in the other world. This belief in an- of something vast and majestic, supeother life, however, crudely conceived, rior to a shah or a mogul, perhaps most persisting through so many centuries, nearly approached by the monarchs of may be one more instance of the un- Nineveh and Persepolis. But these changeable nature of the Egyptian were butterfly dynasties in comparison character; but it is also, like the Chris- with the eternity of Pharaohs. Quite tian use of masses for the dead, one different is the impression produced by more proof of the soul's need of some the later inscriptions, which attribute link between that life and this which to Ptolemies and Cæsars, as mere titles, continues here; and the most natural the same honors which were borne in security against being forgotten is the good faith by the real Pharaohs. The belief that the prayers of the living gods are stale, the titles are stale, the can help the dead. We observe that hieroglyphics are stale. The whole the whole religion of this strange peo- machine has become like the Holy Rople was built upon that which Greek man Empire a century ago, waiting for and Roman disliked or ignored. The a Napoleon to dissolve it with a touch. wish of Pharaoh to build himself an Yet such is the persistence of tradieverlasting sepulchre and reign over tion in this land of wonders that some the dead as over the living, is nobler of the grandest pieces of Egyptian than the exclamation of Achilles: "I architecture are the work of these Ptolwould rather be a slave on the farm of emies, a feeble race, capable of produc a poor man, one of little substance, ing now and then a Philadelphus or a here, than be king among the dead." Cleopatra, but for the most part as This being so, and when we consider mediocre as the Spanish Hapsburgs. that all that delights us here is the For all that, one would have liked to work of the men who believed thus, see the poorest of Ptolemies wearing there is to my mind something ungrate- the golden double crown of Upper and ful and indecent in what is being done Lower Egypt, borne aloft like the pope nowadays "in the interest of science." in his sella gestatoria, and preceded To break into mummy cases, to tear like him by feather faus, as he went. open the cerements piously wound attended by his princes and great men. about the revered corpse four thousand to offer incense to Amen-Ra, of whom years ago, and expose in glass cases he was himself the impersonation. the blackened, naked carcases of kings and princesses to any idle tourist who will pay sixpence for the sight, is a mean return for a great boon. Science, one would think, would have had enough as soon as the identity of the mummy had been certified. At any rate, nothing beyond the photograph can be demanded by science. Why not break open the tombs at Westminster and the Tower, and send their occupants to the British Museum ? The glories of unmerciful kings, the tale of lopped heads and hands made up by royal scribes, the names of conquered tribes and cities sacked, the endless ascription of divine honors to the kings, help to complete our conception of "the pomp of Egypt," the pride and power of the kings who could dare to undertake works like the monuments of Thebes. We become aware Whatever the degrees of interes may be, whatever the estimate we for of the beauty of Egyptian art - abou which volumes may be and have been written - there can be but one opinion about its impressiveness. There are not many buildings in the world which can justly be called sublime. One of these is the Parthenon and the group of which it forms a part; some castles. like Windsor; some cathedrals, Seville. Milan, Durham, St. Peter's, may claim that appellation. There are plenty of big things at Rome; but there is little at Rome which can properly be called sublime. Even the Coliseum is, afte all, an enormous Plaza de Toros. sublimity with which the Coliseum is credited has overgrown it like th plants which an enlightened gover ment weeded out, and is partly due a Christian tradition, partly to moc The light and "Childe Harold." I don't ing which is present in the rudest form of Christian art, it must have been and in its defaced and ruined condition it still perhaps is more majestic than any other building in the world, both in itself and as the focus of such a city of temples. know that any one ever called the Baths of Diocletian sublime-they are very big; or the Pont du Gard, or Charing Cross Station, or the Forth Bridge. Scale is a necessary element of sublimity, but sentiment is another; and a building which is made large or Philæ, that most attractive of Egyplofty because it is to hold a great many tian holy places, has a different sentipeople or to carry water or trains at a ment. We are no longer oppressed by high level is no more sublime than the the greatness of the kings. The place Suez Canal. But if anything is sub- has its own religion, and was a natural lime, Karnak is sublime. Nothing in sanctuary and a place of pilgrimage. architecture affects the traveller more Here were the sources of the Nile, and than the first sight of the obelisks and here stood Crophi and Mophi, if these pylons of Karnak rising against the names were not, as I have always suspalm groves, and colored by the even-pected, invented there and then by the ing sun; and this feeling is only deep-humorous priest at Thebes to mystify ened by seeing them close at hand in Herodotus. Crophi and Mophi are the clear daylight. It is not only the there no longer, and the Nile now rises immense scale of the work which elsewhere; but the island still charms affects the imagination, nor the propor- us. Phile was one of the burial-places tion, nor the variety and disposition of of Osiris, and the birthplace of Horus. the buildings, nor the beauty of form, Thus the island had its own local charnor the wealth of decoration - though acter; it had also the charm of a picall of these elements of grandeur are turesque situation among the granite present; what is overwhelming is the rocks, the flowing water, and the sense of majesty and power devoted to pleasant palm-trees which surround it. the service of religion. Nor need this Here you may sit in the shade on the impression be weakened by the self- warm stone roof and listen to the dronglorification of these mighty monarchs. ing sakîyehs, whose combined music They ascribed all their glory to the sounds like a peal of distant bells, and gods; and their belief in Pharaoh as dream of a less remote past, the days the mirror of deity was as sincere and of Ptolemies and Roman emperors, of genuine as Innocent III.'s belief in the pax Romana, the great organization Papacy, and has nothing in common which reached from the central artery with the apotheosis of a Roman em- at the Palatine to Syene, at the furthest peror. I cannot conceive any approach extremity of the empire; good laws, to a temple more subduing and awe- good roads, the golden age of the inspiring to the worshipper than the world, as yet unclouded by the fanatmile-long avenue of sphinxes which icism of Pagans, Christians and led from Luxor to Karnak. The num- Mohammedans. The first Pharaoh ber of courts, the long vistas, the commemorated at Phila is Nectanebis, height, number, and crowded variety a patriot-king who withstood the Perof columns and capitals, the half-light sians. The latest is Justinian, in whose admitted into the temples only from reign the buildings were converted to roofs and gateways, contrasting with the use of Christian worship. Last of the full sunlight falling on pylons and all, after fourteen hundred years, plaobelisks and shafts in the open courts, carded in ugly papal capitals, comes the must all have raised admiration and name of Gregory XVI., who sent a reverence higher, and prepared the band of excavators to Philæ in 1841. mind for the wonder of wonders, the For though two Roman empires have Hall of Columns. Barbaric in color, risen and fallen, Rome is as eternal as disfigured by representations of brutish Egypt. gods, with little of the delicacy of feel From The Spectator. WITCHCRAFT IN A SOMERSETSHIRE VILLAGE. some men outzide the door twold her he true. An' some time not The ex I THINK it may be interesting to some of your readers to hear about the witchcraft of a Somersetshire village at the present time. The village is a small one, under two hundred inhabitants; it is on the edge of a mining district, two miles from a railway, and ten from Bristol. So it is by no means This story dates from an isolated place forgotten by, and for- back. I will now give an instance of getting, the world. Last month I was last autumn. The wives of the laborers painting a portrait of the oldest inhab- living in two adjoining cottages in the itant, as she expressed it, "born and village were not on friendly terms. bred in the parish." In the course of The younger woman, who had been a sitting she told me the following brought up in a large mining village story, which she would not say posi- some five miles off, where she had been tively she believed; and I don't think in service before her marriage, thought she did believe it, but she trusted the herself overlooked. Why, I was person who told her, and so simply able to discover. So she went to congave it as a report of facts as to which sult a planet-ruler (the name now given she could offer no explanation. Di- to white witches) in Bristol. rectly my sitter had left my studio, I pert gave an 66 opinion," - which in wrote the story down in her own any other profession would have been words, which I now give: considered vague. It was to the effect that the overlooked woman was to go home and look out of her house, and she would then see the witch go up the road. Whether this stayed the bewitching, or satisfied the woman, I do not know, for it does not do to inquire of the younger people; they are greatly afraid of being laughed at, and are ashamed of their belief, the only hopeful sign about them in this respect. It seems strange that the astroland not on the "blasted heaths" ogers should live in towns like Bristol, the top of Mendip; but such is the fact, as may be proved by the Saturday editions of one of the local papers. where advertisements of planet-rulers are sometimes to be seen. Old John, that do live out to Knowle Hill, have a-told I his vaether, George, had a sister, an' when she wer' young a man what a-lived next door come a-courten of she. But she wouldn't have none on him. But she were took bad, an' had a ravennen appetite, an' did use to eat a whole loaf at once. Zoo her brother thought she wer' overlooked; an' he went down to Somerton, where a man did bide who wer' a real witch, and zo zoon as George got to un, he did zay, "I do knaw what thee bist a-cwome var; thy zister be overlooked by the neigh bor as do live next door. I'll tell 'ee what to do, an' 'twont cost thee no more than a penny." Zoo her told un to goo whoam an' goo to the blacksmith an' get a new nail, an' not to let thick nail out of hers hand till her'd a-zeed un make a track, then her were to take an' nail down the track. Zoo George did as her wer' twold, an' when her zeed the man make a track, her took the nail in one hand an' the hammer .n t'other, an' a-nailed down the track. And the man did goo limping vrom that time, and George's sister she got well. Zome time arter that, the man wer' took very bad, an' George's wife did work vor a leädy, an' she twold her missus he wer' ill. Zoo her missus gied her a rhabbut to teäke to the man, but when she got to his house on 1 shrewdly said that the best way to remove the spell was for the sons to leave off drinking beer, — advice, I fear, not more heeded than that of many regular the "enemye," and many are the tales a secure cover placed there by his I have been told by one old woman as mother, also by the exorcism of a Bible to the doings of her " enemye "next put under the bewitched man's pillow. door. However, she had a protector in The old woman wanted the squire to her cat, who came and told her when exercise his powers as a magistrate the witch was at hand, and who it was somehow to restrain this witch and her who had blasted the potatoes or pre- familiar, a chicken which ran about vented her fowls from laying. I re- and "peeped" at her. The magistrate member, a few years ago the squire got was evidently a last resource, as she a letter from an old woman in the vil- said she had consulted an itinerant lage mysteriously worded. It said that planet-ruler, to whom she had given he must come and see her; she could all the money she had. This man not come to him for the " enemyes were watching, and she had something to tell him, and what it was would also explain how "young Mr. C. met with his death." Mr. C. had accidentally temperance advocates. fallen into a well and been drowned a Of the many stories I have come short time before. The squire thought across, the following is perhaps one of he might be going to hear the revela- the most interesting and complete, contion of a murder, but it was only her taining, as it does, a regular incantadesire that he should do something tion: An old woman in the village that should protect her from her next- had rheumatism, also, I think, her pig door neighbor. This neighbor was a was ill, and so presumably "overwidow living alone, who had the repu- looked." Her son called in a planettation of being a witch, certainly no ruler who happened to be in the one ever looked the part better. She neighborhood. This man went to the was old and grey-haired, with remark- cottage, and prepared for action. A ably bright, sparkling eyes, and a face sheep's heart was stuck full of pins not only powerful, but strikingly hand- and roasted before the fire. While some in its regular features, although this was being done, the assembled wrinkled and brown. Her carriage people chanted the following incantawas erect; she always wore a shawl and sun-bonnet, and grasped in one hand an umbrella, and in the other a basket. She was clever and well spoken, and no doubt felt a sort of power from her position. The complaint of her neighbor was that when her sons came back at night from the public house in the next village they were quite sober till they came under the influence of the witch. She said she was watching at her door for her sons one night, when the witch also came out and watched; directly the sons came in sight of the witch they lost control of body and mind, and, in fact, behaved like drunken men. Some- The planet-ruler was a sharp fellow, times, to such an extent were they and took his payment in kind a Sun"overlooked," that one of them would day coat-giving in exchange some hold conversation with demons at the worthless article, so that when he was bottom of the well, and try to accept prosecuted for obtaining money under the invitation to "come down," a false pretences, he was acquitted on proposal not carried out on account of the technical ground that the coat was tion : It is not this heart I mean to burn, At intervals, in response to the request given only in exchange for, I think, superstitions. What is specially sad a model of a ship. It was the squire is that not only the old people, but who committed him; his oath as a also the young ones who have been magistrate required him. him to banish to a Board school, still hold to these witchcraft, though the original mean- wretched legacies of unnumbered gening of the words implied a belief in it erations. I fear if a company of strollas "black art," and not as obtaining ing players were to act "Macbeth" in money under false pretences." The the village schoolroom, a large number people concerned in this last story are of the audience would look upon the still alive, and, I regret to say, some of witches in it as anything but symthem still believe in these degradingbolical. H. S. THE CANNON OF ANDORRA. -The ambition of small republics, more particularly in matters relating to armaments, is apt to be somewhat out of proportion to the real importance of the State and to its actual requirements. A correspondent, writing recently to the Globe, tells a story of which it may well be said, se non è vero, è ben trovato. A short time ago, he would have us believe, the authorities of Andorra, the little republic in the Pyrenees, conceived the idea that there was something lacking in the dignity of their State, and that something was cannon. Cannon they determined they must have, and, accordingly, inquiries were instituted, and they found that Krupp, of Essen, was a good man for such articles. But when Krupp, of Essen, sent them his price-list, they found that cannon were more expensive things than they had imagined, and that the sum that had been destined to procure three or four guns would only buy one. This was disappointing; but, after consideration, they decided that one cannon was, after all, perhaps enough to give an air of importance to their little valley, and, anyhow, was certainly better than none. So one they determined to have, and Krupp was entrusted with the order. At last the cannon arrived in Andorra, and was duly put into position on the highest point of ground in the republic, where all comers might see how well the valley was protected. Evidently, the next thing to do was to try how it acted. So they carefully studied the directions that came with it, and loaded it accordingly. Then it suddenly struck one peculiarly bright spirit that before they fired they ought to know where they were going to fire to. The ball carried, he represented, about three times the distance of the whole length of Andorra. If they aimed to the north they would fire right SNAKES IN INDIA. A contemporary remarks that, in spite of the large sums paid every year in India as rewards for the destruction of poisonous reptiles, the latter seem to be as numerous as ever, no less than eight hundred persons having been killed in the Punjaub in a year by snake bites. Our contemporary suggests that the prevalence of snakes may be attributed partly to the Mussulman prejudice against swine, and to the British love of pig sticking. Snakes and hogs cannot live together, and, in the struggle for existence, it is the hogs that survive. On the whole, we should be more inclined to attribute the snakes to the high rewards that are offered for their destruction. The wily native is quite capable of keeping preserves of them, and thus earning a dishonest and rather risky livelihood. Globe. |