in the primary conception of the previous dispensation, which included a protest against priestly Egyptianism; so that neither in itself, nor in its main historical source, could it originally have had any priestly or ecclesiastical, but only broadly human and honestly moral aims.

This will, by the way, assist us in forming a right estimate of the character of that argumentum ad ignorantiam we have heard so much of lately, that Protestantism is only a negation of truth, and an inspiration of the Principle of Mischief. Looking back along the line of our own religion, we find that Moses, speaking historically, was the first Protestant; and that the Saviour of the World was, in this respect also, like unto him. As, indeed, have been, and will be, more or less, in the corrupt, but though corrupt, yet still, on the whole, advancing currents of this world, all who are wise and good, and who have the courage of their wisdom and goodness. It will also assist us to understand that religion does not mean systematic Theology and organized priestly domination, which are its degeneration, and into which the ignorance and carelessness of the mass of mankind, and the short-sightedness of some, and self-seeking of others, of its constituted expounders are tending always to corrupt it; but that it means, above all things, the ideal theory of perfect morality and virtue, combined with the attempt to work it out practically in human life, so far as is possible, under the difficulties and hindrances of this world, supported by the good hope of its actual complete realization in a better world to come.

The history of old Egypt is very much the history of the character, working, and fate of the priestly perversion (as we must regard it now) of religion, even when the attempt is made, as it was in that case, honestly, and without any violation or contradiction of the original principles and aims of the religion. As respects the modern world, the lamentable and dangerous consequences of this perversion of religion are to be traced, in some form or other, in the actual moral and intellectual condition of perhaps every part of Christendom. We see indications of them amongst ourselves in individuals, and even in classes. The legitimate action of religion has been in many cases not merely neutralized and lost, but directly reversed. It ought to generate the instincts that contribute to the order, the unity, the building up of society; whereas, by aiming at ecclesiasticism, and endeavouring to retain what is at variance with its own true purpose, it has given rise to unavowed repugnances, to fierce antagonisms, to repulsion of class from class, and even among some of hatred to the very order of Society; that is to say, it has produced instincts that contribute, and that most energetically, to disorder, disunion, and the overthrow of Society; proving the truth of the saying that nothing is so bad as the corruption of that which is best. Religion is the summa philosophia which interprets, harmonizes, systematizes, and directs to the right ordering of Society, and of the individual, all knowledge from whatever source derived, all true and honest thought, all noble aspirations, all good affections. Development and growth ever have been, and ever must be, a law of its existence: nothing else can maintain its continuity. And as, notwithstanding this necessity of development, its end and aim must all the while, and for ever, be one and the same, development and growth do not and cannot mean the overthrow of religion, as some have told us, and will continue to tell us, but, on the contrary, the enlargement and strengthening of its foundations, and the better ordering and furnishing of the superstructure.

The very name of the building before us—The Abbey—reminds us that, as far as we ourselves are concerned, we have accepted and acted on the principle of development, adaptation, and correction in our religion. The old name, belonging to a past order of things, is evidence that this principle has once been applied; and so it supplies us with a ground for hope that it will be applied again, whenever a similar necessity may arise. History, indeed, assures us that this must be done always, sooner or later, for in all ages and places the religion of any people has ever been, in the end, what the knowledge of the people made it; but it makes a great difference whether what has to be done be done soon, or whether it be done late. If the former, then the continuity of growth and development is not interrupted. If the latter, then there intervenes a long period of intellectual and moral anarchy, of religious and irreligious conflict. The consequences and the scars of the conflict are seen in what is established eventually. It is found that some things that were good have perished; and that some that are not good have become inevitable.

By the side of the old Abbey rise the towers of the Palace of Westminster—a new structure on an old site. That which first occurs to the beholder, who has old Egypt in his thoughts, is its inferiority in artistic effect to the stupendous but simple grandeur of the Egyptian Priests’ House of Parliament in the hypostyle Hall of Karnak, with its entourage of awe-inspiring temples, its vast outer court, and its lofty propylons. In that hall he had felt that its great characteristic was not so much its grandeur as its truthfulness to its purpose, of which there is not one trace to be found in the home of our great National Council, which one might survey carefully, both internally and externally, without obtaining the slightest clue for enabling him to guess for what purpose it was designed. But how grand, I hesitate to say how much grander, is the history which the site, at all events, of the building we are looking at brings into our thoughts. It has not indeed numbered the years of the Egyptian Panegyries. They might have counted theirs by thousands, while our Assembly counts its by hundreds. And we must also remember that they assisted at the birth, and watched by the cradle, of political wisdom. True they swathed the infant in the bands of a fixed religious system; but, then, they could not have done otherwise; and what they did, under the restrictions and limitations which times and circumstances imposed upon them, was, notwithstanding, good and precious work; and we comparing that work of theirs with much that has since been done, and is now doing, see that, though it was crippled and distorted at every step by their evil necessities, it was done wisely, and well, by men who clearly understood what they wanted to do, and how it was to be done. Our Parliament had to do its work under very different and even opposite conditions. This island—indeed, this part of the world—was not an Egypt where none but corporations of priests and despotic rulers could be strong. We could not, on the contrary, be without chieftains’ strongholds, and strong towns, too. While, therefore, with us the armed possessors of these strong places accepted religion, they could resist and forbid ecclesiastical encroachments, and could thus save Society, through saving the State, from ecclesiastical domination. They were strong and free, and so could nurture freedom, instead of standing by and looking on while it was strangled and buried out of sight. They were, too, the heirs of Israelite, Greek, Roman, and German traditions; and these they could keep alive, even without quite understanding them, until the day came when they might be carried out more fully and harmoniously; and more might be made of them than had been possible even in the days, and in the countries, which had given them birth. That has been the slow but glorious rôle in human history of these English Parliaments, of which that Palace of Westminster at which you are looking is the shrine: a spot most sacred in human history, and which will be closely interesting to the generations that are to come when time shall have forgot the great Hall of the Panegyries of Egypt; for the History of the freedom of Religion, of Speech, and of the Press, of Commerce, and of political and almost of human freedom itself, is the History of these English Parliaments.

The History, then, of these two buildings throws much useful light on the history of the later phases of the progressive relations to each other of the State and of the Church; and of the rights, the duties, the proper field, and the legitimate work of each. The questions involved in these points have been answered very differently at different times, in accordance with the varying conditions of society: but the answers given have, on the whole, been such as to assist us in understanding two particulars of importance: first, that the character of the relation of the two to each other among any given people, and at any given time, is dependent on the conditions of society, then and there; on the point knowledge has reached; the degree to which it has been disseminated; and on the course antecedent events have taken. (The relation, at any time established, does, of course, re-act on the conditions which gave rise to it, and so has some effect in shaping, and colouring, their character in the proximate future.) And, in the second place, that there is observable, throughout History, if its whole range be included in our view, a regular evolution and ever-growing solution of the great question itself.

All the peculiarities, and particulars of the history, of these two buildings, such, for instance, as that they stand side by side, and yet are quite distinct from one another; that the Ecclesiastical building is very old, very ornate, and imposing, and was very costly; and that the Civil building is modern, but on an old site; that it too was costly, and is very ornate and imposing, and in its ornamentation and aspects affects somewhat the Ecclesiastical style; that they are in the hands of distinct orders of men belonging to the same community; that the work carried on in them is quite distinct, and yet that ultimately their respective work is meant to contribute, by different paths, and with different sanctions, to the same end, that is to say, the bettering of man’s estate—all this symbolizes with sufficient exactness the history and character of the conflicts, and of the relations, past and present, of the Church and of the State amongst ourselves.

I am here taking the word Church in its widest, most intelligible, and only useful sense—and which is the interpretation history puts on the phenomena the word stands for—that of the conscious organization of the moral and intellectual forces and resources of humanity for a higher life than that which the State requires and enforces. It is untrue, and as mischievous as untrue, to talk of Religion—that is, the effect on men’s lives of the doctrine which the Church has elaborated—as if it were something apart, something outside the natural order of things, something up in the air, something of yesterday, which has no root in man’s nature, and the history of which is, therefore, not coincident with the history of man. Like every thing else of which we have any knowledge, it is the result of certain causes. And in the case of this effect, of which the Church is the personal embodiment, the affiliation is distinct and palpable. Poetry and Philosophy are as much manifestations of it, as what we call Religion, when we are employing the word in its popular, restricted signification. They do, indeed, so entirely belong to it that there could be no advance in Religion, I might almost say no Religion at all, without them. And, conversely, Religion supplies to the bulk of mankind all the Poetry and Philosophy that will ever be within their reach. Poetry (which uses Art as one of its instruments of expression), dealing with things both objectively, as they appear to address themselves to us, and subjectively, as they are seen through the medium of our own sentiments; and Philosophy, dealing with the ensemble of things as they are in themselves—the two, working in these ways, and endeavouring to organize sentiment and knowledge, or, in other words, human thought and the world of external facts, for the sovereign purpose of nurturing and developing our moral being, if they do not give rise to Religion, yet have, at all events, largely contributed towards expanding, purifying, and shaping it. Every one can see how Philosophy and Poetry contributed each its part to the construction of the Old Dispensation. It is equally plain that Christianity originally rested on a profoundly philosophical view of the Old Dispensation, considered in connexion with the then new conditions of the world. And it was, precisely, because the view taken was so profound, because it went so completely to the bottom of all that then and there had to be dealt with, that it was felt and seen to be thoroughly true. For the same reason it was as simple as it was true. And it was because it was so entirely in accord with man’s nature and history, and with the conditions on which the world had then entered, that it was understood to be, and received as, a Revelation from God. This was the internal evidence. And in the old Classic world, which we can now contemplate ab extra, and without prepossession, we see that the only teachers of Religion were first Poetry, and then Philosophy: at first mainly the former, and afterwards mainly the latter. And thus were they the means by which the outer world, at all events, was prepared for Christianity.

If, then, we take the word Church in the sense I am now proposing (and I am concerned here only with the interpretation History gives of the phenomenon), it will help us to understand how it happens that every Church, at certain stages in its career, comes into conflict with the State, or the State with the Church; and, too, how it happens that, at certain conjunctures, the action of the State, as it is, is to restrict and to thwart the action of the Church, as it should be; and why it is that, in the end, the latter must always carry the day. It will also lead us to think that in the future the Clergy will not have the entire decision of religious questions; but that, strange as it may sound to us, the Poet, the Historian, and the Philosopher will, sooner or later, be able to make their ideas felt in the discussion and shaping of these matters. It has been so in the past; and we may suppose that it will be so again in the future. Even now the lay Prophet has no insignificant auditory, and it is one that it is growing rapidly in every element of influence. We have no reason for believing that the world will be content to leave, for ever, its own highest affair in the hands of those only whose function, as understood and interpreted, at present, by the majority of themselves, is to witness to what were the thoughts of their own order, in an age when that order thought for mankind; and did so, sometimes, not in complete accordance with the common heart, conscience, and aspirations of mankind, certainly not with what they are now, but rather with what the Church supposed would complete and strengthen its own system; at all events, always in accordance with the insufficient knowledge, sometimes even with the mistaken ideas, of times when the materials supplied by the then existing conditions of society, and by the then state of knowledge, for the solution of the problem, were not the same as those supplied by our own day.

In old Egypt—under the circumstances it could not possibly have been otherwise—the Church administered, and was, the State: the State was contained within it. The distinction between things civil and things religious had not emerged yet. This fact deeply modified the whole being of the Church. Its resultant colour thus came to be compounded of its own natural colour and of that of the State. This primæval phase can never again recur. The increase and dissemination of knowledge; the idea and the fact of civil as opposed to ecclesiastical, we may almost say of human as opposed to divine legislation, and the now thoroughly well ascertained advantage of the maintenance of civil order by civil legislation, have made the primæval phase, henceforth, impossible among Europeans, and all people of European descent. We may add, that it has, furthermore, become impossible now on account of the higher conception that has been formed of the duty and of the work of the Church itself.

The Middle Ages present to our contemplation the curious and instructive picture of a long-sustained effort, made under circumstances in many respects favourable to the attempt, and which was attended by a very considerable amount of success, to revert to and to re-establish the old Egyptian unspecialized identity of the two. This effort was in direct contradiction to the relation in which the early Christian Church had placed itself to the State; though, of course, it was countenanced, apparently, by the early history of the Hebrew Church, which, like that of Egypt, had necessarily embraced, and contained within itself, the State, in the form and fashion that had belonged to the requirements of those times. That it had been so with it, however, only shows, when we regard the fact, as we can now, historically, that society, there and then, was in so rudimentary a condition, that its two great organs of order, progress, and life had not yet been specialized; the ideas and means requisite for this advance not having been at that time, among the Hebrews, in existence.

The State, here, amongst ourselves, had, throughout the whole of this middle period, been asserting that it had a domain in which it was supreme; that the Church had usurped a great part of this domain, and was still endeavouring to extend its usurpations; and that there could be no peace till the whole of this usurped ground had been recovered. At last the State became sufficiently enlightened and strong to establish its supremacy in the domain it claimed; and to estop the Church from its usurpations. This was a great gain. The work, however, was very far from having been completed. What was done, though much, was in truth only a beginning. What further was required was that the State should forthwith address itself to the discharge of the high and fruitful duties that belonged to the position it had assumed. But the fact was that it did not yet fully and clearly perceive either what had become its own sphere, rights, and duties, or what had become the sphere, rights, and duties of the Church. Some, indeed, of the conceptions it formed on these points were entirely erroneous, as both the teaching of History—now better understood—and the inconveniences, the evils, and the necessities of our present condition have since demonstrated. The correction of these errors is a very important part of the task of the present generation. The unsettled character of the actual relation of the State and of the Church to each other, and the resultant uneasiness and tenderness felt by each, and the way in which, by these causes, each is at present crippled for much good it might be doing, are to be attributed to these errors. These are matters in which History is our only guide and interpreter. A knowledge of the origin, nature, aims, and fortunes of this long conflict in past times, enables us to understand its present position, and to foresee its future course. We are at a certain point in a chain of events: and nothing throws light on the events that are coming except the events that have been now evolved.

When ideas, through their having been traditional for many generations, have got a strong hold on men’s thoughts and feelings, it is impossible to break away from them, and in some matters to face in the very opposite direction, at a moment. Ideas grow, and decay: they are not subject to instantaneous transformations, like the figures in a kaleidoscope. This explains the partial acquiescence by the State in the theory that the Church was only the State acting in another capacity: as it were a committee of the whole House for some politically necessary objects; and with an authority that must be maintained. There was merely a colourable amount of truth in this. Practically, and relatively to the condition society had reached, it was a mistake; and one that was unworkable in every particular. The Church, whatever might have been the case in the early stages of society, is not now the State in another capacity. It has ceased to have now any directly political objects. It has no authority in the sense in which the State has: the authority of the State being such as can be enforced by pains and penalties, and by physical constraints; whereas the authority of the Church is only that of moral and of intellectual truth—as much as, and no more than, it claimed eighteen hundred years ago. In this matter its present advantages are that it has not to contend for existence against hostile established religions, and a consequently hostile tone of morality and of society; for what is now generally recognized, in the moral order, is precisely its own principles.

The logical and practical issue of this mistake was the mischievous conclusion that the teaching of all morality, including that which is necessary for the order and well-being of modern societies, must be left exclusively to the Church; and that the State must confine its own action to the repression of crime, and to the protection of person and of property; and this only by the way of punishment. Now each of these two propositions has, in a certain sense, and from a certain point of view, though not those belonging to these times, enough plausibility to enable a kind of defence of it to be set up; but, at the same time, each contains such an amount of real falsity to the existing circumstances and conditions of society, as to issue in incalculable mischief both to the State and to the Church; both in what it has caused, and is causing, to be done, and in what it has hindered, and is hindering, from being done.

This was a mistake which assigned to the Church work, which what have now become its constitution, its real objects, and the means and forces at its disposal, incapacitate it from doing; and which led the State to abdicate what is now its highest, and really paramount, function. It put both the Church and the State in a wrong position, and on a wrong path. It enfeebled, depraved, and shackled both. It brought them into inevitable conflict with each other. It made them both aim at what could never be more than very imperfectly attained by the means they were respectively endeavouring to employ. Its results were confusion, anarchy, and failure. Hence came about the neglect by the State of national education. And hence the claims of the Church to educate the nation. Hence the fierce contradictions to these claims, expressed in a blind demand, as if that were the only way of effectually contradicting them, for secular education, that is to say, for the exclusion of morality from education, and its limitation to an acquaintance with the instruments of knowledge, plus a little physical instruction. This would make things far worse than they are at present. It would be prohibiting the acquisition, by those who are now the depositories of power, of the knowledge and sentiments requisite for its right use. It would be creating, and setting at work, in the midst of us, the most efficient machinery imaginable for the general demoralization of the community. It would be going some way towards transforming the commonwealth into an aggregation of wild beasts, but of wild beasts possessed of knowledge and reason. The concession of this by the State would be the renunciation of its first and most imperative duty. Hence, in short, all the imbroglio and the evils of the present situation of this great question; and all the misunderstandings and hot conflicts between those on the one hand, whom logic, working with wrong data, has made secularists, but to the exclusion of secular morality, the chief point of all, and, on the other hand, those whose fealty to what is highest and best, and should be supreme in man’s nature, even when regarded only as a political animal, has obliged them to enrol themselves as supporters of (I am afraid we must say internecine) denominational teaching in the education of the people. It is obvious that, as it is the duty of the State to regard the community as a single family, and to endeavour to bring its members to act harmoniously together, it would be better, both theoretically and practically, to exclude the inculcation of these differences from the Schools of the State: that, if it must come, would come with less evil from the denominations themselves.

But truth, reason, right, and History must in the end triumph. It is the duty of the State, and we rigidly exact from it the performance of it, to punish and repress crime: it must, therefore, be its duty, but this we will not allow it to perform, to teach that kind of morality which manifestly has a tendency to prevent the commission of crime. The evil is done when the crime has been committed: à fortiori, then, it is better to prevent than to punish it. It is the duty of the State, and we energetically insist on its being discharged effectually, to protect person and property: à fortiori, then, it must be its duty to teach that morality which shall dispose men to respect the rights of person and of property. It is the duty of the State to do what it can, within its own sphere, to promote the well-being of its members; we may presume, then, that it is its duty to teach that morality which shall have a tendency, above every thing else the State can do, to secure this great object. How can it be argued that the State does rightly and wisely in neglecting the one means which stands first in the order of nature, and which is emphatically the most efficient, for bringing about its great paramount object? To deny that the means for doing this duty are within its sphere, is to deny that it has any duty at all, except that of punishing. Possibly such means may not be within the sphere, as some define it, of the political Economist. But, though a Statesman ought to be a political Economist, he ought to be something besides. And it may be very bad political Economy to allow in these days the mass of the people to be vicious. This may, in the highest degree, be destructive of wealth. But, at all events, what the Statesman has to lay his measures for is the well-being of the community, of which wealth is only one ingredient; and which, too, may be so distributed, and so used, and productive of such effects and influences, looking at the community generally, as on the whole not to promote its well-being. At all events, man, even when regarded in his social capacity exclusively, does not live either by, or for, bread alone.

The present condition of society is never to be lost sight of. And the two most prominent elements of its present condition are the general diffusion, throughout all classes, of political power, which almost means that the decision of political questions has been entrusted to the most ignorant and uninstructed, because they are the most numerous, part of the community; and the fact that every member of the community is now required to think, and to act, and to take charge of, and to provide for himself. Here are two reasons, which have made it as much the duty of the State to teach, as to repress, and to punish; for knowledge, and this means pre-eminently moral knowledge, has become quite as necessary to it for self-preservation. Though, indeed, punishment is a mode of teaching, and the policeman and the magistrate are a kind of teachers; but it is as unreasonable, as suicidal, to have recourse to no other mode of teaching, and to no other kind of teachers.

I think, then, that none but unstatesmanlike Economists will deny that it is the duty of the State to see to the education of the whole people. The Egyptian Priest, and the Hebrew Prophet, never made, nor could have made, a mistake of this kind; to their apprehension the right training of the people was the paramount duty of a Government—the very purpose and object for which it existed. This must, amongst ourselves, be given mainly in schools established everywhere. We have now at last got so far as to attempt their general establishment. The schools, however, are only machinery; and the great question is, what kind of work this machinery is to do? and the State will not discharge properly its duty in this all-important matter, if it does not take care that the schools shall teach the morality indispensably required, under existing conditions, for the well-being of society. This morality means the principles of Justice, Truth, Temperance, Honesty, Manliness, Forbearance, Considerate Kindliness, Industry, Thrift, Foresight, Responsibility. These are political and social, and perhaps also economical, necessities of modern communities. They are now the first great wants of society. Speaking generally, they can be taught to the masses of the people, and to the whole people, best, and, in fact, only by the State. Every one, I think, must be ready to acknowledge, that if the State, during the last fifty years, had seen to their having been taught, so far as schools and early training could have taught them, to the population of this country, we should be in a widely different position—all the difference being on the right side—from that in which we are at this day.

It is just because the State has made, at best, only half-hearted attempts to do any part of this work, and has even at times loudly proclaimed that it saw that it was not its duty to undertake it, that is to say that it was its duty to renounce its most important duty, that that part of the community in which the moral instinct predominates, has turned to Church organizations, and called upon them to undertake it. And this is a reason why many of this class have been attracted to that particular branch of the Church which advances, most loudly, the most unqualified claims to the superintendence of the whole domain of morality, not making any distinction between that which is social, civil, and political, and that which belongs to the higher sphere of the spiritual life. Had the State seen its duty in this great matter, and endeavoured to act up to it, nothing of this kind would, or could, have occurred. On the contrary: the wisest and best part of the community would have supported it in carrying out what it had undertaken, with their whole heart and soul.

Of course it is a mistake to look to the Church for this kind of work. Neither the Church of Rome, nor any other Church, either in this, or in any other, country, has the means necessary for enforcing this kind of teaching, or even for bringing it home, generally, to the bulk of the population, that is to say to the very part of it which most needs it. Nor under any conjuncture of circumstances, which can be imagined as possible, will they have the means for doing it. And even further, if the powers necessary for the purpose could be conferred upon them, it would be putting them in a false position to call upon them to undertake this mundane, political work. Besides that, the false positions into which events and circumstances have already, more or less, brought all Churches, have so damaged their credit with large proportions of the population, in all the foremost nations of the world, as that their teaching of this kind would not, generally, be received, would even be strenuously resisted; and it would still further weaken them, were they to attempt to teach these things for these purposes. It would bring them before the world as mere instruments of national police—a position that is now so utterly and glaringly at discord with the purpose and idea of a Church, that its assumption would go a long way towards obscuring altogether in men’s minds that purpose, and that idea; far too much in that direction having been done already. We know how disastrous an effect the assumption, to some extent, of this position has had, in this and other countries, on some branches of the Church. This is true now, and will continue to be so, till the Church shall have become an organization in which all of us, laity as well as clergy, women as well as men, who shall be animated by the desire for the higher moral and spiritual life, shall find ready for us places and work; and until, in this matter, the first effort amongst us shall not be to secure this-world power, and social and political position, which must always be accompanied by separations and antagonisms, and is demoralizing, and destructive of the very idea of a Church; but to reform and improve, and to lift above the world; an effort which is actively and fruitfully moral, and of the very essence of the work of a Church. This is truly spiritual work.

Taking things, then, as they are, any Church would be but a bad and inefficient teacher of the political, we may even call it the secular, kind of morality we are now thinking about. While every one can see that, as it is an affair of the State, and comes within its sphere, and is useful for its purposes; and as it is the duty, and the interest, of the State to teach it; and as the State has, and alone has, the power of teaching it, it might be well and properly taught by the State. But it may also be remarked that no Church can afford to give to this work of the State the first place in its thoughts and efforts. Every branch of the Church, from the greatest down to the least, must be occupied, primarily, by its own necessities. Self-preservation is the first law of nature, in the case of Churches as well as of every thing else that has life. The first care, therefore, as things now are, of every Church must be to maintain and enforce its own system; and, as part of the same effort, to weaken those whose systems are opposed to its own. This, however disguised, must be a main object with all of them. That it is so, is very disastrous for Churches; still it is a necessity of their present position. And the efforts that arise out of this necessity can, at the best, be only non-moral: in truth, one cannot but think that they must generally be demoralizing, and even immoral: at all events, they can only be made at the expense of the higher morality, which is the true domain of the Church. But, however much this point may be controverted, the other is an obvious fact, and incontrovertible, that no Church has the power of teaching to the community, and this is especially true of the most numerous and least instructed part of the community, that morality which is now necessary for the well-being of political societies. In this matter there is a wide difference between past and present times. Formerly this teaching, however desirable it might have been, was not indispensable under the old restrictive and paternal systems of society. All that has now passed away. We have drifted from those moorings, and out of those harbours. Our population has been agglomerated into large masses; and these masses have been put into a position to exercise the power which resides in numbers. Every one, too, is now called upon, and this is a most important element in the consideration of what ought to be done, to take care of himself. No class is now put in charge of another class. The moral training, therefore, which these conditions require has become the paramount object and first duty of the State; and, one way or another, perhaps the highest personal mundane interest of every member of the community; and all would do well to demand from the State the discharge of this duty.

That the State should awake to a sense of its duty in this matter, and act up to that awakened sense, would be no encroachment on the domain of the Church. In so doing, indeed, it would set free, and strengthen, the Church for its own proper work. The State cannot do the work of the Church, any more than the Church can do the work of the State. Each has now, distinctly, marked out for it its own sphere, its own aims, its own rights, and its own duties. The world is rapidly advancing to a correct understanding of all this. Each should, properly, by attending to and doing its own work, help the other. Each is necessary to the other. The morality the State has charge of is that which, obviously, contributes to the right ordering and prosperity of the commonwealth generally, and of its members individually. It is such as can be expounded, and made intelligible to all and acceptable to many. Much of it too can be enforced on all. Not, of course, in the old Egyptian fashion, but in a fashion which is in accord with the conditions of modern societies.

There can be few things more mistaken and ridiculous than to urge that the Master of a School, because he is a layman, cannot teach such morality as the State requires for its own maintenance, and for the well-being of its members. He is just as capable as the Minister of Religion, or as any body else, of learning his own proper work. The point that really needs to be seen clearly is that the proper work of the State School Master, and of the Minister of Religion, so differ, as that each is incapable of teaching fully and rightly what ought to be taught by the other. The Minister of Religion puts himself quite in a false position, and contradicts the idea of his office, when he undertakes the work of the State; and the School Master goes out of his way, and passes beyond the work of the State, when he enters on the ground of the Minister of Religion. From the time that civil societies existed, or that men had come to act from a sense of duty, all well disposed Fathers of families, not excluding Masters of Schools, have deemed themselves qualified to teach, and have taught, with more or less success, to their children such ethics as they themselves had attained to a knowledge of, and thought desirable. Let any one refer to the duties I just now enumerated, as socially and politically necessary in these days; and, when he has considered what they are, will he be disposed to assert that a man of ordinary intelligence, the business of whose life it is to teach, whose attention has been particularly directed to this subject, and who has studied it with the knowledge that he must teach it, will, after all, be unable to teach it? Or would any teacher, with that list in his hand, say that it never would be in his power to give lessons on each of the heads it contains; and to see that the practice of the pupils corresponded with what he taught? If the Clergy could do this, why not the Masters of Schools? The fact, however, is that the Clergy cannot, and that the Masters of Schools can.

Nothing else that is taught in Schools can be taught so naturally, so easily, and so surely. Almost everything that occurs, or that is done, supplies ground for a lesson on the subject. In nothing else that we have to teach do we find a foundation laid for our teaching already, as it is here, in the instinctive moral sentiments which have, some how or other, come to be, or, if not, which may be made to be, a part of the pupil’s nature. The discipline, too, of life here again aids the teacher in a manner, which is not the case in anything else he has to teach. The Ethics the State requires may be taught, as the occasion in any, and each, case will suggest to the teacher, either practically, or dogmatically, or scientifically; either with a reference at the moment to the principle of utility, or to the voice of conscience, or to experience. Lessons of this kind may also be set forth in Parables, or illustrative stories: a large proportion of the reading lessons now used in Schools have this aim. Nor would there be many who would object to reference being made, in the teaching of the State School-Master, to the Religious ground, that is to say, to the future life: though of course it is manifest that this would belong rather to the teaching of the Church and of the Minister of Religion. Practically, however, that is with respect to the substance and form of the virtues taught, there would be no antagonism between the two: for even with respect to Charity, which Religion elevates above Justice, the layman would still have something to say in the same sense, for he would show that the kindliness, and consideration for others, he taught supplemented and went beyond Justice. Indeed, what antagonism could there be, seeing that our ideas of the several virtues, wherever they differ from what Aristotle or Cicero would have taught, are what our Religion has made them to all of us alike? The chief difference, indeed, I can make out would be a very small one, for it would be the importance the lay-teacher would have to assign to industry and thrift, secondary virtues of which popular Religion does not take much notice: an oversight which, of course, arises out of popular misapprehensions, such, for instance, as those we are all familiar with in respect of the purpose and character of the present life, of the meaning of faith, and of the teaching of Jesus Christ on the subject of Divine interposition in the current affairs of life.

But, however, this little difference, though indeed it happens to be one that must ultimately disappear, for it arises out of a misconception, will help us to understand the difference between the morality the State requires and that which the Church presents to us. The former is limited to what is useful politically and socially, and for mundane purposes; while that of which the Church has charge (there being ultimately no real contradiction between the two) consists of the same principles, only purified, elevated, and rendered more fruitful by the action of higher motives. It is that which is in thought perfect; the morality of the kingdom of God, that is of those who have been brought to understand that they have a citizenship which is not of this world, and whose conversation is above. It is that morality which is cast in the mould of the ideas we endeavour to form of the moral attributes of the Deity; or rather the application of that to our own present condition: its members endeavour to form God within themselves. This cannot be enforced. The idea of constraint contradicts its nature. Its motives are found in men’s spontaneously engendered conceptions of moral perfection; and in the hope of a future life, which alone can supply a stage and conditions suitable for the complete realization of such conceptions. The rights of the Church are those of humanity to complete freedom in its effort to advance and purify its ideal of the moral and spiritual life. This has been its work from the beginning, though in the early stages of society it embraced the State, and has subsequently often, during the struggles of the State to establish its independence, been in conflict with it: sometimes one, sometimes the other, sometimes both having been in the wrong: all this History explains. Its true position is to be in advance of the State. It elaborates and diffuses that interpretation of man’s nature, and position, and of the knowledge man has attained to, those conceptions of virtue and that morality which the State, following in the wake of the Church, adopts in its own degree and fashion, and makes in such degree and fashion the aims and principles of its legislation. Every virtue, however elementary and indispensable, according to our ideas, might once have been beyond the power and the ken of the State. We can imagine such a condition of things, as that, during its continuance the State would have been unable to enforce and inculcate the principles of common honesty, and even of responsibility. It may once have been so here, just as it is still, to this day, in Dahomey. Scientifically, the condition of Dahomey is as much a part of the subject as the condition of England. The question is, what has brought about the difference? The answer is the Church—the Church that was in Egypt, that was in Israel, that was in Greece, that was in Rome, that was in the forests of Germany, that has been, and is, amongst ourselves. The Church has, all along, been going before and shaping, little by little and step by step, higher and clearer conceptions of right, and of duty, and of life; and the State has followed, little by little and step by step, accepting and adopting what the Church had made possible for it. Its position has generally been, and ex rerum naturâ it must be so, behind the Church. This is seen distinctly in the early days of Christianity. The Church was then working out, and diffusing, much that the State afterwards recognized and acted upon. This is their true relation to each other. It is not merely that the nation, organized for its immediate mundane wants, is the State, and that humanity, organized for the needs of its higher life, is the Church; but that, besides this, in the progress of society and of humanity, each is indispensable to the other. Universal History tells us this: and from universal History, in a matter of this kind, there is no appeal. And what universal History tells us the History, as far as it goes, of the two famous buildings before us confirms.

And now we must take off our thoughts from the two great organizations of society, whose action and interaction have all along been at work in shaping our political, social, and moral growth, and making us what we are, symbols of which, in the two buildings before us, we have been looking upon, and must turn our thoughts to the great million-peopled city itself, of the existence of which we are reminded, at the spot where we have taken our stand, chiefly by a few lordly mansions, glimpses of which we catch, here and there, through the trees. What variety of life is stirring within its widely differing regions! How much energy and power, and how much waste of power, and neglect of opportunity, are there! What principles are struggling into existence! What principles are dying out! What a conflict of principles is going on! We shall think not only of the lordly mansions environing the parks that are spread out before us, but equally of the commercial city on the banks of the river, and of the moiling and toiling, the rough and gin-drinking myriads of the manufacturing quarters of this world-capital. We shall, in our thoughts, set by the side of what is refined, and intellectual, and energetic, what is frivolous and enfeebled, what is rough, and degraded, and vicious. We shall become sensible of the uncertainties, as well as of the power, of the great intellectual and moral organism that is at work all around us.

How much is there that is good and hopeful in all classes, and how much in all that is evil, and evil enough almost to cause despondency! How vast and complex is the whole! Your thought enables you to understand that the railway and the telegraph have made the city in which you are standing the centre of English business and life, in a manner that was impossible formerly; and more than that, for the ocean steamers and electric cables have made it the centre of the business of the world. How does the imagination, when stirred by the suggestions of the scene, picture to itself the fashion in which are peopled the decks and saloons of the great steamships that are hurrying, outward and homeward, on all seas and oceans, to carry out the plans that have been originated and matured here! You think, too, of the countless messages that are flashing to and fro, beneath those seas and oceans, every moment, for the same purpose. Here is the heart of the world. The life-sustaining blood, in the form of human thought, and which carries along in itself the elements of construction as well as of life, is ever going forth from this heart, and coming back to it again. How many tens of thousands of steam-engines, in as many mines and factories, are throbbing and working to supply the wants, and maintain the wealth, of this manifold Babylon we have built. Of this wealth we see an exhibition here every day; for this is the spot for the daily parade of one of its braveries. How have the corn-fields and meadows of this island been solicited year by year to yield more and more, and how widely have Australian and African wildernesses been peopled with flocks and herds, for the enlargement of this wealth. This has on its surface only a material aspect. It is true that its first and most obvious result is to give wealth, and the enjoyment of wealth; and that neither of these are necessarily and in themselves good: for if wealth lead only to the self-bounded fruition of wealth it is deadening, corrupting, and degrading: and of this there is in the city around you much. But, however, this is not all its effect. It has given to many minds culture and leisure, which they have devoted to advancing the intellectual wealth of man; and it has produced many who have devoted themselves, according to the light that was within them, and prompted by the noblest impulses of our nature, to the improvement of the moral condition of those with whom they come in contact. Which of the two preponderate, the good or the bad effect of the sum of all that is going on, we need not attempt to estimate here. But to whichever side the balance may incline at the present moment, we believe that the bad will perish, as it has done in past times, and that the good only will survive—for only what is good and true is eternal.

And now we turn from the many who are wealthy to the greater many who are poor, and are carrying on a painful struggle for bare existence, in this vast assemblage of humanity: and here, too, we find mingled with what there is of good much that is evil. Here, as with the wealthy, are aims that are unwise, springing from misleading instincts which society has, carelessly and ignorantly, allowed to be formed in its bosom, and which tend in the individual to unhappiness and degradation, and in society itself to disorder and subversion.

All this must be taken in by the mind in order that the scene before us may be rightly understood. We could not interpret the scenes of old Egypt till we had formed some conception of what old Egypt was, and we must endeavour to do the same for our corresponding English scene. It is in this way only that the study and understanding of old Egypt can be of any use to us. It is only when we understand both that we are in a position to ask the question whether old Egypt has anything to teach us.

It tells us that the aims of society must be moral; and that the morality required can, within certain limits, be created and shaped, and made instinctive, where society itself honestly wishes and intelligently endeavours to do it. But as we look upon old Egypt we see that the morality we need is not precisely what they imagined and established, and that we are precluded from attempting to establish what we want in the fashion of old Egypt. Theirs was a system of constraint, ours must be a system of freedom. Theirs was a system that concentrated its highest advantages on a few, ours must be a system that opens its advantages to all. We must present what we have to offer in such a form that men will voluntarily accept it for themselves and for their children, and allow it to shape them. If we see distinctly what we have to do, and the conditions under which we have to do it, this will be in itself the achievement of half our work. Their method was to devise a system, in strict conformity to the conditions of the problem as it then stood, and place it as a yoke upon society. They could do that: we cannot. Our method must be accepted freely by society, and by the individual. We, too, must devise a system in strict conformity to the conditions of the problem as it now stands; and it must be such as approves itself to the understanding and the conscience of the men of these times. The successful fulfilment of the first requirement will, probably, include the second.

Egypt, Israel, Greece, Rome, each did the work that had been allotted to it. What we have to do is not to repeat what any one of them did. That, indeed, we could not do; and, if we could, it would be of no use to us. Imitations at all times, but more particularly when circumstances differ, are worthless and disorganizing. And yet what each of them did was necessary for us. The work we have to do now is a great advance upon theirs, and is to be done under very different conditions from theirs, but is so connected with theirs that we cannot dispense with their foundations, or with the principles they worked with. We need them all, but we must use them in the way our work requires. When men came to build with stone, they did not abandon all the principles of construction they had worked out for themselves during the time they had built with wood. Those principles were right as far as they went. They were not all bad, and worthless, and inapplicable to the new material and its grander possibilities. What had to be done was to incorporate the new principles that were needed with those from among the old that would still be serviceable. The purpose and object of building, whatever the materials might be, continued one and the same. And so, now that we have come to use glass and iron largely in architecture, the same process is again repeated. Some new principles may be introduced, but we do not discard all the old ones. Just so is it with the social fabric.

The great and governing differences in our case are that what we have to do is to be done for all, and that this is accompanied with the condition of not partial, but universal freedom. It never was so with any of the old peoples. And though our work is new in some of its conditions, and such as, in its reach and variety, was never dreamt of by the four great teacher nations of antiquity, there is no more reason for our failing in it than there was for their failing in theirs. That it is to be done is, in some sort, proof that it may be done. Indeed, there is apparently more reason for our success than there was for theirs. We have their experience; and in the principles of universal freedom, and universal justice, we have more to commend what ought to be done now to men’s hearts and understandings then they had. Freedom, knowledge, truth, justice, goodness; these must be our aims, our means, our statecraft, our religion. We do not go off the old tracks. They all converge into our path. And so we find that we are advancing, having history for guide, through new conditions, into a richer and better life, placed within the reach of an ever increasing proportion of the community.

The greatest, perhaps, of the advantages that will be found in our wealth is that it will enable us to confer on every member of the community such knowledge and such training as shall have an hopeful, perhaps a preponderant, tendency towards making instinctive, at all events in the minds of the greater number, a rational use of the freedom they already possess, and the love and practice of truth, justice, and goodness. Though, indeed, when we look at the educational efforts of Saxony, of Switzerland, and of New England, we are almost brought to fear that this great and necessary work will be undertaken more readily and intelligently, and done sooner and better, among people, who have less of the material means for carrying it out than ourselves. In saying this, I do not at all mean that we should confine our efforts merely to what they have done, for they have, to a great extent, omitted that morality which I consider the main point of all; but that we should be much better than we are, if we had done as much as they, with their very inferior means, have already accomplished.

In Egypt submission and order; in Israel, though labouring under most cruel disadvantage, during its better days belief in and devotion to right, and during its latter days the determination to maintain at any cost its morality and religion; at Athens the appreciation of intellectual culture; in the Roman Empire, by the mere working of its system, the idea of the supremacy of the law, and the sentiment of the brotherhood of mankind—were made instinctive. Why should we despair of doing as much for what we need? Our task, indeed, though so much grander, and promising so much more fruit than theirs, does not appear as hard as theirs. If it be beyond our powers, then modern society is but a fermenting mass of disorder and corruption. It cannot be so, however; for if it were, then the long course of History would now have to be reversed. All the progress of the Past, and all its hard-won achievements, would prove without purpose; and there would remain for us only to despair of truth, of right, of religion, and of humanity itself.

FOOTNOTES

INDEX.

• Abraham, his genealogy, 29.
• At the Pyramids, 83.
• At Heliopolis, 119.
• Bargaining with Ephron, 337
• Abydos, 97-104.
• Ride to, 98.
• Its Palace and Temple, 100;
• its Tablet, 101.
• Antiquity of its civilisation, 102-104
• Acacia, 411
• Achmed and Hodge, 396-401
• Agriculture, Egyptian, favoured early civilization, 13-15.
• Syrian, 245
• Alexandria, 448-457
• Alkali, Egyptians used, in washing, 367
• Amasis, 277
• Amenemha III., his register of risings of the Nile, 5, 114.
• Engineered Lake Mœris, 114
• American, an, on the Pyramids, 85.
• The ⸺ pig, 433
• Amunoph, 124.
• His Colossus, 150
• Apries, or Pharaoh Hophra, 277
• Arabs sleep in the open air, 99.
• Truthfulness and honesty of, 176.
• Superstitions, 359-364
• Arch, date of the, in Egypt, 142.
• Why not used, 294.
• Date of the pointed, 464
• Art, style of Egyptian, 36
• Arts, antiquity of useful, 44
• Aryan ancestors of Egyptians might have come from the Persian Gulf, 38.
• Date, 40.
• Their belief in a future state, 35, 195
• Ashdod, siege of, 275
• Ass, the, 424
• Assassef, 151
• Assyrian Dynasty at Bubastis, 271.
• They overrun Egypt, 272
• Assouan, Governor of, 168.
• Camel-riding at, 421
• Astronomer Royal for Scotland on the Pyramids, 63, 65
• Awe, its place in religion of Egypt, 127
• Backsheesh, 45-51
• Bahr Jusuf, 103, 106, 475
• Bargaining, 337, 469
• Basques, possible origin of, 40, 44
• ‘Beginning’ of 1st Ch. of Genesis, 264
• Belief, travel and, 244-256
• Belzoni, 138
• Benihassan, 173
• Bethany, girl of, 47-49
• Bethlehem, women of, 50
• Birds in Egypt, 436-440
• Birket el Keiroon, 106, 111, 112
• Bitter Lakes, 486
• Bottled-up labour, Capital is, 59
• Boulak Museum, wooden statue in, 72-74.
• Chephren’s statue in, 74
• Brotherhood, doctrine of, 318.
• Overthrew Egyptianism, 320.
• Its subsequent history, 322
• Bubastis, 270.
• Festival of, 278.
• Canal of, 473, 475
• Buffalo, the, 433
• Builders, Orientals great, 467
• Buildings, cause of disappearance of, 77.
• Destruction of, in Egypt, 79.
• In the Delta, 266-289.
• Preservation of, in Upper Egypt, 290-298.
• Why large, and constructed of large stones, 293
• Bunyan’s ‘Pilgrim’s Progress,’ 190
• Cairo, 458-471
• Caliphs, tombs of the, 467
• Camel, 417-423
• Canalization of the Isthmus, 472-493
• Capital, what ⸺ is, and how it acts, 59.
• What it will do for the East, 394
• Caste, origin of, 34.
• How used by the Egyptians, 311.
• Survey of the phenomena of, 332-336
• Christianity has no written law, 211, 213, 215, 217, 220, 229, 233, 318.
• Why ⸺ triumphed in Egypt, 320.
• Why ⸺ failed, 321.
• Was a protest, 509.
• What it dealt with, 516
• Chronology, early, 75, 81
• Church and State, 514.
• Its relation to religion, 515.
• Its conflicts with the State, 516.
• Originally included the State, 517.
• Its usurpations stopped, 519.
• Who look to the, for the education of the people, 525.
• Its inability to educate, 526.
• Its sphere, 528.
• What it should teach, 532
• Civilization, early hindrances to, 13.
• What it was before the date of the Pyramids, 52-56.
• Anterior to Abydos, 102
• Cleanliness, Oriental, 365-369
• Cleopatra, 164, 286.
• Needle of, 455
• Climates, Egypt has the ⸺ of two zones, 15
• Clothes pawned returned at sunset, 340
• Colchis, Egyptian colony at, 160
• Colossus of Memnon, 150
• Communications easy in Egypt, 13.
• In direction of latitude, 14
• Conclusion, 494-540
• Concrete, early thought, 259
• Constantinople, 492
• Contemporaneous, Egyptian documents, 94, 101
• Copts at Thebes, 148
• Cosmogony, Mosaic, how to be taken, 261
• Crabs, their business, 145
• Criticism, Biblical, 82, 257
• Crocodiles, why worshipped, 109.
• The last killed below the Cataract, 435
• Custom, persistency of, 337.
• Change of, an European characteristic, 340
• Darius completes the Canal to the Red Sea, 477
• ‘Day’ of the 1st Ch. of Genesis, 263
• Dead, Book of the, 186
• Deceased, the, 103
• Della, its dynasties, 266-284.
• Overthrow and disappearance of its monuments, 266-289
• Dendera, 286
• Despotism, how nature aided, in Egypt, 18-20.
• How formerly checked, 21
• Dish, dipping in the, 340
• Divorce, 378, 383
• Doctrine differs from idea, 193
• Dodecarchs, connexion of, with Labyrinth, 115
• Dog, the, 428
• Dôm Palm, 413
• Donkey-boys, 170-176
• East, can anything be done for the? 389-395
• Edfou, 285
• Education, the, which the State should undertake, 524
• Egypt, how formed, 1-9.
• Its agriculture made civilization possible, 13.
• Has two climates, 15.
• Its configuration and agriculture aided despotism, 12-20.
• What hope for modern, 21.
• Antiquity of its civilization, 26.
• Its relation to Israel, 239.
• Its prosperity under Amasis, 277.
• What its history teaches, 536
• Egyptians, how their character affected by nature, 12-20.
• Hard lot of modern, 22-24.
• Not mainly African, or Semitic, 27.
• Mixed Aryan and Ethiopian, 32.
• Their style of art, 36.
• Aptitude for science and organization, 37.
• Might have arrived by the Red Sea, 38.
• Not Turanian, 41.
• Resembled the Japanese, 42-44.
• Their belief in a future life, 182-192.
• Their wisdom and its fall, 299-322
• England, how want of wood in Egypt affects, 408.
• Advantage of the Canal to, 491
• English thought practical, 120-123.
• Language in Egypt, 171
• Equus, why not Latin for horse, 263
• Esbekeyeh, 464
• Esné, 287
• Established Churches, 214
• Ethiopians, connexion with Egypt, 33.
• Why irreproachable, 162 (note)
• Etruscans, possible origin of, 40, 44
• Evil eye, 360-363
• Exclusiveness, national, 312.
• Abrogation of, 318
• Exodus, date of, 474
• Faioum, 105-116.
• Remoteness of its reclamation, 105.
• How reclaimed, 106-112.
• Why crocodiles were worshipped in, 109
• Fellah, his hard case, 22
• Festivals, at Bubastis, 278.
• At Sais, 279
• Finns, possible origin of, 40, 44
• Free trade and independence, 43
• French policy in Egypt, 480
• Fuel, how manufactured in Egypt, 407
• Future life, Egyptian belief in, 35.
• Whence derived, 182.
• Basis of Egyptian civilization, 184.
• Why not a doctrine of the Mosaic Dispensation, 193-243.
• Why necessary for Christianity, 211-220.
• Why Moses could not have taught it, 221.
• Logical basis of the doctrine, 238.
• Buddhist doctrine of, 240.
• Jewish morality unsupported by, 240, 500
• Gardening in Egypt, 414-416
• Genesis, 1st Ch. of, 261-265
• Geese, ancient and modern, 438
• Germanicus at Thebes, 164-167, 502
• Girl of Bethany, 47-49.
• At Thebes, 172.
• At Benihassan, 173
• Goats, 434
• Gods, materials from which ⸺ were made, 290
• Granite, why used, 267
• Greece compared with Egypt, 501.
• What it achieved, 539
• Greeks keep pigs in the East, 431, 432
• Hareem, the atmosphere of the, 387
• Harrow, my young friend late from, 47, 51, 87, 91
• Harvests, Egypt has two, 15
• Hebrew Scriptures not primarily historical, 81-84.
• Their chronology, 81.
• Why ⸺ have no doctrine of a future life, 193-243.
• How to be interpreted, 257.
• Right of interpretation, 259
• Heliopolis, 117-123.
• The Holy Family at, 117.
• The University of Egypt, 119.
• Obelisk of, 119
• Herodotus upon the formation of Egypt, 3.
• Mentions a register of risings of the Nile, 5.
• His account of Lake Mœris explained, 110.
• Of Egyptian colony in Colchis, 160.
• What he says of Bubastis, 270.
• Of the Egypt of Amasis, 277.
• Of Necho’s circumnavigation, 274.
• Of feasts of Bubastis and Sais, 278
• Herod’s temple and palace, 246
• Hippopotamus, 435
• Hodge compared with Achmed, 396-401
• Homer acquainted with the greatness of Thebes, 124.
• Why ⸺ sends the gods to the irreproachable Ethiopians, 160-162.
• Mentions the Island of Pharos, 453
• Homœopathy, 364
• Hophra, or Apries, 276
• Horse, the, in Egypt, 426
• Houriism, 381-388
• Ideas make men and women, 385.
• Change slowly, 519
• Imagination, its relation to history and religion, 461
• Immortality, how the working of society confirmed the idea of, 17.
• How the river and the sun, 18.
• How Christ brought it to light, 211-234.
• Why mankind not immortal, 243 (note)
• Insects in Egypt, 443
• Instincts, moral sentiments are, 306.
• What are ⸺, 308.
• Egyptian study of, 310
• Interpretation, historical method of, 257-265
• Isaiah, why ⸺ anticipated a new earth, 243 (note)
• Iseum, 280
• Ismailia, 483
• Israel compared with Egypt, 499.
• What it achieved, 539
• Israelites, who they were, 29.
• Their ethnology, 199.
• Not unimaginative, 204.
• Their moral heroism, 241.
• When ⸺ built Pithom and Ramses, 474
• Jacob’s deception, 250
• Japan, Egypt compared to, 42-44
• Jerusalem, aspect of the city, 246.
• Only a Bible word, 256.
• Pilgrims at, 357.
• Camels at, 419
• Jesus Christ, the situation to which His teaching was addressed, 207.
• What He taught, 210-220.
• Argumentative position of, 216, 229.
• Why He taught a future life, 229.
• Why He impugned the doctrine of immediate judgments, 239.
• His doctrine, in part, a protest, 509
• Jews, a mixed people, 29, 199.
• Moral heroism of, 241.
• Why not proselytisers, 243 (note)
• Jezebel’s last toilet, 338
• Joseph, story of, 338
• Josiah defeated by Necho, 276
• Kagabu, 339
• Karnak, 125-132.
• Hypostyle hall of, 129
• Kêf, 95
• Koran, 345
• Labour, why squandered on Pyramids and Temples, 57-63
• Labourer, English, why held to labour all the year round, 399
• Labyrinth, 114-116
• Lamps, Feast of, 279
• Landlordism Eg., 328-331
• Language, morality compared to, 242
• Laps, possible origin of, 40, 44
• Law, Semitic idea of, 31.
• Separation of Municipal from Religion, 212-216.
• General laws the same as particular Providence, 235
• Legislatures, Orientals have no, 347, 371
• Letters, discovery of, 184.
• Results, 185, 391
• Liberty, Oriental systems extinguish, 372
• Library of Rameses, 146.
• Of Alexandria, 455
• Light, Symbol of the Divine Spirit, 280
• Literature, effects of, 390-392.
• Alexandrian, 451
• Livingstone, 2
• London, a contemplation of, 506, 534
• Luncheon at the Pyramids, 92-96
• Luxor, 124
• Luxury, Oriental, 383
• Mad, are all Orientals, 341
• Mandeville, his account of the Pyramids, 64-66
• Marriages, Oriental, 338, 374.
• Why early in the East, 378
• Master-mind, the, 122
• Medinet Haboo, 148
• Memnon, 150
• Mendes, 266
• Metaphysical solutions of physical problems, 3
• Metaphysics, Hebrew, 261.
• Early, 232
• Mississippi compared with the Amazon, 15
• Modern societies, prospects of, 540
• Mœris, Lake, 108.
• Abundance of fish, 110.
• Herodotus’ account of, 110
• Mohamed, 66, 342
• Mohamed Adamanhoury, 470
• Money not known at date of the Pyramids, 58
• Monogamists, early Egyptians were, 37.
• Nature made us, 379
• Monuments, why disappeared in the Delta, 266-289.
• Why not in Upper Egypt, 285-289.
• Rationale of, 290-298
• Moral being is a growth, 253.
• Moral sentiments instincts, 306-310.
• Aims of society must be, 536
• Morality not dependent on future life, 240.
• How congenital, 242.
• Grounds of, 242.
• Progressive, 251.
• What should be taught by the State, 524.
• What by the Church, 532
• Moses, his wife, 168.
• Aim of his legislation, 201.
• First historical protestant, 509
• Mosks of Omar, 246.
• Of Cairo, 464.
• Of Ebn e’ Tooloon, 464.
• Of Hassam, 465.
• Of El Azar, 466
• Mosquitoes, 443
• Mounds of old cities, 404
• Mouské, 461
• Municipal religion when impossible, 227
• Nature, how ⸺ affected the Egyptians, 12-20.
• What it presented to the Egyptians, 16.
• Variety of, 495.
• Intelligence seen in, 496
• Necho, extends the Canal to the Bitter Lakes, 273.
• Circumnavigates Africa, 274.
• His Asiatic campaign, 275.
• Extends the Canal of Rameses, 477.
• Necropolis of Pyramid era, 91-95.
• Of Thebes, 133-143
• Nile, how the, formed Egypt, 1-9.
• Three colours of its water, 9.
• Contrast of past and present value of its work, 10.
• Facilities for up and down traffic, 14.
• Important that it flows in the direction of latitude, 14
• Norfolk Island Pine, 415
• Obelisk of Heliopolis, 119.
• Of Luxor, 125.
• Of Alexandria, 281, 455.
• Were books, 298
• Omar destroys the library of Alexandria, 456.
• Re-opens canal to Red Sea, 479
• Orientals, are they mad? 341.
• Intellectual inferiority of, accounted for, 343
• Originality of the Egyptians, 153
• Osiris, temple of, at Abydos, 101.
• Mysteries of his sufferings, 271
• Ositarsen, first name at Karnak, 130.
• At Tanis, 267
• Ox, the, 434
• Palace of Westminster, what it suggests, 512, 514
• Palm-trees, tax on, 23.
• Character of, 110
• Paradise, Hebrew, 205.
• Mahomedan, 381
• Parliament, history of the English, 513
• Paul, St., what he taught, 220
• Pearls, real, 121
• Pelicans, 437
• Persian invasion, 163
• Petamenap, his tomb, 141
• Pharos, 453
• Philæ, Great Pyramid looks down on, 70.
• Ride to, 421
• Physical Geography, bearing of, on national history, 12
• Pigeons in Egypt, 437
• Pilgrimage, 355-358
• Pilgrims, Greek and Latin, at Jerusalem, 357
• Pithom, 473
• Platte, resemblance of valley of, to Egypt, 4
• Pointed Arch, 464
• Polygamy, 374-380.
• The polygamic region, 376
• Population, Commerce supports, 245
• Pork, why forbidden in the East, 433
• Port Saïd, 482
• Post-Pharaohnic temples, 285-289
• Prayer, Oriental, what it is, 349.
• Connexion of, with morality, 351.
• Variation in its object, 352.
• Repetitions in, 354.
• Women not taught, 374
• Printing-press, its use to the East, 392
• Progress, in arts, 137.
• In religion, 231.
• In moral being, 253.
• Historical progress, 325.
• Ordained by God, 233.
• Rendered possible by letters, 184, 392
• Property, value of security for, 389.
• Exists amongst animals, 429
• Prophets, the Hebrew, have no doctrine of a future life, 194.
• Anti-Egyptian policy of, 276.
• Their hopefulness, 315.
• Their self-devotion, 500
• Protestant, the first, 509
• Providence, identity of particular, and general laws, 235
• Psalm, the 109th, 250
• Psammetichus, 272
• Ptolemy Philadelphus re-opens the canal to the Red Sea, 478
• Pyramids, contemporary civilization implied by, 52-56.
• Why labour was squandered on, 57-63.
• Why so formed, 63-69.
• Sir J. Mandeville’s account of, 64-67.
• Inscriptions on the Great, 65.
• Great Pyramid higher than the Cataract of Philæ, 70.
• Ascent of Great Pyramid, 85-91.
• Luncheon at, 92-96.
• Necropolis of Pyramid era, 94-95
• Railway, a mid-European, 492
• Rameseum, 146
• Rameses II. at Luxor and Karnak, 125.
• His temple-palace, 145, 146.
• His library, 146.
• His great expedition, 154-163.
• His inscription in Syria, 162.
• Cut the Pithom-Ramses Canal, 473
• Rameses III., his tomb, 135.
• His temple-palace, 148
• Ramses, city of, 473
• Rationale of the monuments, 290-298
• Register of Nile risings, 5, 114
• Religion, Aryan character of that of Egypt, 27, 35.
• Aim of that delivered by Moses, 201.
• A municipal, when impossible, 227.
• A chapter in its history, 231.
• Same as truth, 237.
• Its great rôle in Egypt, 299.
• Why it did not spread, 302.
• Its aims moral, 303.
• Why it fell, 320.
• Reverts in Egypt to Theocracy, 321.
• An organism of thought, 341.
• A distinction between Christianity and Mahomedanism, 342.
• What it is, 515.
• Its aims, 532
• Republicans, why Orientals are not, 370-373.
• Conditions disposing them to be, 370
• Ritualists, where those, get their ideas, 465
• Rome compared with Egypt, 502.
• What it achieved, 539
• Rooks, 439
• Sais, its temple, 271.
• Connexion with the Greeks, 271.
• Festival of, 279
• Sakia, 446
• Sandstone-buildings long-lived, 289
• Saul’s sons hanged, 250
• Scarabs, 177-181
• Scene, the, in England, 495.
• Must be associated with man, 496.
• In Egypt, 498.
• The chief ⸺ in England, 506
• Science, Egyptian aptitude for, 37
• Scotchman’s opinion of Heliopolis, 120
• Sebennytus, 280
• Secession of military caste, 273
• Semites, their monotheistic tendency, 30.
• Their view of law, 31.
• Not unimaginative, 204
• Semnéh, Nile registration at, 5
• Serpent-charming, 340
• Sesortosis not first dresser of stone, 72-81
• Sethos, his hypostyle hall, 129.
• His tomb, 134, 138.
• His temple-palace, 147
• Shadoof, 445
• Sheep, 434
• Shoes taken off in holy places, 338
• Shops, Eastern, 263
• Silsiléh, Cataract once at, 7
• Slavery, its abolition not contemplated by the first Christians, 234
• Sluices of Lake Mœris, 108.
• At Suez, 477, 478
• Solanum, a handsome one, 416
• Solomon’s Pools and Aqueduct, 50.
• Has no doctrine of a future life, 194
• Sparrows, 437
• State, relation of, to Church, 513.
• Stops the usurpations of the Church, 519.
• Does not see its own duty, 520.
• Neglected national education, 521.
• What it should teach, 523.
• Why it should enforce moral training, 528.
• The sphere of the, 528.
• Its ability to give moral training, 529
• Statue, wooden, at Boulak Museum, 72-74.
• Of Chephren, 74
• Stone, date of building with, 75-81.
• Why large stones used in building, 293
• Street, the Royal, at Thebes, 151
• Suez, 477, 478, 484
• Superstitions, Arab, 359-364.
• The evil eye accounted for, 360-363
• Sycamore, 117
• Tablet of Abydos, 101
• Tacitus’ account of Germanicus’ visit to Egypt, 165
• Tamarisk, 412
• Tanis, 267.
• Hyksos at, 269.
• Connexion with the Exodus, 269
• Tax on palm-trees, 23
• Temples fortresses, 286
• Testament, relation of New to Old, 235
• Thebes becomes the capital, 125.
• Sources of its wealth, 130.
• Necropolis of, 133-143.
• Its temple-palaces, 144-153.
• Grandeur, 151
• Theology and religion, 67.
• Not religion, 321.
• Of Alexandria, 451
• This. See Abydos
• Tombs, pictures and sculptures of, 134-142.
• Why larger in Egypt than elsewhere, 296.
• Of the Memlooks, 467
• Transmigration of souls, 188
• Travel, effects of Eastern, on belief, 244-256.
• An aid to understanding the Scriptures, 249.
• Affects different minds differently, 253
• Trees in Egypt, 410-413
• Truth identical with religion, 237
• Turanians, Egyptians not, 41
• Turtle, how treated, 441
• Unclean, the, animal, 431
• Unconformable stratification of Nile mud, 9
• Upper Egypt in post-Pharaohnic times, 289
• Veil, the, 338
• Venice, 492
• Vertebrate skeleton, belief in a future life the ⸺ of thought, 183
• Vespasian’s excise on scouring, 367
• View from citadel of Cairo, 460.
• In London, 506
• Villages, wretched houses in the, 405
• Wagtail, 436
• Wall-space for records, 290-298
• Warburton’s Divine legation, 238
• Water-jars, 402-404
• Wells, suggestion for, in Egypt, 459
• Westminster Abbey, what it suggests, 508, 511.
• What palace of, suggests, 512, 514
• Wheat, mummy, cultivated by early settlers in central Europe, 44
• Wife, an unfaithful, drowned, 384
• Wisdom of Egyptians, 299-321.
• In what it consisted, 306.
• What overthrew it, 320
• Women, Oriental, why frail, 386.
• Water-carriers, 402
• Wood, want of, in Egypt, 405-409
• Woollen, why Egyptian priests did not use, 367

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