of it, according to Lucian, as out of the skull of a goat, there proceeded horns. In all that Villoteau here suggests indeed, we found nothing new. Nor is the fact that the instrument is found sculptured on the great temple of Denderah, any thing more than a confirmation of other testimony in favor of its high antiquity. This other testimony, however, is very abundant. Numerous are the traditions preserved in fable, all of which go to prove this one of the earliest instruments of Egypt, although it was never a favorite instrument of this region, as it was of Greece.

From the fact, that as a constellation it embraces a star of the first magnitude, and one of the most conspicuous, united with the testimony of the poets, it would seem to be one of the earliest invented, and may have had its origin on the plains of Babylon.

III. Tebouni in the form of the guitar. This class of instruments, which has already been sufficiently described, and which resembled the Turkish tambûra,2 was rarer according to our author, than the others. "We have seen none of them," he remarks, "except in one place. Hence it would seem to have been a less important instrument than the others."

Whatever we may think of the above remark, we have abundant evidence of the high antiquity of this instrument. The testimony of Burney has already been quoted, in Notes to Pfeiffer, with some account of the instrument which he found sculptured on a broken pillar, in the Campus Martius at Rome, and which he compares to the calascione of Italy. The specimen given in the Egyptian work is to be found, Ant., Planches, Tom. II. pl. 44. Thebes-Hypogées, No. 6. It is exactly the one described by Dr. Burney, except in the number of its strings,

See his Handwörterbuch der Griech. Sprach. s. v. On the lyre as a constellation, see much useful information in Burritt's Geography of the Heavens, chap. LIII. For more learned and oriental information, see Untersuchungen über den Ursprung und Bedeutung der Sternnainen. Ein Beytrag zur Geschichte des gestirnten Him

mels von L. Ideler.

2 See Niebuhr's Reisebeschr. Th. I. p. 177. C. See also Bibl. Repos. Vol. VI. p. 371, Note 6. His words are: "This instrument is called by the Greeks at Káhira (Cairo) Beglatná and Tambûra. The first is probably the Grecian, and the latter the general Arabian name for Grecian stringed instruments." Villoteau spells the latter word tombour, or tanbour, etc.

which are three, and it corresponds very nearly to number seven of Pfeiffer's Plate as above; only the bulb-part has more of the oblong oval about it. The handle is long and slim. The writer says "it is a kind of mandoline or tanbour, as the instrument is now called in Turkey."

This is the specimen referred to above, when speaking of the harp, no. 23. The person who plays on it, is apparently seated on his heels; while he rests the body of the instrument on his left thigh and leans its neck against his left shoulder,the left hand being made to grasp its neck, as if to shorten the strings, while the playing is performed solely with the fingers of the right hand. In the fictitious musical procession, referred to above, p. 289, the body of the guitar seems to be fastened into a belt in front of the player, who holds the neck of it, obliquely aloft with his left hand, while he touches its strings with the fingers of the right. This instrument has frequently been found sculptured or painted in the grottos and other places of Egypt, by travellers. Belzoni discovered it in a mummy-pit, which he himself had opened at Gornou.1

As to the guitar itself,-it is well known to be a Spanish national instrument, and originally derived from the Moors, and through them from the eastern countries. It is now very common indeed in Europe, but it came from Spain; and the Spaniards, we are told, in general believe, that the instrument itself is as old as the harp or the lyre.

This may be in the main true. In all probability, however, it was an improvement upon the latter instrument in the Egyptian shape, or the bow form, and the lyre. I was inclined to this opinion some time since, from observing the approximation of the kussir or tambûra,so particularly described by Niebuhr and regarded by Pfeiffer as the nabhel, to the harp, and also to the guitar; or at least the ease with which the latter instrument might be deduced from the kussir, in some of its modified shapes. The remark of Burney, referred to in Note 6, p. 371, of the 6th Vol. of the Bib. Repos., is also favorable to this opinion. I have been confirmed in it, however, of late, from information received from a Polish gentleman of unquestioned veracity and intelligence, that in Egypt, he has seen the painting of a bow harp, with a piece running down from the top, by means of which the strings could be shortened with the fingers; but es

1 Narrative, etc. Vol. I. p. 357.

pecially from discovering the painting of what appears to be just such an instrument, in the French work, as alluded to above.1

This instrument is indeed rarely to be found sculptured on the monuments of Greece and Rome. It may nevertheless have been common among them. Indeed, the close resemblance between it and the modern tambûra, implies as much. The fact that no more frequent mention is made of it, and that it does not oftener appear in sculpture, may possibly have arisen from the fact that it was a vulgar instrument like our fiddle, and consequently out of place in dignified scenes. The portable size of the instrument is certainly in favor of this supposition. It is far more probable, however, that the infrequency of its occurrence among the ancients is owing to the fact that they did not appreciate the means it furnished them of diminishing the number of strings, and consequently, that it was indeed never very much in use among them. However this may have been, we see that the belief of the Spaniards as to its antiquity has a foundation in truth, inasmuch as the instrument belongs to some of the highest antiquities of Egypt.

The great question, then, as to the antiquity of the harp, the lyre, and the guitar, has now been decided. We know that instruments were common in the earliest ages of Egypt, the cradle of the arts and sciences, possessed of the same general form as the harp, the lyre, and the guitar of modern times. The discoveries made of late years among the ruins of Egypt, have clearly decided this point, and placed it beyond controversy. True, among the ancients, there was a great variety of other stringed instruments; but these constituted the leaders of them all, and contain the grand characteristics of the several classes, at the head of which they respectively stand. Here then what I at first proposed has been accomplished, and, for the present, I drop the subject, not because I have not investigated further, but for the same reason that this portion of it has been detained by me for more than fifteen months,—lest disgust should be created by what most readers consider a dry and uninteresting theme.

ARTICLE III.

MRS. SIGOURNEY'S LETTERS.

Letters to Young Ladies, by Mrs. L. H. Sigourney. Third Edition. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1837, pp. 259.

THE notion that education is reserved for man alone, and is not to be imparted to the softer sex, is a prejudice that ought long since to have been dissipated before the increasing light of civilization. Woman has a soul; and the gospel tells us it is immortal. If belonging to the household of the faithful, she is soon to take her seat in the upper sanctuary, where, we may well imagine, that one of the employments of eternity is to be the ceaseless acquisition of knowledge. In the school of heaven, woman will doubtless be a student equally privileged with man. Why then should she be excluded from equal access to those fountains of knowledge, which flow on earth?

The argument, that education disqualifies woman for the faithful discharge of the duties belonging to her own peculiar province, has been tried by the test of experience and proved destitute of foundation. Females of the present generation are better educated than those of any former age. But by this advancement in education, have the distinctive features of female excellence been in any way deteriorated? Are our wives less faithful housekeepers than their grandmothers? Has learning robbed our sisters of the gentle domestic charities? Are our daughters less affectionate and dutiful than the daughters of other generations? When, since the apostolic age, has woman been more beautifully decorated in the vestments of philanthropy, than at the present enlightened period? Look at the efforts of female benevolence now in progress, at home and abroad, for the melioration of the condition of our race. Who are these mothers and sisters of charity? Commune with them, and you will find many, perhaps most of them, to be women whose minds are expanded and elevated by an enlightened education, and who glory in making their acquired knowledge a willing and useful handmaid in the service of religion.

Perhaps no happier illustration can be found of the benefits resulting from female education, and its entire compatibility with

the ordinary duties of life, than the case of the author of the volume before us. She has, we understand, been devoted from early life to the love of letters. About twenty years ago, if we rightly recollect, and before she had yet changed her maiden name of Lydia Howard Huntley, a little volume of her youthful poems was collected and published. Since then, at least four volumes of her poetical effusions have appeared. Of these, it is not now our province to speak. They have been generally and justly admired in her native country, and their praise has been echoed back from Europe. She is now, by universal consent, regarded as one of the ornaments of the age in which she lives, and of the country from whence she sprang. But we understand that these literary attainments, and this literary fame, have not estranged her from the patient discharge of the practical, homely, and every day duties of woman. Authentic report informs us that no one better fills the arduous station of a New England housekeeper, in all its various and complicated departments. Nor are the calls of benevolence unheeded. Like that distinguished philanthropist, from whom she derives her intermediate name, she is said to go about doing good. Much of her time is devoted to the practical, silent, unambitious duties of charity. Nor must we omit the crowning praise of all-the report of her humble, unassuming, unpretending, untiring devotion.

But we detain the reader, perhaps too long, from the volume before us. This volume, besides a short preface, and an appeal to the guardians of female education, contains sixteen Letters to Young Ladies on the following subjects, viz.: value of time; religion; knowledge; industry; domestic employments; health and dress; manners and accomplishments; sisterly virtues; books; friendship; cheerfulness; conversation; benevolence; self-control; utility; motives to perseverance.

One of the first things observable in the perusal of this work, is the accurate estimate which the author forms of the true excellencies of the female character. With a kind of intuitive precision, she perceives and delineates all the delicate shades which go collectively to constitute the real loveliness of woman. She treats woman, not as the gay insect of the hour, to be admired and followed after for some brief space of time; but as a rational, immortal, accountable being. She seeks to exalt the standard of her mental and moral attainments; to make her useful and happy here, and prepare her for the companionship of