iers.

The administration of Mohammed Ali would be a blessing to Palestine, inasmuch as it would soon render the intercourse between the capital and the Dead Sea as safe as that between Alexandria and Grand Cairo.

CATARACT OF THE NILE.

With an Engraving.-See page. 353.

The following description of this great Cataract on the river Nile, or as it is sometimes called the Cataract of Alata, is taken from the travels of Mr. Bruce:

The first thing our traveller was shown was the bridge, which consists of one arch of about 25 feet broad. Fragments of the parapets remained, and the bridge itself, seemed to bear the appearance of frequent repairs, and many attempts having been made to ruin it otherwise, in its construction, it was exceedingly well designed. The Nile here is confined between two rocks, and runs in a deep trough with great roaring and impetuos velocity.-Leaving the bridge he passed up the stream above half a mile before he came to the Cataract, through trees and bushes of a delightful appear

ance.

The Cataract itself was the most magnificent sight that Mr. Bruce had ever beheld. The height has been rather exaggerated; the measuring is indeed very difficult, but by the position of long sticks and poles of dif ferent lengths and different heights of the rock, he thinks that it is about 40 feet from the water's edge. The river had been considerably increased by rains, and fell in one sheet above half an English mile in breadth, with a force and noise that was truly terrible; and which stunned and made him for a time excessively dizzy. A thick fume or haze covered the fall all around, and hung over the course of the river, both above and below, marking its track, though the water was not seen. The river, though swelled with rain, preserved its natural smoothness, and at a distance, far as the eye could discern, fell in a deep pool or basin; the stream when it fell, seeming part of it to ran back with great fury upon the rock.

Mr. Bruce observes, the sight was so imposing, that ages added to the greatest length of human life, would not eradicate it from his memory; it struck him with a kind of stupor, and a total forgetfulness of where he was, and indeed, for a time, of every other consideration.

We can readily imagine the feelings of our traveller on his first view of this stupendous work of nature. A scene at once so awfully sublime-so magnificent to the sight, and so fearfully astounding to the hearing, is cal culated to overwhelm the mind with an unutterable awe, and indeed so to confuse and disarrange the ideas, as to render contemplation utterly impracticable.

PURSUITS OF KNOWLEDGE UNDER DIFFICULTIES ILLUSTRATED BY ANECDOTES.

Self-educated Men continued.-Pursuits of Knowledge and Business united Cicero; Sir William Jones.

The cultivation of science and literature as often been united with the most active and successful pursuit of business, and with the duties of the most laborious professions. It has been said of Cicero, that, “no man whose life had been wholly spent in study, ever left more numerous or more valuable fruits of his learning in every branch of science and the polite arts-in oratory, poetry, philosophy, law, history, criticism, politics, ethics in each of which he equalled the greatest masters of his time; in some of them excelled all men of all times. His remaining works, as voluminous as they appear, are but a small part of what he really published. His industry was incredible, beyond the example or even conception of our days: this was the secret by which he performed such wonders, and reconciled perpetual study with perpetual affairs. He suffered no part of his leisure to be idle, or the least interval of it to be lost." These are the words of his learned and eloquent biographer, Dr. Middleton. He says himself, in one of his orations-" What others give to their own affairs, to the public shows and other entertainments, to festivity, to amusement, nay even to mental and bodily rest, I give to study and philosophy." He tells us, too, in his

letters, that on days of business when he had any thing particular to compose, he had no other time for meditating but when he was taking a few turns in his walks, where he used to dictate his thoughts to his amanuenses, or scribes, who attended him. His letters afford us, indeed, in every way, the most remarkable evidence of the active habits of his life. Those that have come down to us are all written after he was forty years old; and, although many of course are lost, they amount in number to a thousand. 66 We find many of them," says Middleton, dated before daylight; some from the senate; others from his meals, and the crowd of morning levee." "For me," he himself exclaims, addressing one of his friends, ne otium quidem unquam otiosum -even my leisure hours have their occupation."

In modern times the celebrated Sir William Jones afforded the world, in this respect, a like example. We have already mentioned his wonderful attainments in languages. All his philosophical and literary studies. were carried on among the duties of a toilsome profession, which he was, nevertheless, so far from neglecting, that his attention to all its demands upon his time and faculties constituted one of the most remarkable of his claims to our admiration. But he was from his boyhood a miracle of industry, and shewed, even in earliest years, how intensely his soul glowed with the love of knowledge. He used to relate that, when he was only three or four years of age, if he applied to his mother, a woman of uncommon intelligence and acquirements, for information upon any subject, her constant answer to him was, "Read, and you will know." He thus acquired a passion for books, which only grew in strength with increasing years. Even at school his voluntary

exertions exceeded in amount his prescribed tasks; and Dr. Thackeray, one of his masters, was wont to say of him, that he was a boy of so active a mind, that if he were left naked and friendless on Salisbury Plain, he would, nevertheless, find the road to fame and riches. At this time he was frequently in the habit of devoting whole nights to study, when he would generally take coffee or tea, to keep off sleep. He had, even already, merely to divert his leisure, commenced his study of the law; and it is related that he would often amuse and

surprise his mother's legal acquaintances, by putting cases to them from an abridegment of Coke's Institutes, which he had read and mastered. In after life his maxim was never to neglect any opportunity of improvement which presented itself.

In India, where he filled the office of Judge in the Supreme Court of Bengal, and where his professional duties were of the most laborious nature, he contrived to do more than ever in the study of general literature and philosophy. He had scarcely arrived in the country when he exherted himself to establish a society in Calcutta, on the model of the Royal Society of London, of which he officiated as president as long as he lived, enriching its Transactions every year with the most elaborate and valuable disquisitions on every depart ment of oriental philology and antiquities. Almost his only time for study now was during the vacation of the courts; and here is the account, as found among his papers, of how he was accustomed to spend his day during the long vacation in 1785. In the morning, after writing one letter, he read ten chapters of the Bible, and then studied Sanscrit grammar and Hindoo law; the afternoon was given to the geography of India, and the evening to Roman history; when the day was closed by a few games at chess, and the reading of a portion of Ariosto. Already, however, his health was beginning to break down under the climate; and his eyes had become so weak, that he had been obliged to discontinue writing by candle-light. But nothing could prevent him from pursuing the studies he loved, while any strength remained to him. Even while confined by illness to his couch, he taught himself botany; and it was during a tour he was advised to take for the recovery of his health, that he wrote his learned Treatise on the Gods of Greece, Italy, and India -as if he had actually so disciplined his mind, that it adopted labor like this almost for a relaxation His health, after a time, was partially restored; and we find him again devoting himself both to his professional duties and his private studies, with more zeal and assiduity than ever When business required his attendance daily in Calcutta, he resided at a country-house on the banks of the Ganges, almost five miles from the city. "To this