and the exodus early in that dynasty. If we tion that was coming upon his land and peotake the reckoning of Hales, which many ple. (VIII. 8; IX. 5.) I have never seen any are disposed to consider the best Bible thing that so completely brought before me chronology, both sojourn and exodus would the idea of a destroying flood as the inundafall in the time before this dynasty. In tion of the Nile. The river bursts through either case we could scarcely expect any re-its banks and covers the whole valley; in ference to the Israelites. But setting this aside, although Joseph's administration might have been recorded, the disasters of the exodus would have found no place in the annals of a nation that was especially averse to chronicling defeat. The kind of illustration we have a right to expect does not relate to the main facts of the history, but to such matters as the details of manners. the midst rushes a broad turbid stream agitated by the strong north wind blowing against its current; on either side landmarks are carried away, and the villages stand like islands connected by dykes, which the water threatens to break. Until custom has used one to the scene, it is a terrible realization of the calamities of a flood. I have dwelt upon these less-known topics in preference In these matters the accuracy of the Bi- to the histories of Joseph and Moses which ble is strikingly shown. The Greek writers, have been more carefully studied. Yet both some of whom, and especially Herodotus, these will gain a fresh interest with those were not inaccurate observers, have been who will read them with the Egyptian moncited to set right the Biblical account. In uments for illustration. There they may see every case the monuments have proved that the investiture of a Joseph with his badges the sacred historian was correct, and the pro- of office, the robe of fine linen, and collar of fane historian in error. The most interest- gold; there they may see the corn carefully ing illustrations are, however, those which stored in granaries, as though for the years show a perfect knowledge of the country. of famine. Such boats as the papyrus-ark These are quite as frequent in the Prophets of Moses are there shown, and there are foras in the Pentateuch. Thus we read in Exo-eign brickmakers under hard taskmasters. dus, that when the Israelites saw Pharaoh in The whole series of sculptures is an uninpursuit of them "they said unto Moses, be- tended commentary upon, and an impartial cause [there were] no graves in Egypt, hast witness to, the truth of the Bible history. thou taken us away to die in the wilderness." (XIV. 11.) The prophet Hosea declared of the fugitives of Ephraim, " Egypt shall gather them up, Memphis shall bury them." (IX. 6.) Egypt is, above all countries, a land of ancient tombs. The rocky ridge that shuts in the plain and valley is honeycombed in its face with sepulchral grottos; in the edge of the desert are countless mummy-pits; on its surface are many built tombs. Scarcely a day's journey passes but the voyager up the Nile sees some of these; first, the great chains of the Pyramids; then, when the mountain approaches, the entrances of grottos along its face, sometimes a field of sepulchres. Numerous as are the modern tombs, they are insignificant by the side of their truly innumerable predecessors. But of all the ancient sites, Memphis has the greatest necropolis. For about fifteen miles this city of the dead extends along the edge of the Great Desert, marked from afar by the pyramids rising regally above the smaller monuments. Wherever excavations have been made, it seems as though there had been an Perhaps the most important use of Egypeconomy of space, for there is frequently but tian archeology in reference to the Bible is a narrow passage between the lines of tombs. the manner in which it illustrates the fulfilNo other graveyard in Egypt rivals this. ment of phrophecy. Here, again, I know Therefore the prophet spoke of it instead of that many, wearied by the rash and presumpThebes the seat of empire, or any other great tuous interpretations of prophecy which have town better known in Palestine. Amos of late years abounded, will object to the again uses the inundation of the Nile," the very discussion of the subject. Yet if they flood of Egypt," as a symbol of the destruc-acknowledge the truth of the Bible, they In I may here mention a modern illustration. It is well-known that many ancient Egyptian customs are yet observed. Among these one of the most prominent is the wailing for the dead by the women of the household, as well as those hired to mourn. the great cholera of 1848 I was at Cairo. This pestilence frequently follows the course of rivers. Thus, on that occasion, it ascended the Nile, and showed itself in great strength at Boolák, the port of Cairo, distant from the city a mile and a half to the westward. For some days it did not traverse this space. Every evening at sunset, it was our custom to go up to the terrace on the roof of our house. There, in that calm still time, I heard each night the wail of the women of Boolák for their dead borne along in a great wave of sound a distance of two miles, the lamentation of a city stricken with pestilence. So, when the first-born were smitten, "there was a great cry in Egypt; for [there was] not a house where [there was] not one dead." (Exodus XIII. 30.) must be prepared to give a reverent consid- tion of her old monuments in the time of eration to the prophecies it contains. The desolation that followed the capture by Tibelief in the inspiration of these prophecies tus? The cases of Damascus and Sidon are, is a necessary consequence of a belief in the I frankly acknowledge, more difficult of extruth of the Bible. There is no middle course planation. Yet if we admit the veracity of a prophecy must either be authoritative what sacred history relates as to the fall or an imposture. of the one, and profane history as to that of the other, there seems to be a sufficient answer to the requirements of the case. Very often the dissociation of people and city might be reasonably supposed to relieve the latter from the curse that fell on it for the punishment of its inhabitants. Damascus, be it remembered, was Syrian, and for centuries has been Arab. Who rebuilt it we know not, after the Assyrians had destroyed it; but in St. Paul's time it was ruled by an Arab prince; and from the earlier days of Mohammedanism it has been a seat of Arab power. The case of Petra is well worth looking into. There the full measure of punishment came surely, if it tarried long. First the Idumæans were driven into their rocky fastnesses, there for a while to resist the power of Greece and Rome. Even then, however, the dominant race, that of the Nabathæans, appears to have been not Edomite In consequence of the uncritical mode in which prophecy has been studied, this branch of Biblical inquiry has been neglected by many who have not felt any doubt as to the authenticity of the Scriptures, and others have adopted views of the nature of sacred prophecy in some degree tending to lower its dignity, and to weaken the evidence of its Divine origin. Thus Professor Stanley, avoiding the rocks on which Keith ran his vessel, steers into very doubtful shallows. He thus writes in the preface to his Sinai and Palestine: "Those who visit or describe the scenes of sacred history, expressly for the sake of finding confirmations of Scripture, are often tempted to mislead themselves and others by involuntary exaggeration or invention. But this danger ought not to prevent us from thankfully welcoming any such evidences as can truly be found to the faithfulness of the sacred records. One such aid is sometimes sought in the supposed fulfilment of ancient prophecies by the appearance which some of the sites of Syrian or Arabian cities present to the modern traveller. But, as a general rule, these attempts are only mischievous to the cause which they intend to uphold. The present aspect of these sites may rather, for the most part, be hailed as a convincing proof that the spirit of prophecy is not so to be bound down. The continuous existence of Damascus and Sidon, the existing ruins of Ascalon, Petra, and Tyre, showing the revival of those cities long after the extinction of the powers which they once represented, are standing monuments of a most important truth, namely, that the warnings delivered by 'holy men of old,' were aimed not against stocks and stones, but then, as always, against living souls and sins, whether of men or of nations."-P. xvi. but Arab. for full eighteen hundred years, the Edomite But for centuries past, probably race has disappeared, and the only population of its mountain and valley has been a colony descended from its hereditary enemies. Some have cavilled at there being now a scanty peasant-population of the valley of Petra. But these very peasants are called "the children of Israel," Benee-Israeel, and I find in their existence a confirmation of the truth of the Bible-narrative which relates the settling of a band of Simeonites, in Hezekiah's time, in Mount Seir (1 Chron. iv. 42, 43), no less than a fulfilment of the prophecy that Israelites, apparently the most southern, should hold "the Mount of Esau." (Obadiah 19. I think that here we have witnesses enough The principle put forth in this passage to justify our maintaining those rules of inwould, I think, reduce all seemingly literal terpretation which a long series of great prophecy to a tropical sense. The obvious divines has upheld. Let Egypt supply a answer is, How could men's souls be punished fresh test, Egypt of which each site has been if their bodies did not suffer? how could na- well explored, and of which the post-biblical tions be punished except by the wasting of history presents few gaps. As I travelled their fields and cities ? Professor Stanley's through the country I was very much struck reply is a citation of the restoration of certain by the utter ruin of some cities and towns, cities, some yet standing, which were once and the long continuance of others, when all denounced as to be utterly destroyed. The the advantages of position and ancient improphecies, however, either did not speak of portance have been in favor of the former. their final ruin, or else did not declare the im- I have unriddled this difficulty by the prophpending calamities to be the last that should ecies relating to them. For instance, it is fall upon them. Ascalon, Petra, and Tyre, said of Memphis, "Noph shall be waste and if not at once destroyed, certainly virtually desolate, without an inhabitant" (Jer. xlvi. perished many centuries ago. Jerusalem is 19); and "Thus saith the Lord God, I will still a city; but where has prophecy been also destroy the idols, and I will cause [their] more literally fulfilled than in the oblitera-images to cease out of Noph." (Ezek. xxx. should be smitten "into seven streams." In any case, the Nile in the Delta has so failed, that now the only navigable branches are the two that were formerly artificial canals, so that the seven streams are fordable. Not less definite are the prophecies of the failure of the papyrus and other reeds, and the flax, the destruction of the fisheries, and the consequent ruin of the main branches of Egyptian industry. (Isaiah xix.) Not less remarkable is the exact fulfilment of these predictions. The papyrus is unknown in Egypt, the reeds are no longer a feature of its vegetation, English cotton is sold in its streets in the place of its once famous fine linen, and its fisheries can scarcely support the half-savage population of a small district. In the political history, the one prophecy that "There shall be no more a prince of the "land of Egypt" (Ezek. xxx. 13), has been literally fulfilled in the stranger rule that has been the curse of the country since the sec ond Persian conquest, more than two thousand years ago. 13.) Except Saïs, Memphis, the greatest city of Egypt, is alone unmarked by the ruins of temples. The remains are utterly insignificant, although the tombs are great and extensive enough to show the size and wealth of the city. So, too, of Thebes it is prophesied, "No shall be rent asunder" (Ezek. xxx. 16), which may merely refer to the distress of its people; but when we stand amid its ruins, torn by a great earthquake, of which Eusebius has preserved the record, we incline to the literal interpretation. Nowhere else in Egypt has the solid masonry of the temples been thus destroyed. Still more distinct are the prophecies of the drying of the Red Sea, which has taken place since the latest date to which perverted ingenuity has endeavored to bring down the prophetic writings. "The Lord shall utterly destroy the tongue of the Egyptian sea." (Isaiah xi. 15.) "The waters shall fail from the sea." (Isaiah xix. 5.) In the last two thousand years the head of the Gulf of Suez has retired some twenty miles. Who can look at that dried-up bed and doubt "the sure word of prophecy?" So is the failure of the Nile foretold (Isaiah xix. 5), and, apparently, also the destruction of its seven streams (xi. 15), although the latter passage may mean not that the Egyptian river should be smitten in "the seven streams," but that "the river," that is Euphrates, Egyptian archæology has had the reputation of being a narrow and fruitless pursuit. I have endeavored to show that, if rightly prosecuted, it has the highest human interest. In these days of contest, so important a province should not be left to those who are indifferent or hostile to the best purpose of honest and earnest inquiry. CROPSEY'S VIEW ON THE HUDSON. One of the most beautiful pictures of the scason is not in the exhibition of the Royal Academy. It is a large landscape painting, by Jasper Cropsey, representing a view on the Hudson river, from the heights above one of the small towns upon its banks. The spectator stands high up, and somewhat back, upon a wooded hill with an opening before him, through which is a broad view of the river; the land descending from the foreground to the nearest bank, which is, however, quite in the distance. The time is autumn, and the foliage of the tall trees and tangled underwood, intermingles a brilliant green with colors of red and yellow that vie in richness and intensity with the hue of flowers. Every one who has visited America knows how glowing is the scenery, how it altogether surpasses the experience of Europe, and would seem to those who have seen no more than the picture exaggerated. In the painting before us, however, it is generally agreed that the painter has rather subdued these brilliant tones than otherwise. The country is scen under a vivid sun. The subject is treated with great skill. With a sharp eye and a firm hand, Mr. Cropsey is enabled to scize the precise forms of organic life, or the broken ground, in all their variety and force; and the effect of air is conveyed by the movement in the atmosphere above, by the smoke which goes dancing from the steamer's funnel, and by the endless change of tint which prevades the entire scene. Still, as in nature, the varying forms and countless tints of innumerable glancing shadows viewed under one sun by one pair of eyes, aro blended into a harmonious whole. There is complete life and thorough repose. One little trait will illustrate the completeness with which the work is done; it is a test which we have often applied to pictures, and very seldom found them answer to it. In nature, the forms of the foliage, the position of the treetrunks, the leaves and the flower-stems, will be found to present an endless variety of direction. The landscape painter too often suffers his hand to fall into a pattern: if any variety be introduced, the variations are repeated at certain intervals; and an inorganic mechanism may be detected at a glance. There is nothing of the kind in Mr. Cropsey's picture. It is this, as well as the force and freedom of the coloring, which makes you feel that placed before the canvas, you stand upon the wooded height, looking over the vast expanse of the Hudson valley, breaththe very air of that magnificent region. The painter's magic makes the room wall open, and the possessor of the picture becomes owner of one of the loveliest and grandest estates in which eye can revel.-Spectator. THE ELDER'S DAUGHTER. CAST her forth in her shame; All of our house and line; She is dead to me evermore:- There is no shame in dying: I did not curse her, did I? I meant not that, O Lord! We are cursed enough already; Let her go with never a word: I have blessed her often already. You are the mother that bore her, I do not blame you for weeping; They had all gone before her, And she had our hearts a-keeping; And oh the love that we bore her! I thought that she was like you; I thought that the light in her face Dark without and within.- There by the side of him, I wot not what ails me to-night; I cannot lay hold on a text. O Jesus! guide me aright, For my soul is sore perplexed, And the Cook seems dark as the night. And the night is stormy and dark; And dark is the way of sin; Her bed so pure and white! How often I've thought and said Was a whited sepulchre; And I've buried my heart in her; We will go altogether, She, and you, and I; There's the black peat-lag 'mong the heather, Any foul place will do For a grave to us now in our shame :- But she shall not sleep with them, Is it sin, you say, I have spoken? Lord, is it the coming change? I scarce know what I have said; The love that was owing to them And then she brought us to shame, Do we not all of us err? Oh, might I but look on her That I was in Abraham's bosom, Like some pale, withered blossom, Do not say, when I am gone, That she brought my gray hairs to the grave She'll have sorrow enough to brave; And the stream will be swollen too; and hark, Is that her hand in mino? How the water roars in the Lynn ! It's an ugly ford in the dark. What did you say? To-night Might she sleep in her little bed? Now, give me thine, sweet wife : I thank thec, Lord, for this grace of thine, ORWELL. From The Press. METAPHYSICS. WE are frequently told that we live in a very materialistic age, which, where it is not wholly absorbed in pleasure and amusement, only cares about intellectual exertion in its bearing on political objects or the pursuit of wealth. Our ears, it is said, are stuffed with cotton, and thereby dead to the "voices of the Infinite," and regardless of all the great problems of the soul and the universe. In spite of all this, however, metaphysics continue to flourish and abound, and as they excite controversy, we conclude that they find readers. Those who are inclined to take a gloomy view of the fortunes of abstract thought, may be re-assured when they see the number of works devoted to it which are constantly appearing. The circles made by Mr. Mansel's plunge into that "Parson's Pleasure," the "Limits of Religious Thought," are still spreading. To Mr. Maurice has succeeded as a critic of that work Dr. John Young, who takes the field in a book entitled "The Province of Reason." Mr. Mansel's article on "Metaphysics," in the Encyclopædia Britannica, is also about to appear in a separate form. The Bampton lecturer's metaphysical opinions are also the subject of a chapter in Dr. Whewell's "Philosophy of Discovery," which forms the concluding portion of his great work on the Inductive Sciences in general. The Master of Trinity has also nearly ready a second volume of his "Platonic Dialogues for English Readers"-and Oxford adds her quota to the appreciation of the academic sage through Mr. Poste, of Oriel, who has lately published a translation of the Philebus. Scotland is represented by Dr. M'Cosh, who has brought out a large volume of the "Intuitions of the Mind." Mr. Bains' Psychology forms the subject of an article in the new number of the National Review. Mr. Craik appears with an enlarged and revised edition of his Introduction to Bacon (our interest about whom is at the present day purely of a speculative kind); and the University of Dublin, seldom behindhand in matters of pure philosophy, is to be represented by the Rev. J. Macmahon's "Treatise on Metaphysics, chiefly in connection with Revealed Religion."-What degree of interest on the part of the general public this metaphysic crop really represents, it is difficult to say, because readers are now so numerous, and the quantity of books published so far beyond any one's power to keep up with, that there has come to be a special public for every thing. The question, however, is likely to be tested by Mr. Herbert Spencer, who has issued proposals for publishing, by subscription, a connected series of philosophical works, to form a complete system. London readers would not expect such a project to succeed, but they are perhaps unaware what a considerable following Mr. Spencer has in the provinces. At Bradford, for instance, as we hear, he is a sort of Pope-enjoying a reputation like Voltaire's at the time when that potentate's influence was greatest. No thinker, except perhaps Mr. Mill, is considered worthy of being placed anywhere near him; and even the latter philosopher's views are now, probably, not so palatable as formerly to the thorough-going advocates of universal suffrage and redistribution of landed property. While we are on the subject of metaphysics, we will take an opportunity of suggesting a reprint in this line to some (in both senses) speculative publisher. Mr. Bohn has issued a translation of Kant's Kritih, but readers often require some additional help besides a translator's notes. We wonder that no one has thought of republishing in a separate volume Mr. Wirgman's articles on Kant, which appeared many years since in the Encyclopædia Londinensis. They form the casiest introduction to the German philosopher with which we are acquainted. ARSENIC IN AGRICULTURAL PLANTS.-Dr. I The arsenic, being thus proved to enter vegetaE. W. Davy has detected arsenic in peas, cabbages, and Swedish turnips, which had been manured with superphosphate of lime. This fertilizer is very extensively manufactured in England, especially for use on the turnip crop, from various phosphatic minerals, and from bones, by the help of arsenical oil of vitriol. tion, may very casily and naturally pass into animals, and be retained in their organism. This is another striking, presumptive proof of the worthlessness of that toxological evidence which hangs a man on the strength of minute traces of arsenic being found in working up several pounds of flesh and viscera. |