the largest of which, built by King Cheops, justly ranked as one of the seven wonders of the world.

It was built of stones of prodigious size, the least of which were thirty feet, wrought with wonderful art, and covered with hieroglyphics. According to several ancient authors, each side was 800 feet broad, and as many high. The summit of the pyramid, which, to those who viewed it from below, seemed a point, was a fine platform, eighteen feet square. In the construction of this stupendous tomb it is said 100,000 men were employed; and these relieved every three months by the same number. Ten years were spent in hewing out the stone in Arabia and Ethiopia, and twenty more in the building. There are expressed on the pyramid in Egyptian characters the sums it cost for garlic, leeks, and onions only, for the workmen, and the whole amounted to 1,600 talents of silver (£210,000). Within are numberless chambers and passages, leading in all directions; and in the very heart of this giant tomb an empty sepulchre may still be seen, cut out of one single black stone, a little more than six feet long, and three in depth and breadth. Thus all this enormous expense, and the labours of so many thousands of men for so many years, ended in procuring for a prince in this vast and almost boundless pile, simply shelter for a little stone coffin, six feet in length.

When any person in a family died, all his kindred and friends would quit their usual habits, and, clothed in mourning, abstain from the bath, wine, and dainties of every kind, for a period, varying according to the rank of the dead, from forty to seventy days. In the meantime, the dead body was embalmed; and this was done in three different ways, also in accordance with the deceased's rank. Many hands were employed in this ceremony. The body having been stripped and cleansed, the brain was first drawn through the nostrils by an instrument made for the purpose; and the intestines then removed, through an opening in the side made with an Ethiopian stone ground as sharp as a razor, no iron being allowed to touch the flesh.

The persons employed in these two operations fled for their lives as soon as they had finished, for they were always pursued with stones by the standers by, and seldom escaped without a broken crown. But those who embalmed the body were treated with great honour. They filled it with myrrh, cinnamon, cassia, and other fragrant spices, except frankincense. As soon as it was sewn up, it was placed in a tub full of a solution of nitre, and there left to pickle for seventy days. At the end of this time it was taken out, dried, and swathed in linen fillets stuck together with a very thin gum, and then crusted over with perfumes. By this means, the entire figure of the body and the lineaments of the face, even to the hairs on the eyelids and eyebrows, were preserved in perfection. The body, thus embalmed, was delivered to the relations, who enclosed it in an open chest, and then placed it upright against the wall of their sepulchre-if they had one-or in their house.

All the people recognized the virtues of deceased persons, because before the body could be admitted into the sacred asylum of the tomb, the departed soul must undergo a solemn trial; and this peculiarity in the Egyptian funeral customs is one of the most remarkable in ancient history. The Egyptians would not suffer praise to be bestowed indiscriminately on all deceased persons. This honour was alone to be obtained from the public voice. An assembly of judges met on the other side of a lake, which they crossed in an open boat. He who sat at the helm was called Charon in their language, and this in all probability first gave the hint to "Orpheus," who had been in Egypt-and, after him, to the other Greeks-to invent their fiction of "Charon's Boat." As soon as a man was dead, his deeds were brought to trial. The public_accuser was first heard, and if he proved that the deceased had led a bad and worthless life, his memory was condemned, and he was deprived of burial; but if, on

the contrary, he had led a good and virtuous one, and had not been convicted of any crime, his body was interred with all honour.

Thus the people admired the power of the laws which extended even beyond the grave; and struck with the disgrace inflicted on the worthless dead, everyone was afraid to reflect dishonour on his own memory and on his family.

The first rank in Egypt, after the king, was the priesthood, and next to this the army, which possessed peculiar immunities. To every soldier, no matter what his rank, was granted a piece of arable land, equal to about nine acres of our measure, exempt from all tax and tribute. In addition to this, every man received a daily allowance of five pounds of bread, two of flesh, and a quart of wine; so that a portion could be set apart for the support of their families. 400,000 native soldiers were kept in continual pay, and inured to the fatigues of war by a severe and rigorous education. Foot, horse, and chariot races were performed with wonderful agility, and the world could not show better horsemen than the Egyptians; and the Scriptures in several places praise their cavalry. (Cant. i. 9; Isa. xxxvi. 9.) The military laws were easily preserved, for sons received them from their fathers, the profession of arms, like all others, being transmitted from father to son to the last generation. But the Egyptians loved peace better than war, and maintained soldiers only for their own security. They triumphed rather by the wisdom of their counsels, and the superiority of their knowledge, than by the force of their arms.

They were among the first who noted the course of the planets, and their observations led them to regulate their years from the course of the sun, the duration of which, from the remotest antiquity, being composed of 365 days. When a man fell sick, he was not left to the arbitrary will and caprices of a doctor, but was obliged to follow fixed rules for the cure of diseases, which were the observations of old and experienced sages, and were written in the sacred books, and every physician confined his practice to the cure of one disease only. The Egyptians entertained but a mean opinion of those exercises which did not contribute to invigorate the body or improve health; as well as of music, which they held to be a diversion not only useless, but dangerous, and calculated only to enervate the mind. No profession or trade was considered dishonourable; and every Egyptian was held noble, for as all were held to be descended from Misraim, their common father, the memory of their still recent origin in the minds of those living in the first age established amongst all a kind of equality, and stamped a nobility upon every person derived from the common stock.

Every man had his way of life assigned to him by the laws, and this was perpetuated from father to son. Two professions at one time, or a change of that to which a man was born, were never allowed; and by this means the arts were raised to the highest perfection.

The first libraries were in Egypt, and the titles they bore inspired an eager desire in all to enter them. They were called, "The Remedies for the Diseases of the Soul"; and that justly, for the soul was there cured of ignorance, the most dangerous of all maladies.

The ancients first wrote upon palm-leaves, next upon the inside of the "bark" of trees (from this the Latin liber, a book, and the English library), then upon tables covered with wax, on which the characters were impressed with a stylus, pointed at one end and flat at the other, to efface what had been written. At last the use of paper was introduced, which was made from the bark of the "papyrus," a reedy grass growing in great profusion in the marshy country; and this plant was also used for sail-tackling, clothes, and various other domestic purposes.

Polygamy was allowed in Egypt, except to the priests, who could marry but one woman; and whatever was the condition of the woman, whether free or a slave, her children were held to be free and legitimate. One custom in particular that prevailed through the land it is necessary to mention, for it reveals to us the darkness into which a great nation, universally renowned for for its wisdom, was plunged; this was, the marriage of brothers with their sisters, which was not only authorized by their laws, but in a great measure originated from their religion, from the example of their principal gods, Isis and Osiris.

The priests, as I have already told you, held rank second only to the king. They had great privileges and revenues, and their lands were exempted from all imposts. We read in Genesis xlvii. 26, that Joseph made it a law over the land of Egypt that "Pharaoh should have the fifth part; except the land of the priests only, which became not Pharaoh's." They were the repositories of religion and all the sciences, and they were on all occasions treated with the greatest honour and respect; and in so great an estimation were they held, that learned men from all parts sought them out, to consult them upon all that related to the mysteries of religion, and the most profound subjects in the several sciences.

It was in Egypt that Pythagoras conceived his favourite doctrine, "Metempsychosis," or transmigration of souls; for the Egyptians taught, that at the death of men their souls transmigrated into other human bodies; but, if their lives had been bad and vicious, they were imprisoned in the bodies of unclean beasts, to expiate their first digression, when, after the revolutions of some centuries, they again animated other human bodies. I should require many pages to describe to you fully the religion of the ancient Egyptians, but in this paper I must confine myself to a short account of the various deities worshipped by them.

No people were more superstitious than the Egyptians; none had a greater number of gods, of different orders and degrees.

Of these the principal were Osiris and Isis, representing the sun and moon. They also worshipped a great number of beasts-the ox, the dog, the wolf, the hawk, the crocodile, the ibis, the cat, and many others. It was death for any person to kill one of these animals intentionally, and severe punishments were decreed against whoever should accidentally kill an ibis or a cat.

Diodorus relates an incident of which he was an eye-witness during his stay in Egypt. A Roman having inadvertently killed a cat, the exasperated populace chased him to his house, and neither the authority of the king, who immediately dispatched a body of his guards, nor the terror of the Roman name, could rescue the unfortunate offender. Of all these animals the bull apis was the most famous.

Magnificent temples were raised, and extraordinary honours paid to him when alive, and still greater when dead. Then all Egypt went into mourning, and his obsequies were celebrated with extraordinary pomp. In the reign of Ptolemy Lagus, the bull apis dying of old age, the funeral outlay, besides the ordinary expenses, amounted to a sum equal to £11,250 of our money. After the last honours had been paid to the deceased bull-god, the next and immediate care was to provide a successor, and throughout all Egypt a close search was instituted for that purpose. The new bovine deity was to be known by a white spot in the form of a crescent on his forehead, on his back the figure of an eagle, and upon his tongue that of a beetle. As soon as found, mourning gave place to joy, and nothing was heard but rejoicings throughout the kingdom. The new god was brought to Memphis to take possession of his dignity, and there installed with a great number of ceremonies, with the particulars of which you would not be interested. The idea of the golden

calf set up by the Israelites near Mount Sinai, as also those afterwards set up by Jeroboam, was derived from Egypt, and a wretched imitation of their god Apis.

The Egyptians ascribed a divinity to the very roots in their gardens; and one reason assigned for the servile worship paid to animals is taken from fabulous history, which relates, that once the gods, in a rebellion made against them by monsters, fled into Egypt, and there concealed themselves under the form of different animals. Another is taken from the benefit which these several animals produced-the oxen by their labour, sheep by their wool, and dogs by their services in hunting (whence the god Anubis was always represented with a dog's head), the ibis, or Egyptian stork, was worshipped because he put to flight the winged serpents, with which Egypt would otherwise have been infested; the crocodile, because he defended them against the incursions of the Arabs, and the ichneumon, because he prevented the too great increase of the crocodiles themselves. This service the little animal is said thus to perform Watching the time when the crocodile is fast asleep on the muddy banks of the Nile-and it always sleeps with its jaws open the ichneumon leaps into the slimy monster's mouth, forces his way down to the entrails, and eats his exit through the belly. He also destroys their eggs whenever he comes across them.

To read of animals and vile insects honoured with religious worship, placed in temples, and maintained with great care and extravagant expense to be told that those who slew them were punished with death, and that these animals were embalmed and solemnly deposited in gorgeous tombs, assigned to them by the public-to hear that these extravagances were carried to such lengths that even leeks and onions were acknowledged as deities-were invoked in times of necessity, and depended upon for succour and protection -are absurdities which we, with the light of Christianity and science, can scarcely believe; and yet they have the evidence of all antiquity.