will be noticed in the sequel, the law which gov- utility. Milk, they said, could' easily be kept erns its temperature sufficiently indicates that an sweet and fresh in the heats of summer for three all-wise Mind ordained it, and no doubt with a weeks, meat for a month, and cherries from one special object in view. At no great distance from season to another! In winter, curious enough it the ice-cave of St. George's another was found, is to notice that outside water will be frozen the entrance to which was announced by a low for some time before it is so within. Saussure vault, forty feet or so in width, and by a current adds, that the "proprietors of the caves unaniof air which fell upon the over-heated traveller mously affirmed, that the hotter the summer was, with folds of deadly coldness, so that the greatest the greater was the strength of the cold current caution is necessary in entering it. Descending which issued from them;" in the winter a sensible by an inclined plane, the cavity is found to become current of air sets into them. In the south of wider from the entrance inwards. At the bottom France is another famous natural ice-cave-that is a horizontal platform of ice. The cave is about of Fondereule. M. Hericart de Thury has given sixty feet long by thirty wide; the ice is thickest an interesting account of a visit to it. This cave at the farthest end. The roof presents a beautiful is situated in a wild and romantic region, where appearance, all pendent with elegant stalactites of some long bygone convulsion of the earth has the purest içe; and the coup d'œil is picturesque rent asunder the solid rocks, and produced a scene in the extreme. The temperature in the open of confusion of the wildest description. The air at this time was 58 degrees Fahrenheit in the occurrence of the cave in this district, and its shade, and in the grotto it was 34 degrees Fahren- extraordinary phenomena of temperature, &c., are heit. The guide related that when he visited it without doubt attributable to this geological disin the previous April, three months before, there turbance, as will be best perceived in the sequel. was no ice then; yet at this period, in the middle It was long thought to be a subterranean glacier, of an unusually hot summer day, it existed in and has been described as such; but this is an abundance. erroneous view of the case. It is a magnificent cavern, nearly two hundred feet in depth, of very irregular width; and the thickness of its vaulted roof is about sixty-six feet. Its interior is decorated with the most beautiful calcareous stalactites, and the floor is variegated with curious alabaster cones, which shoot out from the sheet of clear, transparent ice forming the pavement. In many The all-observant and renowned De Saussure, in his travels in the Alps, paid much attention to these caves, and offered the first rational attempt at a solution of the riddle. He says that in the volcanic island of Ischia, near Naples, which abounds with hot springs, a number of grottos exist in which a great degree of cold is felt. At the period when he visited them, the external places elegant stalactites of ice drop down from shade-heat was 63 degrees, that of the grottos the roof like pendents of clear glass, and, as it 45 degrees, and in a severely hot summer they were were, melt into the glassy floor beneath, so that colder still. Other caves are mentioned in a free- the vault is upheld by pillars of this beautiful mastone hill upon which the town of St. Marin is built, terial. The alabastrine stalactites are found prinwhere the same violent contrasts existed between cipally at the sides of the cavern, while the icy the temperature of the external and internal atmos- ones are in the middle, and here and there propheres. Evelyn mentions, in his account of his duce all the resemblance of rich folds of drapery tour in Italy, being shown as a wonder, in one of clear as water. One of the travellers cut a hole the palaces which he visited, a hole out of which in a pillar of ice, and placed a candle inside; the issued a strong current of cold air sufficiently pow- most magical effects were thus produced; and the erful to buoy up a copper ball. Saussure states fantastic aisles of this subterranean temple of cold that in a private house near Terni, in the Papal were illuminated with the richest yellow, blue, States, there is a cellar, of no great depth out of green and red tints, the reflected rays playing with which an impetuous, sharp, cold wind issues. Nu- illusory effect upon the floor of ice, the pillars of merous natural refrigeratories are commemorated the same substance, and of alabaster, and the great by the same philosopher; among the most curious stalagmites which lined the walls. A larger illuwere some which he found at the foot of a steep mination was afterwards got up by arranging mountain near Mount Pilatus, on the banks of the torches in the clearest and best crystallized parts Lake of Lucerne. These places were simply of the cavern; and the result, say the visitors, small wooden huts, on three sides formed of tim-" was worthy of all that the Thousand and One ber, but the back wall was built against the talus, Nights' could present to the richest and most brilor heap of fragment and rubbish at the foot of the liant imagination." This beautiful cave is somerock, and was formed in a loose manner of dry times made use of economically when there is a stones. When these huts were visited by the scarcity of ice; and its crystalline pavement is traveller, it being the 31st of July, the thermom-dug up and carried to several towns in the vicineter marked 73 degrees in the shade; in the huts it ity. was as low as 39 degrees, or seven degrees above We have met with an account, by Professor Silthe freezing-point; and all that separated these liman of America, which we have no hesitation in remote degrees of temperature was a few planks classifying under our present head. The ice-cave of wood! The proprietors of these places men- of which he speaks is in the state of Connecticut, tioned several curious facts in illustration of their between Hartford and New Haven. It is only ness. The inhabitants also dig caves into the hill, which they use as refrigeratories, and in these the thermometer often marks 44 degrees when the temperature outside is nearly 80 degrees. 66 two hundred feet above the level of the sea, and is situated in a defile filled with fragments of rocks of various sizes, through which a small brook runs. It was visited in the middle of July, the thermometer at 85 degrees in the shade; and We shall conclude our series of illustrations on approaching it, an evident chilliness was felt in upon this curious subject, by referring to one which the air. Parties of pleasure often resort hither in has attracted a large share of interest and attention the sultry summer days to drink of the cold flow- of some of the most talented of our learned men. ing waters, and to amuse themselves with the rich It is to be found in the splendid work on the Geolstore of ice here treasured up. In some places ogy of Russia, recently published by Sir Roderthe ice is quite near the surface, and is only cov- ick T. Murchison. The ice-cave here commemoered with leaves. A boy, armed with a hatchet, rated is not far from Orenburg, and boasts of the descended into a cavity, and, after a little hard work, unpronounceable name Illetzkaya-Zastchita. It is hewed out solid lump of ice several pounds in situated at the base of a hillock of gypsum, at the weight. An idea of the solidity of this piece eastern end of a village connected with the impemay be formed, by adding that on the third day rial establishment, and is one of a series of apparsome of it was yet unmelted. A similar reposi- ently natural hollows, used by the peasants for tory of cold exists about seven miles from New cellars or stores. It possesses the remarkable Haven, at the bottom of a steep ridge of trap rock. | property of being partly filled with ice in the sumIn the hottest summers ice is conveyed from this mer, and totally destitute thereof in the winter. place to New Haven, much soiled, indeed, with "Standing," says the talented author, on the leaves and dirt, but useful for cooling beverages. heated ground, and under a broiling sun, I shall A more celebrated one, also in America, has often never forget my astonishment when the woman to been noticed by tourists of that country; some whom the cavern belonged opened a frail door, accounts, in fact, have been greatly exaggerated and a volume of air so piercingly keen struck the about it. It is situated in Hampshire county, legs and feet, that we were glad to rush into a Virginia, and is widely celebrated under the title cold bath in front of us to equalize the effect! We of the Ice-Mountain. The place where the store afterwards subjected the whole body to the cooling of cold exists is a sort of natural glacier, which process by entering the cave, which is on a level lies against a steep mural ridge of lofty rock, and with the street. At three or four paces from the is composed of a number of fragments of sand- door, on which shone the glaring sun, we were stone of all sizes loosely heaped together. In the surrounded by half-frozen quass and the provisions midst of these the ice is contained. It was visited of the natives. The roof of the cavern hung with in the summer of 1838, a season of drought and solid undripping icicles, and the floor might be heat quite unparalleled in the history of that coun- called a stalagmite of ice and frozen earth. We try. But the excessive external heat did not were glad to escape in a few minutes from this appear to exert the smallest influence on the Ice-ice-bound prison, so long had our frames been acMountain. At the depth of a few inches abundance of excellent ice was found, and a thermometer lowered into a cavity dropped from 95 to 40 degrees. The surrounding rocks were covered with dew, owing to the condensation of atmospheric vapor by the excessive coldness of their surface. One cavity had been filled with snow, and only covered with a few planks, and yet the snow was as crisp as if it had but just fallen! At the bottom is a little artificial structure called the "dairy," and used for that purpose in the sum-appreciate; yet a single plank was the division mer. In ordinary summers its roof is covered with icicles, and its sides are often quite incrusted with ice. Strange to say, a spring near the rock has only one degree less temperature than the waters of the surrounding district. The atmosphere over this singular spot had in this scorching season a balmy, spring-like coolness, most refreshing to the weary traveller. Most Italian tourists know the Monte Testaceo near Rome. It is a hill, from two hundred to three hundred feet high, composed of broken pieces of urns; hence its name. It is, in fact, a vast mass of broken pottery; therefore extremely light and porous. It is situated in the burning Campagna, near the city; and yet, most singular it is, that from every side of this hill there descend winds of the most refreshing cool customed to a powerful heat." The cold in this cavern is invariably the greatest inside when the air is the hottest outside. As soon as winter sets in, the ice disappears, and in mid-winter the peasants assured the travellers that the cave was of so genial a temperature that they could sleep in it without their sheep-skins. At the very period when Sir R. Murchison visited it, the thermometer was 90 degrees in the shade, a degree of heat which only those who have experienced it can between a burning sun and a freezing vault! The cave is about ten paces long, and about ten feet high. It has a vaulted roof, in which great fissures open, which appear to communicate with the body of the hillock. This account was first read before the Geological Society, and excited much discussion among the members of the body. Sir R. Murchison at first believed that the intenselyfrigorific powers of the cave were due, in some way which the learned expositor could not make very clear, to the presence of saline ingredients in the rocks. His geological chemistry, however, being shown to be at fault, and the causes on which he relied, if they existed at all, being such as to produce heat instead of cold, Sir J. Herschel undertook the solution of the problem. An elaborate letter of his soon appeared, in which he attempted | will not be moved in the presence of this people, to show that the cold of the cave was explicable which of old accomplished such mighty deeds, and on climatological grounds solely, and in which now are reduced to misery so extreme? Who much was said about waves of heat and cold, so as can visit Alexandria, Cairo, the Pyramids, Heliopto give a very scientific air to the explanation. olis, Thebes, without being moved by reminisBut on similar grounds we might expect every cences the most imposing and the most diverse ? natural cavern similarly situated to be a freezing The Bible, Homer, philosophy, the sciences, cave; which is not the case. Greece, Rome, Christianity, the monks, Islamism, the crusades, the French revolution; almost everything great in the world's history seems to converge in the pathway of him who traverses this memorable country! Abraham, Sesostris, Moses, Helen, Agesilaus, Alexander, Pompey, Cæsar, Cleopatra, Aristarchus, Plotinus, Pacomus, Origen, Athanasius, Saladin, St. Louis, Napoleonwhat names! what contrasts!" Thus exclaims an eloquent writer in the "Revue des Deux Mondes:" but his list of memorabilia, M. Ampère very well knows, begins where the really marvellous ends; and to arrive-not at the origin of Egyptian civilization, but merely at the epoch where our researches are lost in the darkness of antiquity-we must go back at least fifteen centuries before the calling of Abraham! With Moses, between two and three hundred years after the first patriarch, begins the procession of the historians, lawgivers, and warriors of a world now passed away; but in the tombs of Egypt there are written, with a freshness that endures to this day, the annals of a long anterior greatnessa greatness earlier than antiquity itself. Saussure long ago gave the clue to the real exposition of this paradoxical phenomenon; and Professor Pictet, following it out, has satisfactorily demonstrated that it is a beautiful example of a practical illustration in nature of that first principle in chemistry-evaporation produces cold. It is well known to the geological student, that in certain mines which have a horizontal gallery terminating in a vertical shaft communicating with the atmosphere, a current of air in summer descends the vertical shaft, and emerges from the horizontal; while in winter the current sets in at the horizontal, and issues from the vertical shaft. Now, in almost every instance quoted, the arrangement of these caves has been precisely similar; they are placed at the bottom of a hill perforated by various rents and chasms. Thus the cave is the horizontal, and the vertical shaft lies in the mass of the hill. Suppose, then, the mean temperature of the hill to be about 48 or 50 degrees. The descending summer current passing through the channels in the hill evaporates the water it meets with in its progress, and so rapidly, as to become colder and colder in its descent; until, reaching the cave, it is even below 32 degrees, and there freezes the water collected in it. The hotter the air outside, the greater the destruction of equilibrium between the interior and exterior columns, which communicate at their base in the cave; consequently, the more rapid and intense the evaporation, the more severe the measure of cold produced. Every postulate is satisfactorily answered upon this hypothesis; and while no doubt occasionally the ice found in some caves may be part of a glacier, or the remains of last winter's product, yet the phenomenon which we would include under the term Nature's Ice-Caves, is explicable solely upon this simple and beautiful law. "This view," says Sir R. Murchison, in a postscript to his previous account, is supported by reference to the climate of the plains of Orenburg, in which there is great wetness of the spring, caused by melting of the snow, succeeded by an intense and dry Asiatic heat." 66 From Chambers' Journal. THE LANGUAGE OF THE TOMBS. 'EGYPT offers subjects of conversation and meditation which no one can entirely neglect, whoever he may be, if he have eyes to see, a memory to remember, or a sprinkling of imagination wherewith to dream. Who can be indifferent to the tableaux of unaccountable nature on the banks of the Nile? At the spectacle of this river-land, that no other land resembles? Who Egypt is now the great highway between the east and west; and one may as well stay at home as pretend to travel without seeing the pyramids. To enjoy, however, the descriptions we receive, from every succeeding tourist, of a buried people, who, 2400 years ago, reproached the ancient Greeks with their modern juvenility, it is necessary to know from what sources these records are drawn, and what are the claims to authenticity possessed by the Language of the Tombs. To do this, we do not require to understand the ancient tongues, or any other modern one than English; Colonel Vyse having thrown into an appendix, in the second volume of his quarto work, all that is known on this subject.* But a much smaller book has recently been published, touching upon all the Egyptian questions together; and although, from the highly-condensed form in which the knowledge is conveyed, it is somewhat difficult of study for persons previously ignorant of the subject, we are in hopes of being able to extract from it, for the benefit of our readers, some rudimental information. It consists of a series of reports, taken from several American newspapers, of the lectures of the distinguished Egyptian antiquary Mr. Gliddon; and the whole has been revised by himself, and enriched with learned notes and appendices.† * Operations carried on at the Pyramids of Ghizeh from 1837 to 1839. See also Gliddon's Chapters on Early Egyptian History. 1843. Otia Egyptiaca: Discourses on Egyptian Archæ ology and Hieroglyphical Discoveries. By George R. Gliddon. London: Madden. 1849. 66 Previous to the year 1802, the hieroglyphics, or | The revelations thus made have released Egypt sacred characters of the Egyptians, found in the from the plague of darkness. She is no longer a sepulchres and on monuments, were a mystical land of sorcery and mysticism, such as she apscrawl, the unknown signs of an unknown tongue, peared to the Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans; but which the learned gazed at with unavailing long- thousands of years ago, her every-day life appears ings. But a stone, found three years before be- a prototype of our own. The hieroglyphics are at tween Rosetta and the sea by a French officer of once manuscripts and pictures-illustrated books, engineers, was destined to give the hint, which fell speaking at once to the eye and the mind; and the like a sudden spark of light upon their conjec-genius of the people seems to have delighted in tures. This was the celebrated Rosetta Stone, perpetuating themselves in their records. "If we (now in the British Museum,) a fragment of black enter a tomb," says Mr. Gliddon, we see the basalt, 3 feet in length, and originally 2 feet 5 deceased surrounded by his family, who offer him inches in breadth, and from 10 to 12 inches in their remembrances. The-I had almost said thickness. The sculpture was not in itself of Christian-name, the profession, rank, and bloodgreat antiquity, dating 196 years before the Chris-relationship of each member of the family, are tian era. It contained two inscriptions-one in the written against him or her. The scenes of ordiGreek, and one in the popular Egyptian character,nary life are painted on the walls. Study, gymcalled Demotic or Enchorial, afterwards discovered nastics, feasts, banquets, wars, sacrifices, death, and not to have been much used before 700 years B. c. : funeral, are all faithfully delineated in these sepulbut there was likewise a third, in hieroglyphics; chral illustrations of manners, which are often epic and it may be supposed with what interest it was in their character. You have the song with which discovered that these three were identical in sub- the Egyptian enlivened his labor in the field; the stance! They were an edict chiselled at Memphis, anthem, that, when living, he offered to his Crein honor of Ptolemy Epiphanes, and the con- ator; and the death-wail that accompanied his cluding sentence was in these words :-"That body to the grave. Every condition, every art, this decree should be engraved on a tablet of hard every trade, figures in this picturesque encyclopastone, in hieroglyphics, enchorial, and Greek char- dia-from the monarch, priest, and warrior, to the acters, and should be set up in first, second, and artisan and herdsman. Then these tombs are real third-rate temples, before the statue of the ever-museums of antiquities-utensils, toilet-tables, inkliving king." stands, pens, books, the incense-bearer, and smelling-bottle, are found in them. The wheat which the Egyptian ate, the fruit that adorned his desserttable, peas, beans, and barley, which still germinate when replanted, are also discovered. The eggs, the desiccated remains of the very milk he had once used for his breakfast, even the trussed and roasted goose, of which the guests at his wake had partaken-all these evidences of his humanity, and a myriad more, exist, in kind, in the museums of Europe, to attest their former owner's declaration to us, modern occidentals, athwart the oceans of time and the Atlantic, Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto. But not only do the scenes sculptured or painted on the temples or in the sepulchres furnish every detail concerning the Egyptians; they give us the portraits, history, geographical names, and characteristics of an infinitude of Asiatic and African nations existing in days long anterior to the Exode-many of whom have left no other record of their presence on earth, and others again whose names are preserved in the Hebrew Scriptures." The inscriptions, being identical, would of course repeat the name the same number of times; and the word Ptolemy, in its various inflections, being found in the Greek eleven times, the first business was to look for a corresponding word in the Demotic character. In this inscription a group of seven letters was found repeated eleven times; and these were discovered to compose the word Ptolmis, thus giving seven letters of the alphabet, from which the whole was afterwards deduced. But the hieroglyphic inscription? How was it possible to interpret those representations of animals and things, intended though they must be for the symbols of a language? Here and there some of them were enclosed in an oval. This was repeated again and again, and must no doubt be the name sought for. The middle figure was a recumbent lioness, the Coptic name of which is laboi. Might not the lioness represent the sound of the initial letter of her own name? It was a wild and fantastic conjecture, to which the explorer was no doubt driven by mere despair; but it was inspiration. The moment it was taken for granted Not the least curious and important of the hie that this was one letter of the name, the others roglyphical revelations, is the synchronism which were read with comparative ease; and thus were exists between the Scriptural annals and the monobtained, to begin with, the signs of seven hiero-uments of Egypt. The names of some of the Phaglyphic letters, PTOLMEES. raohs are not only the same, but they are identified in particulars of their history; and authenticated portraits of sovereigns incidentally referred to in the Bible are now exhibited in engravings throughout the Christian world. These portraits are carried back to 3500 years ago, (about the time of Joseph,) but the synchronism cannot be traced earlier than 971 B. C. This is unfortunate, as it righteous assertions of innocence, supposed to be made by the departed spirit. In these, however, which are forty-two in number, is found the whole, and more than the whole, decalogue. would be very interesting to identify in their mon- | ments, and the Christian petitions for divine aid to uments the Pharaohs who were contemporary with observe them, they present only a series of selfSolomon, Moses, Joseph, and Abraham. The earliest, however, as yet reached is Shishak, the conqueror of Rehoboam, son of Solomon; and indeed, as the Bible does not mention by name the earlier sovereigns of Egypt, there is little probability of further advance in this interesting study. As for the supposed death of the Mosaic Pharaoh in the Red Sea, it is neither countenanced by the text of the Pentateuch-which merely relates the destruction of Pharaoh's host, chariots, and chosen captains-nor by the traditions of the Talmud, which expressly state that the king returned and reported the loss of his army. The hieroglyphics, however, are silent on both points. Neither has any trace at all been found in them of the patriarchal relations with Egypt. We may add that Mr. Gliddon makes the pertinent remark, that if the validity of hieroglyphical history be proved "from the Scriptures for the time succeeding Moses, in all those cases where either record refers to the events mentioned in the other, the authenticity of hieroglyphical monuments in affairs whereon the Bible is silent, and which antedate Moses by twenty centuries, cannot fairly be called in question." While mentioning portraits, let us descend to later times, and say that the portrait of Cleopatra, taken from the temple of Dendera, by no means establishes the Shakspearian authority with regard to the personal beauty of that "serpent of old Nile." The Cleopatra of history appears to have been celebrated only for her powers of fascination and the splendor of her court. The earliest date of the sacred language is not known; but if the antiquaries are correct, there must be an error in the commonly-received interpretation of Bible chronology, the original fifteen hieroglyphic letters having been in common use only 250 years after Menes, the first Pharaoh. This would carry back the origin of hieroglyphics to near the time commonly assigned to Cain and Abel! The emblem of the scribe's palette, reedpen, and ink-bottle, is found about 3400 years B. C.; and books, indicated by the sign of the papyrus or scroll, are long antecedent to the time of Abraham. This language received afterwards some change, and in that form became more current as the hieratic or sacerdotal. About 700 years B. C. there was introduced an alphabetic kind of writing called the Demotic, Enchorial, or Epistolographic; and this remained in popular use till it was suppressed by the Roman imperial authority, and replaced by the Coptic alphabet, formed of Greek and Egyptian letters intermixed. It is impossible to ascend to the origin of the mummies that are covered with extracts from this ritual. Mummification, as the science is now called, is supposed to have been earlier than the pyramids or tombs, the first mummies having been buried in the sand. The Necropolis at Memphis is twenty-two miles in length by about half a mile in breadth, and here, it is supposed, one fourth of the population of Egypt was buried. The Great Pyramid was built 4000 years ago; but supposing the period of mummification to be only 3000 years, Mr. Gliddon calculates that the number of mummies in Egypt is about 500,000,000. A Cairo journal, a year or two ago, went further; it counted up the quantity of cloth in the wrappers, and came to the conclusion that if the linen were manufactured into paper, it would bring into the pacha's treasury £4,200,000! The objection as to the vast space so many mummies would fill, is met by a calculation which shows that they could be contained in a cube half a mile in length, breadth, and height; although so far from being cramped in room, the tombs of a single individual sometimes cover several acres of subterranean ground. Under the fourth dynasty the bodies were prepared by a saturation with natron, and were baked in ovens, and wrapped in woollen cloth. The sarcophagus of Cheops was a plain monolithic bin, and that of Mycerinus a rectangular chest, with an inscription in which the dead Osirian king is saluted with a sublime simplicity, "Live forever!" Under the twelfth dynasty linen is found in use, the bodies are partially gilded, and all the luxury in coffins had commenced, which, from the eighteenth dynasty down to the time of the Romans, remained at a great pitch of extravagance. Under the eleventh dynasty, round the "sides are usually painted the whole sepulchral equipment of the dead-his bows, arrows, quivers, shirts, wigs, mirrors, sandals, and cosmetics. They are, in fact, the pictorial portmanteau of an Egyptian gentleman twenty centuries before our era, as well as a bill of fare; his ducks, geese, haunches, shoulders, chops, bread, cakes, biscuits, flourhis drinks, water, beer, wine, white, northern, or Maræotic—his salt and pastiles-are detailed at the head of these coffins." The eighteenth dynasty is the era of the introduction of bitumen, which became known to the Egyptians through their conquests of Assyria; and the new fashion The prayer-book of the Egyptians, called the Book of the Dead, is traced as far back as 3200 B. C. It was a collection of hymns and liturgical | changed the color of the mummies, which, since prayers offered by and for the departed Egyptians; that epoch, are black, while those earlier emand extracts from it are met with on mummy cases, balmed are of the natural hue. By this time the and every other object connected with death or system of idolatry had attained its full developreligion. In this antique ritual are taught the ment; even the bodies of animals were at length doctrines of the soul's immortality and resurrection embalmed as well as those of men; and the reof the body; but instead of the Jewish command-ligious simplicity of the earlier mummies existed |