1

because so much of the universal Woman, das EwigWeibliche,' in you; live immortal in the many-nationed Alexandria in which you have still song-celebrated sisters, in fair Greek Uranies and Athenês, not the less lovable, perhaps, because more like you than their names; live side by side with those in whose hearts and brains worked the high thoughts and profound emotions which, though you prayed

Χαῖρε, "Αδων ἀγαπητέ, καὶ ἐς χαίροντας ἀφίκι ευ,

2

substituted for your beloved Adônis, Christ!3

And

Yet the whirligig of Time brings its revenges. as, in those days, Adônis and Osiris gave place to Christ, there is, in these days, being substituted for the supernatural ideal of Christ, the natural ideal of Humanity; and that, in spite again of women's again of women's prayers and tears. But now having in the considerations suggested at Alexandria attained some such preliminary clearness, perhaps, with respect to the character of the Christian Revolution, as may put us in the right track in pursuing our further enquiries as to the origin of the myths of Christianity-let us bid adieu to the Capital of Neo-Platonism.

Wa-sh-shefáif sukkareeyeh.-Arab Song.

2 Farewell, beloved Adonis, and come-again to us then faring-well. 3 See Arnold, Essays in Criticism: Pagan and Mediaval Religious Sentiment. There is here admirably contrasted with this Adonis hymn of the Euparoma of Theocritus (B.c. 280) the Cantico delle Creature of S. Francis of Assisi, for a readily accessible original of which see Oliphant's Life of S. Francis, pp. 234-5. Compare Mr. Arnold's translation of the Syracusans in the above-cited work, pp. 193 flg., with that 'en vers François,' by Hilaire Bernard de Roqueleyre, Seig. de Longepierre: Les Idylles de Théocrite, Paris, 1688.

291

CHAPTER II.

AT THE ROCK-TOMB OF STABL-ANTAR.

"For which cause the ancients made Pan, that is Nature, to play upon an

harp; but sense, which only passively perceives particular outward objects, doth here, like the brute, hear nothing but mere noise and sound and clatter, but no music or harmony at all; having no active principle and anticipation within itself to comprehend it by, and correspond or vitally sympathise with it; whereas the mind of a rational and intellectual being will be ravished and enthusiastically transported in the contemplation of it, and of its own accord dance to this pipe of Pan, Nature's intellectual music and harmony.'

CUDWORTH, Intellectual System, vol. III. p. 600.

THE ORIGIN OF THE MYTHS OF NATURIANISM.

AT the Rock-tomb of Stabl-Antar, high on the Libyan hills that rise behind Asyoot, the capital of the Saeed, or Upper Egypt, the reflections which had for some time been occupying me on the Aspects of Nature in the Nile-valley; on the Wants of Mind and the Powers of Nature as, in their interaction, the Cause of the Myths of those religions of the First Age of Humanity, which we have distinguished as Naturianism; and on that reflection of Nature in the Nile-valley which we find in Osirianism-these varied reflections seemed here to come, at length, into some measure of articulate clearness-' es leuchtet mir ein !'

Hitherto travelling alone, with the brought from Malta, at Cairo, Mr. P

servants I had

and his brother

Captain R. P asked me to join them, and we together chartered a dahabieëh, or Nile-boat, which was named, from a Spanish reminiscence, 'La Niña' (the Pet). And our voyage was neither the less impressive, nor the less delightful, because our progress was slow. For we were sailing up that ancient river Αἴγυπτος, at the mouth of which, before it was yet called only by the name of Nileus, a king of the land, Menelaos, in the Homeric legend, of a date here almost modern, had anchored his fleet. We had, on the farstretching Tableland of the Pyramids of Geezeeh, of Abooseer, of Sakkara, and of Dashoor, entered on the exploration of a monumental world, taking us many millenniums back in Human History. In the towns and villages along the banks, on the narrow strip between the river and the desert, there was, whenever we cared to land, perpetual adventure amid new forms of life. Returning to our dahabieëh, she looked always worthy both of her name and its memories, with her half-furled wing-like sails fluttering in the wind, as she lay-to, all flashing with, here but fit, and not gaudy colour, from her gay pennon, and great white wings edged with blue, from her black hull ribanded with red, white, green, and yellow, and from the Oriental costumes of her crew. And ever, from joyous sunrise, through midday splendour, to gorgeous sunset, we were in the midst of Aspects of Nature which, in the unchanged grandeur, silence, and serenity of their beauty, had profoundly

1 See Bunsen, Egypt's Place, vol. II. pp. 86–105.

2 But it was not till after my return home that,-lying one sunny summer-afternoon on the greensward alone in Richmond Park, amid a

impressed the Human Spirit, and influenced its development, from ages immemorial. Yet, for more than a week, the feeling of it all was more oppressive than delightful; till, at length, landing at the little port of El Hamra, riding to, and through Asyoot, and then walking up the tomb-excavated promontory of the Libyan hills, we stood before Stabl-Antar.

Imagine a broad far-out-lengthened river with rich alluvial banks, wealthy with wheat and sugar, cotton also, tobacco, and innumerable vegetables, and overshadowed by frequent groves of village-hiding palms; here and there acacias, and one or two other trees, but the beautiful palm ever the undisputed king; imagine such river-banks everywhere soon, and so suddenly lost in the Desert that you can literally stand with one foot on the black, and life-teeming soil of the river-bank, and the other on the sands; and from the sands see rise a continuous range of steep desert hills towering, on either side, up; and imagine all bathed in a sunshine, the radiance of which, as it pours down from the depths of brilliant azure, seems almost unearthly. *** I can fancy the lifegiving river, flowing within wide deserts, under walling mountains, and between banks of its own soil, left in its overflows, murmuring as it gleams beneath the strong, serene, and solemn light, murmuring to some disenchanted, but silently resolute one of this anarchic time the psalm of an heroic life—a life gleaming with the reflection of those ideas of divine beauty and love which have made all

divine chorus of birds,-I became expressly aware of the voicelessness of Nature in Egypt.

the Immortals independent of the inconstancy and unsatisfyingness of earthly prosperity and personal affection a life which, in passing through a loveless desert-world, overflows but to make, of its sorrows, fairest fruit-covered banks. *** But, if true students of History, we shall try to divest ourselves of merely personal accidents of feeling, and endeavour to lay ourselves open to the sights of this Nile-world in a manner at once more simple and profound.

SECTION I.

THE ASPECTS OF NATURE IN THE NILE-VALLEY.

6

1. BEHOLDING the magnificent Oasis-valley at feet, I recalled Mr. Buckle's affirmation, that, in the civilisations exterior to Europe, all nature conspired to increase the authority of the imaginative faculties, and weaken the authority of the reasoning ones.'1 Well, suppose it granted-though I by no means admit that in Europe the Aspects of Nature are such as to have exercised no such influence on the imagination as History need take cognisance of-it could not hence follow, as he contends, that the division between European and Non-European civilisation must be the basis of the Philosophy of History,2 unless the European peoples and their civilisations were autochthonous. But they are not. Both have their

1 History of Civilisation, vol. 1. p. 118.

Ibid. pp. 138-9.

3 Compare Littré, in a review of Mr. Buckle's work in La Philosophie positive, t. II. p. 65.