Had the great library of the Ptolemies been unconsumed when Alexandria was given to the flames by Julius Cæsar, what an invaluable flood of light would have been cast upon the darkness of the mysterious Past!

What the Romans did not wholly destroy, was successfully accomplished by the Saracens, under the caliph Omar, who heated the water of their baths by burning books instead of wood.

By the cupidity of modern adventurers, and speculators in human remains, the Nilotic valley has been plundered of some of its rarest and fairest monuments of art.

The sacred halls of death have been pillaged, and the mouldering tenants of a primitive age have been sold as marketable commodities.

Fortunes have been made out of the archæological spoils of Egypt.

The Pamphylian obelisk can now be seen in the Piazza Navona at Rome, and there is a statue of a priest of Sais in the Vatican.

The celebrated Rosetta Stone, and the Sarcophagus of queen Onknas, adorn the British Museum.

The magnificent Sarcophagus, which once contained the ashes of Ramses IV., can now be found in the museum of the Louvre; and the colossal statue of Thoatmosis, with many other precious sculptures, can be seen among the royal collections at Turin.

The statue of the Mendesian Nepherites is now in the Institute of Bologna, and an obelisk sculptured by an Egyptian king can now be seen in the Hippodrome at Constantinople.

Almost every museum of distinction in the world can boast of its Egyptian antiquities.

The turbaned inhabitants of the present day have no respect for the primeval monuments of ancient Egypt, and take no interest in the faded glory of the land whose antiquity and civilization are so proudly attested by the hieroglyphics sculptured and painted upon her temples, her palaces, her obelisks, and her eternal Pyramids.

The living plunder the Catacombs of their sacred trust, and traffic in the ashes of the illustrious dead; and had they found the mummies petrified instead of embalmed, they would have been used as stones, like the venerable ruins of Memphis, to build the Turkish city of Cairo.

Let the studious inquirer acquaint himself with the history of Egypt, from the days of Menes, under all its dynasties, to the death of Cleopatra, and from the time that it became a Roman province until the present Mahometan rule, and he will find an abundance of material for reflection, and behold, in a strong and striking light, the awful truth of the mutability of human institutions.

Rest again, O Spirit of Inquiry, and farewell forever, O mysterious land of the Pharaohs, with all thy grand and monumental associations!

THE POLLYWOG PAPERS.

I

MRS. POLLYWOG'S INCOMPARABLE BEAUTY AND IMPECCABILITY— MORAL REFLECTIONS ON THE SHORTCOMINGS OF HER OWN SEX-THE PASSION OF LOVE RINGING IN HER HEAD AND TINGLING IN HER TOES.

SOLILO

(OLILOQUIZING the other night, says I to myself, Mrs. Pollywog, you have now made a hit; you have ransacked and turned topsy-turvy every invisible chamber of the human heart, and laid bare all the feelings and failings appertaining to frail humanity, that ought to be clothed with beauties that are unseen to vulgar eyes, and with sentiments that are only understood by the initiated; you have travelled in fancy where human feet have never trod, and descended on the rim of a rainbow from mansions that are illuminated daily by a hundred suns, and nightly by a thousand moons. Yes, Mrs. Pollywog, says I, you have been wonderfully blessed by nature-ample in circumference, requiring no artificial trimmings to set forth your incomparable charms, and no upholstery-stuffing to supply the deficiency of a magnificent form: the wealth of your hair hangs so luxuriantly over your shoulders of alabaster, and sometimes at your toilet over your bosom, which is as warm as the caverns of

Mount Etna, and pure as the snow on the summit of Mont Blanc. Can it be wondered at, then, Mrs. Polly wog, says I, furthermore, that your transcendent qualities as a woman, your intellectual acquirements as a scholar, your deathless productions as an authoress, and your brilliant achievements in the battlefield of Cupid, have brought heroes, hoary with age and honors; statesmen, smoking with political corruption; governors, who have disgraced the lofty position which they were called upon to fill; aldermen, who go in for metropolitan spoils; lawyers, whose business it is to cheat the law and their clients in particular; doctors, who kill more than they cure, and humbugs of all kinds, musical and literary, by the hundred, as kneeling worshippers at the shrine of your beauty, which is not of earth? Such was the language which I addressed to myself a few evenings ago, while musing on the mutability of all terrestrial things, and on the evanescence of all mundane felicity.

Why should I suffer and perish in consequence of Eve, my illustrious maternal ancestor, partaking of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? I think it would require more than the subtlety of a serpent to beguile me. For such a small offence the punishment was terrible. Poor Adam suffered the penalty of his disobedience, and was driven with his charming spouse from the garden of Eden. In consequence of the fall of Adam and his wife, the human race have been tainted with the stain of original sin.

Physically I have no stains, and impure thoughts find no abiding-place in my bosom. bosom. I think that I am wholly free from all defects, whether original or accidental. Some people may think otherwise, and if so, they are welcome to enjoy their opinion. I

can clearly see the faults of others, but, by some inexplicable principle of the laws of optics, I am entirely blind to my own. The fall of virtue is surely more to be deplored than the simple crime of eating a forbidden apple. The fall of a mother from her sacred position not only injures society at large, but entails disgrace upon her unoffending and guiltless children. Some women, by folly and indiscretion, ruin their husbands and open the door for poverty to enter. They seek for pleasures away from the domestic roof, and find congenial fools in the fashionable haunts of vice.

I mourn in the depths of my soul over the frailty of my own sex. They sweep the sidewalks with their flowing skirts of silks and satins, and put their jewelled fingers into the pockets of the golden calves that dance after them. They disregard the marriage knot, which ought to bind man and wife as firmly and closely as the foxes were, when Samson tied their tails together. I, Mrs. Pollywog, have set them a noble example, and shown them that an angel in human form can be as virtuous as she is beautiful. The frown of a good woman will always keep a peace-destroyer at a proper distance. The smiles of encouragement lead to ruin and disgrace. Appointments clandestinely kept sap the foundations of domestic peace, and shake the moral frame-work of society. Let my sex do as I have done, and kill their husbands with love. A fine rosy face looks well in the sombre weeds of widowhood, and will not remain long a marketable commodity. I am all love myself. I feel the passion ringing in my head and I feel it tingling in my toes. It is glowing and brimming over at my heart, and I feel the grand sensation coursing through all the channels and arteries of my body.