whether in ancient Egypt or elsewhere. Indeed, we venture to hope the reader is already in fundamental possession of the whole, and shall, therefore, content ourselves with identifying the designations attested by tradition, and affixing them to the appropriate divisions of this analysis. This last degree of verification will be visible to sense in the annexed rude scheme of the entire exposition:

Things to be signified. Principles of signification.

Signs.

or'

}

{ Analogy:

or

}

Object

Quality.

Homophony

Derivation.

allographic.

Hieratic phonographic;

Enchorial epistolographic.

We must here commit this outline to the reader, and invite him to compare it with the other representations of this curious subject. The terms we have mostly adopted he will find more fully discussed in the admirable Warburton; who gave, we do not hesitate to affirm, among unavoidable errors, a more philosophic account of the hieroglyphic system nearly a century ago, than has appeared, after all the parade of discovery, in any subsequent writer, of whom at least we are aware, to this hour. We do not except the latest (and not the least ostentatious) of them, the Chevalier Bunsen; who, however, if we remember, deigns to make no mention whatever of Warburton. Among the errors alluded to in this vigorous intellect, was his division of Egyptian writing into four, instead of three kinds. And this recalls us to Dr. Hawks, who adopts, from Mr. Gliddon, an error of the same nature; only with the aggravation of applying it to one of the kinds, and subdividing the Symbolic forms into four, instead of two. We might proceed, in the light of the foregoing explanation, to point out many others, not only in our author's compilation, but in the most eminent of his originals. And such an exposure, however invidious, might serve to shield the theory that accomplished it from being charged, by those who are better judges of names than of things, with presumption. But, wanting space, we can give no further assurance than that, if any of our critical readers will be good enough to show the defects of said theory by argument or fact, we, on our part, stand engaged to make him better acquainted-not by any means with the philosophy of Egyptian hieroglyphics-but with the real state of his knowledge upon the subject.

From the hieroglyphics, the author passes to a general sketch of the situation and climate of Egypt, as bearing upon the singular

preservation of its monuments, the principal localities and specimens of its ruins, and the state of the arts of design. Under this head we quote the following passage, descriptive of the subjects selected to decorate the interior of the tombs. It may also be taken for a sample of Dr. Hawks's neat and lively style :—

"Again, there are the family vaults of the wealthy, the priesthood, the military, &c. These are sometimes very extensive, consisting of various rooms connected by galleries, with the walls of the apartments covered with paintings. The scenes delineated most commonly have reference to the operations of ordinary life. The deceased is represented with his family around him; sometimes they are at the banquet, sometimes listening to music, or amusing themselves with the dance. Again, he is seen in the country, hunting, fowling, or fishing; next, he is superintending agricultural labours. In short, almost every species of mechanical trade is depicted in the tombs: all are scenes of activity, and it has been well said, that everything in them savours of life, but the corpse.' The predominant wish seems to have been, to banish from them all that could suggest the idea of death; and the only explanation that offers itself of this singular custom is, that the proprietor of the tomb employed himself, while living, in the preparation for his posterity of what may be called a pictorial autobiography. ... With the dead it was usual to deposit, in the tombs, articles of luxury on which they had set a value while living; and in the case of the humble artisan, the tools or utensils which he used in life, were laid with him when he rested from his toil. Hence various objects of interest have been found in the tombs. Elegant vases of granite, alabaster, metal, and earth, are abundant in the various museums of Europe. The tools of the mason and carpenter, articles of household furniture, models of boats and houses, the pallets used by the sacred scribes, with their cakes of ink and reed pens or brushes, with various other articles, are by no means uncommon. Books written on rolls of the papyrus are also found, sometimes enclosed in the swathings of the mummy, sometimes in hollow cases of wood or in earthen jars.”—Pp. 76, 77.

.....

It was in this manner the papyrus roll above referred to, named the Book of the Dead, had been preserved. It will be observed, by the way, that Dr. Lepsius' interpretation of the scroll, as describing the dismal peregrinations of the soul after death, does not tally very well with the preceding description of the tombs, which seem to have been fitted up, on the contrary, for cheerful and permanent habitation. Nor do we agree with Dr. Hawks, that these scenes had any biographical design. This, like so many more of our modern notions concerning Egypt and antiquity in general, belongs to what might be termed the ex-post-facto philosophy. But the matter is too large for our space. With respect to the implements, &c., too. found in these tombs, it is to be observed, they are not peculiar to Egypt; such things are found as well in the tombs of Etruria, of Greece, of Mexico, and down to our own Indian mounds along the Ohio and the Mississippi. The different degrees of an infant civilization make the observed diversity in the character of the contents. Thus the "brush," in the above enumeration, found accompanying

the cake of ink, affords a curious proof of the practice of mono-chromatic colouring, which we have represented as one of the early stages of the monumental hieroglyphic art.

Thus far for some of the objects of art, both fine and useful. Another extract or two respecting the artists and the execution

"In inspecting the specimens of sculpture and painting presented in the remains of ancient Egypt, one is forcibly struck with the manifold defects to be found generally alike in the design and execution; and these are the more surprising, when occasionally some specimen is met with confessedly of high merit, as exhibiting practised artistic skill. It is observable, also, that these better specimens are delineations of something other than the human figure. Perhaps a reason for this may, to a certain extent, be found in a consideration of the purpose to which the Egyptians applied the arts of design. The effort was not with them to speak through the eye to the imagination; theirs was the more matter-of-fact business of addressing the understanding. In fulfilling their design, therefore, it was more important to convey the idea correctly, and avoid mistakes, than it was to produce a finished work of art. Hence, the representation of the human figure seldom affords proof of elaboration in its execution; a very rude sketch was sufficient to show that nothing but man could be meant by it; commonly the face and lower limbs are in profile, while the body is presented with its full front proportion, also, is sometimes utterly neglected. In fact, the rough drawing served but to spell the word man, while the hieroglyphics above it informed him who could read them, who or what the man was. But in the very same picture, perhaps, containing a rough sketch of the human figure, birds or other objects would be represented, drawn with great spirit, and coloured with a minute attention to nature. Accuracy of delineation was resorted to when such accuracy was necessary to guard against mistakes, and it was therefore required to show the species of the bird represented," &c.— Pp. 78, 79.

We have allowed the author to state his explanation at length, as the fact is one of the most interesting and uniform in the palæology of the arts of design. His conjecture may be well-founded, at least "to a certain extent," as he limits it himself, with that wise sobriety of statement which marks the man who understands and attends to the value of words. But supposing the defects in question to be owing directly to the unartistic purpose of the Egyptians, still it would not follow that they had the power to do better. On the contrary, the absence of this purpose proves the absence of the corresponding power: the latter is father to the other. Moreover, how was it more necessary, for even this merely designative purpose, to be nice in the delineation of the lower animals than in that of man, seeing the former might be indicated as well as the latter, and usually were, in fact, hieroglyphically, by name? Again, in Nineveh, Khorsabad, Persepolis, &c., where there were no hieroglyphics to affix, and no arrow-head or other characters are found employed, we believe, the late explorers all remark the same disparity of execution.

The truth is, that the cause is to be sought in a deeper philosophy. It arises jointly from the nature of the subject and of the artist. The human figure is immensely the most complex, and proportionally the most difficult to express, of any in the animal kingdom. And, then, this difficulty is vastly aggravated when man has to sit for himself. For this is strictly his intellectual condition, until he be brought round to a position, so to say, without himself, by mounting, gradually, the scale of objects, from the inanimate up to the progressively more organized. This position of self-portraiture, of self-contemplation, was first, in the history of humanity, attained in ethics, as well as in art, on the glorious soil of Greece. Here it was that men first understood the difficulty of knowing themselves sufficiently well to have made the maxim an injunction from the temple porch of the god of philosophy.

We had almost forgotten to confess to our readers that there is an appendage to the work of Dr. Hawks, which usurps a full moiety of the elegantly bound volume. Like Pope's grub in amber, the first emotion it inspires is the question, "how it got there." It is entitled, "Journal of a Voyage up the Nile, made between the Months of November, 1848, and April, 1849." The writer makes a much larger figure in his own Journal than do Egypt and its monuments. On every page, nay, almost in every paragraph, we find his "dragoman," his "boats," his adventures, in a word, by flood and field; not forgetting his frequent encounters and familiarities with "young English noblemen." Then, in the scientific controversies respecting Egypt, he finds no difficulty. With the "Hieroglyphic Dictionary and Grammar of Champollion" in hand, he moves through the labyrinth of monuments with the familiarity of a high-priest of the 18th dynasty. And for the poetry and philosophy, his guide-books are, avowedly, Moore's Epicurean and the Travels of Miss Martineau !

Glancing through his pages we encounter the following allusion:

"Had you been here [he is in the midst of an apostrophe to the reader] in the time of the Trojan war, you might have seen the elegant form of Memnon, standing erect in his car, and his two hundred chariots and twenty thousand horseman, which were levied to accompany Achilles to the plains of Troy," &c.-P. 121.

The reader perceives that our traveller has read Homer. Ay, and he quotes him at the bottom of his page; but he assumes the reader to be, like himself, too familiar with the text to require chapter and verse for so novel a reading.

[The writer of the above article having filled up all the space allotted to him without characterizing the higher and holier range of Dr. Hawks's labours-the illustration and confirmation of the historical records of the Pentateuch-we add a few words, (and we regret that they must be but few,) to indicate his mode of procedure. The subject is opened, in the fifth chapter, with some well-considered and judicious observations on the nature and value of incidental testimony, such as that about to be adduced. The Bible, in giving the history of the Hebrew race, gives also, incidentally, a part of the history of the Egyptians. Now, if modern discoveries in Egypt "bring to light historical events which synchronize with the relation of them given in our book; or if they illustrate, in hundreds of particulars, national usages, or manners, or arts, all of which are found to harmonize with what our document casually illustrates of customs, &c., among the ancient people to whom it incidentally refers; then cumulative testimony is afforded thereby to the truth of our document, so far, at least, as our book and the monuments professedly speak of the same thing.”—P. 87.

Dr. Hawks is well assured that the Bible "does not need this cumulative testimony to its authenticity." But it has been boldly asserted that the Egyptian monuments directly contradict the truth of the Bible,-and that, too, while the certain correctness of some of the hieroglyphical interpretations is only assured by their correspondence with the Bible narrative. Our author proposes, then, to go through the fragments (and they are but fragments) of history preserved in the monuments, and to compare them-even though in isolated parts, gathered here and there with the history preserved in the Bible. He takes up successively the history of Abraham, of Joseph, of the Bondage, of the Deliverance, and of the Wanderings, and finds, in each, coincidences of that most striking class the undesigned-so numerous and so obvious, when once brought out, as to furnish a very large stock of cumulative testimony. As a specimen of the argument, we quote the points selected from the history of Abraham, and illustrated from the Egyptian remains; namely:

"That Egypt was then a powerful nation, rich and civilized.” "That Lower Egypt was then dry."

"That its kings were known by the name of Pharaoh."

"That domestic servitude then existed there."

"That there was famine in Canaan and abundance in Egypt."

"That Sarah was fair, and used no covering or veil over her face."

"That Pharaoh wished to place her in his harem.”

"That there was no dislike of Abraham's pastoral occupation then manifested." "That his gifts were sheep, oxen, he and she asses, men and maid servants, camels, gold, and silver."

"That Abraham accepted these gifts.”—P. 94.