growth of Moses; it is mentioned by Herodotus; Plato sate under its shadow of all the obelisks which sprang up around it, it alone has kept its first position. One by one, it has seen its sons and brothers depart to great destinies elsewhere. From these gardens came the obelisks of the Lateran, of the Vatican, and of the Porta del Popolo; and this venerable pillar (for so it looks from a distance) is now almost the only landmark of the great seat of the wisdom of Egypt.

But I must not forget the view from the walls. Putting out of sight the minarets of Cairo in the distance, it was the same that Joseph and Moses had as they looked out towards Memphis, the sandy desert; the green fields of Egypt; and, already in their time ancient, the Pyramids in the distance. This is the first day that has really given me an impression of their size. In this view, the two great pyramids stand so close together, that they form one bifurcated cone; and this cone does, indeed, look like a solitary peak rising over the plain,-like Etna from the sea. On the other side, in the yellow desert, seen through the very stems of the palmtrees, rise three rugged sand-hills, indicating the site of Leontopolis, the City of the Sacred Lions; where in after-times rose the second colony and temple of the Jews under Onias.

One more object I must mention, though of doubtful interest, and thus, unlike the certainties that I have just been describing. In a garden, immediately outside the walls, is an ancient fig-tree, its immense gnarled trunk covered with the names of travellers (in form not unlike the sacred Ash of the sources of the Danube), where Coptic belief and the tradition of the Apocryphal Gospels fix the refuge of Mary and Joseph on the flight into Egypt. There can, of course, be no proof, but it reminds us that, for the first time, our eyes may have seen the same outline that was seen by our Lord.

4. THE NILE VALLEY.

I am now confined within the valley of the Nile-I may say literally confined. Never in my life have I travelled continuously along a single valley with all the outer world so completely shut off. Between two limestone ranges, which form part of the table-land of the Arabian and African desert, flows the mighty river, which the Egyptians called Hapi-Mu, "the genius of the waters;" which the Hebrews called sometimes "Ior," from some unknown meaning,sometimes "Sihor," the black.' Its brown colour, seen from the heights on either side and contrasted with the still browner and blacker colours of all around it, seems as blue and bright as the rivers of the North; hence, some say, the word "Nile," which is the form adopted by the Greeks, and by all the world since.

EGYPT.

Ford & West, Chrome-lith

Published by John Murray, Albemarle St. January, 1856.

The two limestone ranges press it at unequal intervals, sometimes leaving a space of a few miles, sometimes of a few yards, sometimes even a large plain. They are truly parts of a table-mountain. Hardly ever is their horizontal line varied; the only change in them is their nearer or less approach to the stream. In this respect the eastern range is a much greater offender than the western; and therefore the great line of Egyptian cities is on the western, not on the eastern shore; and hence Egypt has never, in its political divisions, followed the two shores, but the upper and lower course of the river. On the other hand, the western range, where it does approach, is more formidable, because it comes clothed with the sands of the African desert-sands and sand-drifts, which in purity, in brightness, in firmness, in destructiveness, are the snows and glaciers of the South. Immediately above the brown and blue waters of the broad, calm, lake-like river, rises a thick, black bank of clod or mud, mostly in terraces. Green-unutterably greenmostly at the top of these banks, though sometimes creeping down to the water's edge, lies the Land of Egypt. Green-unbroken, save by the mud villages which here and there lie in the midst of the verdure, like the marks of a soiled foot on a rich carpet; or by the dykes and channels which convey the life-giving waters through the thirsty land. This is the Land of Egypt, and this is the memorial of the yearly flood. Up those black terraces, over those green fields, the water rises and descends;

"Et viridem Ægyptum nigrá fœcundat arena."

And not only when the flood is actually there, but throughout the whole year, is water continually ascending through innumerable. wheels worked by naked figures, as the Israelites of old "in the service of the field," and then flowing on in gentle rills through the various allotments. To the seeds of these green fields, to the fishes of the wide river, is attached another natural phenomenon, which I never saw equalled:-the numbers numberless, of all manner of birds-vultures, and cormorants, and geese, flying like constellations through the blue heavens; pelicans standing in long array on the water side; hoopoos and ziczacs, and the (so-called) white ibis, the gentle symbol of the god Osiris in his robes of white, -èv Toσìv čiλúμevo-walking under one's very feet.

5. THE TOMBS OF BENI-HASSAN.

High along the eastern shore-sometimes varied by a green strip of palms, sometimes a sheer slope of Desert-sand, broken only by the shadow of a solitary Arab-rises a white wall of limestone rock. In the face of this cliff are thirty holes-the famous tombs of Beni

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Hassan, that is, of the children of Hassan, the wild Arab-tribe once settled near the spot. These tombs of Beni-Hassan are amongst the oldest monuments of Egypt, during or before the time of Joseph, yet exhibiting, in the most lively manner, hunting, wrestling, and dancing and curious as showing how gay and agile these ancient people could be, who in their architecture and graver sculptures appear so solemn and immoveable. Except a doubtful figure of Osiris in one, and a mummy on a barge in another, there is nothing of death or judgment or sorrow.

Every one looks here for the famous procession long supposed to be the presentation of Joseph's brethren to Pharaoh. Clearly it cannot be this. Besides the difference of numbers, and of gifts, and of name, there is no presentation to any one. The procession is in one of three compartments; the two lower show the ordinary droves of oxen and Egyptian servants, all equally relevant or irrelevant to the colossal figure of the owner of the tomb, who stands in the corner towering above the rest, with his dog by his side. Possibly, as the procession is of Asiatics-and yet not prisoners of war-they may, if the date will admit, be a deputation of Israelites after their settlement in Goshen.

6. THE TOMBS AND HERMITS.

The rocky wall still continues on the eastern side, still called by the names of successive Sheykhs or hermits who have lived or died on its desert heights-still perforated by the square holes which indicate ancient tombs. This eastern range is thus the long cemetery, the Appian Way, the Valley of Jehoshaphat of Egypt. It is, indeed, the Land of the Dead. Israel might well ask, "Because there were no graves in Egypt, hast thou brought us to die in the wilderness?" The present use of the tombs also brings before us how those deserted dwellings of the dead made Egypt the natural parent of anchorites and monks.

In one of these caves, close by the water's edge, lived for twelve years Sheykh Hassan, with his wife, two daughters, and his son-a hermit, though according to the Mahometan notions which permitted him still to have his family about him. Below was a little island, which he cultivated for lentiles. The two daughters at last married into the village on the opposite shore, which here, as usual, spreads out its green plain over against the white cliffs of the eastern bank, where the only mark of the fertilising inundation is in the brown discoloration which bears the trace of its rise immediately above the river-here alone unprofitable, or profitable only to such little portions of soil as the hermit had rescued. He still lived on with his wife and the little boy. One day the