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beautifully executed, in particular one of a large size of the Boa Constrictor. The features of the women in these representations bear a close resemblance to those of Modern Egypt; the face oval, the complexion rather dark, the lips full, the expression soft and gentle, and altogether African. In some of the chambers the sculptures on the walls and ceilings are only partially executed, the work being evidently left in an unfinished state. The ambition of a monarch to eternize his memory or preserve his remains untouched, never could have chosen a more suitable or wildly impressive situation.

Leaving Thebes the same night, the next place of any consequence we stopped at was Kenéh, passing by in the way a long encampment of Turkish troops, who were on their march to join Ibrahim Pacha, Ali's eldest son, at Sennaar. There were several renegades attached to the Pacha's army; among others, a young American of some talents and good family, who came to Egypt, turned Mahometan, and got an appointment in the Pacha's army, but was soon disgusted with a campaign in the desert of Sennaar. He quitted the camp in company with a Scotchman, a soldier in the same army, and after a painful journey arrived at Cairo. At the time I knew him there, he had an appointment as a writer in some way under the Pacha with a small salary. He should have made a pilgrimage to Mecca, the only object almost worth turning Mahometan for, if to indulge in Turkish voluptuousness was his aim; but he was not rich enough, for it requires means in Egypt as well as in Europe to live a life of pleasure. However, at Cairo he was often in company with a missionary for the conversion of the Jews, and an excellent man, whose discourses made him perceive the folly of Mahometanism, though he had written a treatise in defence of it. He accordingly became extremely penitent, was conveyed down the Nile secretly to Alexandria, and on reaching Europe was received once more into the bosom of Christianity.

His companion, the Scotchman, was more unfortunate: he went about the streets of Cairo with little on him except a blanket, and sometimes came to me for relief. "I can make it badly out, Sir," said he to me one day, "among the Turks; I shall turn Christian again." In the way to Girge the wind became violent for one or two days, and obliged the vessel to stop. One afternoon, in order to pass the time, I took a walk to a village at some distance, and seating myself beneath a palm, took out a volume of the Arabian Nights to read. After some time two Arabs came up, and sat down beside me. The book was beyond their comprehension, save that a figure of a beautiful Eastern princess in the frontispiece interested them wonderfully. One of them, an old fellow with a beard, made the most expressive signs of admiration, while his eyes sparkled with pleasure. They invited me to enter the village; where, being seated on the floor of a cottage, they set dates and milk before me, and a number of women gathered before the door out of curiosity. The custom they have of concealing a good part of their faces is a very laudable one: considering the number of fine-looking men among the Arabs, it is strange there should be such almost universal plainness among the other sex in Egypt.

A little naked boy came into the hut; he seemed to be a great favourite, being a Marabey; that is, dedicated from his infancy to be a

fakir, or Arab priest. The little dog looked very round and fat, and was, I believe, covered over with oil. All at once the sounds of music were heard without, and a strange group made its appearance. A boy carried a flag of red and white, a tall respectable-looking Arab played a tambourine, a young man a long drum, and another a pair of castanets. They all sung in a low voice; and in the midst was a fakir, for whom all the display was made. He was a very good-looking man, with a full florid face, a black bushy beard, and his thick hair in wild disorder. He moved his head up and down strangely in time to the music, and joined in the chant with the others. He came into the hut where I was, and behaved with great ease and civility; and seemed more a man of the world than a self-denying saint.

The figure of the beautiful woman in the book, which the two Arabs had kissed with earnestness, the fakir seemed to view with dislike, as the Koran forbids a fondness for pictures. The Prophet was right, perhaps, in prohibiting the use of pictures or images to his people; the wretched paintings of the Virgin and the saints, male and female, in the Greek church may have quite as much effect on the imagination, if it can at all be excited by such things, as the vile statues of the Catholics. The only human figure I saw in Greece that was better worth worshipping, if I may be allowed the expression, than half their marvellous calendar, was a young Greek girl at Tripolitza. She was dying-but her figure was symmetry itself. Her father was a priest, and her mother was, as she was well termed, a magnificent woman, of large size, stout, and her features had a noble and imperial character, quite unlike her daughter, who was of the smallest size in which loveliness could well inhabit. The girl was laid in the corridor to breathe the fresh air. She did not speak; but her elegant yet emaciated limbs, but ill concealed by the loose drapery, were moved at times, in agony, while a hurried ejaculation escaped her, and her face was buried in the long tresses of her beautiful hair. Never does a woman arrest every feeling so irresistibly as in hopeless sorrow and anguish; if experience among both the unhappy Greeks and Turks could confirm this, it were easy to appeal to it. I have heard the lament of a mother over all her murdered family; of a widow for her husband torn from her arms, and slain; the parting of a lady from her son, whose father lay covered with wounds; but in the touching and impassioned expression of sorrow the Christian must yield to the Ottoman:-the men take it calmly and passively; but the Turkish women-there is the very soul of sorrow there, and of tenderness.

MISFORTUNE.

From Lucian.

VAIN fears! vain hopes! vain supplications!
Weak and unworthy lamentations!

Endure the ill; for every grief

Time brings to all a sure relief.

Misfortune passes,-we pass too,

Or it soon finds an end,-or you.

M.

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THE everlasting infancy of the vulgar must plead their excuse, if in their ignorance they adopt errors and prejudices, and if the strength of their faith is in an inverse ratio to the extent of their knowledge. Their superstition explains to them without difficulty all the secrets of Nature, about which the philosophers of all ages have to no purpose puzzled their brains. The term sympathy enables them to comprehend the reason why the magnet attracts iron; and spirits explain to them the nature of the ignis fatuus. The most obstinate diseases they attribute to the agency of the devil; any unusual circumstance to the power of witchcraft; the unequal effects of medicines to the arbitrary influences of the moon, and the causes of death to the position of the stars in the heavens, and the howling of dogs upon the earth.

The origin of the propensity of mankind to blame Heaven and the stars for the effects of their own actions, I cannot ascribe to any thing but their self-love: for this alone can produce in them a wish to be considered wiser and more innocent than they really are. It is related concerning Democritus the philosopher, that having one day some figs which tasted of honey brought to his table, he immediately repaired to the spot where the fruit had been gathered, to exercise his ingenuity in discovering whether this flavour was derived from the soil, the juices of the trees, or some other hidden circumstance. His housekeeper, perceiving his intention and wishing to spare him needless trouble, confessed with a smile that she had accidentally put the figs into a jar which had previously contained honey. The philosopher was extremely angry, not on account of the mistake, but because she had acquainted him with it; as he had fully determined to discover a much more profound cause of the phenomenon. Such was his disposition, and such too is that of many scholars and men of science at the present day, who seek truth not in knowledge but in the invention of ingenious errors, to adopt far-fetched causes for natural events, merely that they may flatter themselves with the false reputation of being great philosophers. To this silly propensity we have to attribute so many erudite theories, so many specious systems, so many elaborately devised errors, and so many romances concerning the natures of the world and of man, by which the learned have rendered themselves eminent among their contemporaries and ridiculous to the next generation. They will not have the truth for nothing; and thus truth fares exactly like certain commodities which are thought of no account unless they cost the purchaser a high price. At the same time, nothing is more certain than that those truths which are most essential to our well-being, seldom lie so deep as we seek them, and that we should find them much more easily if we did not give ourselves a great deal more trouble than we need do in the search. The following observations will confirm the accuracy of this position. They will show that men have at all times laboured to seek at a very great distance for the causes of natural infirmities, the grounds of which they have so near them, in order to appear wiser than they need be, or indeed than it is possible for them to be. The reader will at the same time perceive, that it is not the pride of wisdom alone which torments us with such bootless

ingenuity; but that we likewise strive thereby to excuse the depravity of our hearts, and to set ourselves up in our sufferings for martyrs of virtue. We never like to acknowledge that our afflictions are the effects of our own misconduct or imprudence; and therefore we seek the cause of them any where else, even at the extreme limits of the universe, rather than in the little corner of our own heart, where the turbid source of them is constantly flowing. We should be obliged to look upon ourselves as suicides, as self-tormentors, if we were to admit that we drew disease and death upon ourselves, merely because we would not attempt to control our appetites; and we fancy that we clear ourselves from this reproach by assigning some external cause to which we firmly believe we owe our misery.

The principal and most brilliant of the stars composing the constellation of the Little-Dog, is called by the name of the whole constellation, and this is the reddish Dog-star, or Sirius, from which the Dog-days have received their appellation.

Observers have remarked that the celestial hemisphere undergoes an almost imperceptible change from day to day, and that the sun, besides his daily motion from east to west, which produces day and night, has another apparent motion from west to east, by means of which, at the expiration of 365 days, he is again at the same star from which he receded six months, and to which he has been again approaching in the six succeeding months. The period of this last movement is termed the solar year. The different seasons were therefore distinguished according to the constellations which the sun passed through in his annual course, that is, according to the periods at which these different constellations gradually lose themselves in his rays. It was remarked, for instance, that at the beginning of spring the constellation of Aries, or the Ram, set with the sun; that summer commenced when he was seen in the constellation of Cancer; autumn, when he entered the constellation of Libra; and winter when he came to that of Capricorn. His annual course was divided into twelve constellations, which were denominated the twelve Signs of the Zodiac, or the twelve Houses of the Sun, from his abiding in each for the space of one month.

Our summer therefore begins when the sun enters the sign of Cancer, which occurs about the 21st or 22d of June. The sun is then at the highest above our horizon, and his rays approach the nearest to vertical. This period is succeeded by the heat of summer, which gradually increases in the following months, the more the earth becomes heated by his rays for the longer the heat continues in any place, the more intense it seems to those by whom it is felt. This is the true reason why the heat in Italy seems to be more oppresive than in France, though the thermometer demonstrates that the degree in both countries is for a period alike.-Hence, it is that July and part of August are in general the hottest season of the year, and experience proves, that the greatest heat usually occurs between the 20th of July and the 20th of August. About this period the sun must of course be near some constellation, and it so happens that the Dog-star is the most brilliant of those with which at this time it appears to be in contact. For the space of a month it is withdrawn from our view, and lost in the sun's rays, as is successively the case with all the constellations at which the sun arrives in his annual career. The month when the Dog-star is invisible is the interval which we call the Dog-days.

Because the heat is most intense during the Dog-days, the effects of the heat have been ascribed to the influence of the Dog-star on the earth, on brute animals, and on man! There was no necessity whatever to go so far, to produce so lame a conclusion. If it were even true that of two things which are constantly connected together, one must be the active cause of the other, a notion which no reflecting mind could ever adopt―still this would not authorize us to regard the Dogstar as the cause of the circumstances that befal us in the Dog-days. For, on a closer investigation of the matter, we find that the disappear. ance of the Dog-star in the sun's rays does not always happen at the season of the year when the heat is most intense, and that the month which we call the Dog-days may belong to winter as well as summer, as the following explanation will demonstrate.

It is well known that the stars have an apparent motion round the pole of the ecliptic, by means of which they advance about one degree in seventy-two years. The sun which, at the time of the expedition of the Argonauts, rose with the constellation Aries, when spring began about the 20th of March, does not now reach that constellation till towards the end of April. Since that period the Dog-days have been thrown just so much later; and in point of fact they do not now commence till towards the end of August, and terminate about the 20th of September. Our almanac-makers, therefore, can no longer with a good conscience place against the 20th of July in red or black letter, the words Dog-days begin, and against the 20th of August Dog-days end. They would err at least a whole month, and deceive themselves and those who relied on their calculations. Meanwhile the Dog-star steadily pursues its course, and will, in process of time, reach October and November, nay even Christmas itself, and then what will become of the Dog-days?

If we consider all this, we shall clearly perceive that the Dog-star cannot possibly be to blame for all the accidents that befal us during the period of the most intense heat. It is quite unnecessary to extend our enquiries farther, as the heat is of itself sufficient to afford a satisfactory explanation of all these phenomena. If wine or beer turn in bad cellars, if fermenting matters become sour, if standing waters and wells are dried up, there is no occasion to seek the cause of these effects in any thing else than the heated air, as they may all be produced at every season of the year by artificial heat. If dogs go mad about this time, it cannot possibly be because the Dog-star is then concealed by the sun; for I have just observed that this no longer takes place in the Dog-days. But supposing that it did, other animals and even men are as liable to be seized with madness in excessive heat as dogs; and neither brutes nor men are affected by it when the Dog-days are cold, and other incidental causes are wanting. But I must not dwell any longer on these follies, which, strictly speaking, are not within my sphere.

The universal propensity of mankind to insist on their innocence when they suffer has hitherto cherished the error, so flattering to their selflove, of charging the diseases which they induce by their misconduct during the heat of summer to the account of the Dog-star. Ridiculous as all the trash of the astrologers is become at the present day, the notion of the influence of the Dog-star still in some measure keeps its

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