ways in which the Egyptians expressed the truth of Existence. Yet it was, for the most part, but in the language of such fictions as children amuse themselves with. Nay more, these fictions, though they were given a new life by Christianism, were literally believed only by the ignorant multitude. By us, then, of a maturer age, by us of a better disciplined imagination, let consciousness of the Death-environment of Life, of eternal Rebirth, and of the infinite Splendour that ever enspheres our passing joys and sorrows, find more manly forms of expression than unverifiable dreams about the Hereafter, and the Unknowable.

At length, descending from Stabl-Antar, I rejoined my companions at the foot of the mountain, by the Moslem Cemetery, in the desert, separated by a palm-and-acacia grove from the city. Remounting, we galloped into the town, went into a Bazaar, to supply ourselves with the pipe-bowls for which Sioot is famous, and then to a bath. In the dimness of the vaulted labyrinth in which I lay, but clearness of the unvaulted thought that follows Egyptian ablutions, the ideas to which I have above endeavoured to give expression absorbed me again, till admonished that it was after sunset, and that the bath must be closed. So, laying aside my chibouke, I arose, dressed, remounted, and rode through the gates, now deserted, at which in the morning there had been an eager throng. And it was in a magical gloaming, under heavens fast filling with stars, that I rode back to the sacred river.

We continued our voyage with the usual excursions on shore, till, in about a week, we came to Tentyra, or Dendera, with its famous temples. At Keneh, on the opposite bank, a Christmas-eve entertainment was given, to one or two other Nile-voyagers and ourselves, by Fadl Pasha, the Governor of Upper Egypt. And worth recalling, in contrast with that Ancient Egyptian life, not the forms only, but the inmost creative forces of which we have been endeavouring sympathetically to realise, is that Arabian night of Modern Egyptian life:-the cavalcade, at sunset, from the river to the palace; the feast, at which the champagne, we had sent a case of as a present, was not found by the Pasha to have been forbidden by the Prophet; the fantasia of Almeh, or Dancing-girls,2 that followed, and grew ever wilder as night advanced, though one of the sisterhood had, but the previous day, been murdered, in a love-quarrel, by a soldier; the courtyard, and gardens illuminated with a thousand lamps, and having, as captive denizens, strange and beautiful desert

The religious war of the Tentyrites, the foes, and Ombites, the friends of the Crocodile, gave occasion to Juvenal's still-applicable satire :

'Tanta potest religio suadere malorum.’

He certainly travelled in Egypt, and was probably here, but the story of his exile is doubtful. See Lewis, Juvenalis Satiræ.

2 Lady Duff Gordon thus graphically describes the Egyptian dance :'At first I thought the dancing queer and dull.... But the captain called out to one Lateefeh . . . and then it was revealed to me. She started to her feet, and became the "serpent of old Nile"-the head, shoulders, and arms eagerly bent forward, waist in and haunches advanced on the bent knees-the posture of a cobra about to spring. . . . It is "Vénus toute entière à sa proie attachée;" far more realistic than the fandango, and far less coquettish, because the thing represented is au grand sérieux-not travestied, gazé, or played with.'-Letters from Egypt, pp. 160-1.

animals; and the ride back to our dahabieëh-home, preceded and accompanied by servants or slaves with flaming torches, while, in the doming heavens over all, shone the stars in the splendour of eternity, and across the sands the nightwind blew in baptismal purity in our faces.

For such is the twofold world of Egypt; on one bank of life, scenes of present existence, not unfrequently like those of the Tales with which the fair Shahr-ázád (Deliverer of the City) entertained, for a thousand-and-one nights, the Sultán Shahr-yar (Friend of the City); on the other, resurrections--if, in being impressed by the Aspects of Nature in the Nilevalley, even as the primæval Khamites and ancient Egyptians were impressed, we have been able, not merely to unswathe the mummies of past lives, but to evoke, and come into felt contact with, their once informing spirits-resurrections of living souls, such as that which we may have beheld at the Rock-tomb of Stabl-Antar.

1 For the spelling and meaning of these Persian names I am indebted to the kindness of the great traveller and linguist who may, it is to be hoped. one day give us a really full and faithful translation of the Arabian Nights-Capt. Richard Burton.

CHAPTER III.

ON THE TEMPLE-ROOF AT KARNAK.

'Osiris was called the "Manifester of Good," or the "Opener of Truth," and said to be "full of goodness (grace) and truth." He appeared on Earth to benefft Mankind, and after having performed the duties He came to fulfil, and fallen a sacrifice to Typho, the Evil Principle (who was, at length, overcome by His influence, after His leaving the world), He rose again to a new life, and became the Judge of the Dead in a Futurə State. The Dead, also, after having passed their final ordeal, and been absolved from sin, obtained in His name, which they then took, the blessings of eternal felicity.'

WILKINSON, Ancient Egyptians, Second Series, vol. 1. p. 320.

THE CAUSE OF THE CHRISTIAN DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGION.

ON the Temple-roof at Karnak-on the roof of that Osirian Temple which, in the antiquity of its memories, the colossal grandeur of its architecture, and the wonders of the vast templed amphitheatre, and sepulchred hills on which it looks, is, even in its ruins, the most sublime Temple on Earth-considerations, one day, both on the Christian character of Osirianism, and on the Osirian character of Christianism, suggested an hypothesis of the origin of doctrinal Christianity in the influence of the myths of Naturianism (or of what, as the most developed system of them, may be considered as their representative, Osirianism,) on the form taken by those new moral aspirations traceable to the Sixth

Century Revolution (and which may be considered as represented by Messiahism)-an hypothesis which, as enlarged into a general theory by connection with our Ultimate Law of History, I would now, in some of its proofs briefly set-forth as a verification of our deduction from that Law of a moral transformation of the Myths of Naturianism, as the natural sequence of such a Revolution as that which initiated what this Law distinguishes as the Second Age of Humanity.

2

But first, a few words on our approach to Thebes,1 the hundred-gated Thebes, xariμλо Oñßα, of which Homer sings; but of which the glory was, even in Homer's time, a thing of the past, and the fame, even then, legendary. It was after a voyage of three weeks from Cairo, and a day or two after the Christmas-eve entertainment at Keneh to which I have, in the last chapter, alluded. There was no stir in the calm air. 'La Niña's' great sails were loosely furled, and her crew were on the river-bank tracking her up. Of human life there were few signs; but of bird life there was a wonderful variety. Besides geese, and the ordinary waterfowl-pelicans, cormorants, herons, flamingoes, hawks, a solitary soaring eagle, and vultures. The

From Tapé, in the Memphitic dialect of Coptic, pronounced Thaba, and signifying the head, or capital of the country.

2 Iliad, IX. 379-85.

3 'It was in 1550 B.C. that the modern Thebes began to be celebrated in Asia, through the brilliant campaigns, exploits, and works of the second and third Thutmōsis. The former splendour of Thebes dated from fifteen centuries farther back, and was consequently beyond the historical knowledge of the Ionians.'-Bunsen, Egypt's Place, vol. iv. p. 591. In quoting this passage, I do not however mean to affirm that I am entirely satisfied with the evidence on which Bunsen supports his chronology.