travellers. Whether the tribe is becoming better principled or not, we are certain of more attention to truth This very example of Bruce will have been of mighty service to convince them all that honesty is the best policy it is become evident to them, that between the internal evidence in their narratives, and the probability of other adventurers being ere long on their track, there is no chance for the saccess of any very gross deception. At the same time, so much the greater honour is due to those of the earlier travellers, whose integrity sufficed for the veracity of their relations, at a time when the dictates of this policy were by no means so imperious.--But we are sorry to have diverted so long from the excellent traveller with whose work we are at present concerned; a work which will always rank very high for most, if not all of the qualities which should distinguish the report of such a peregrination.

We have very lively descriptions of the people and customs of Cairo, while liveliness, our Author says, is the thing totally wanting in all the inhabitants but the Arabs. Their disposition is to exist without exertion of any kind; to 'pass whole days upon beds and cushions, smoking and 'counting beads.' This dulness pervades the habits and families of the residents from Europe, excepting we presume, the long-famed Signor Rosetti. But the living inhabitants are a matter of inferior consideration in a region which seems even now to belong much more to the people who lived there innumerable ages since. Those ancient possessors have left their imperishable works upon it, as if in evidence of the perpetuity of their claim; and, as if to maintain it, have left their very bodies, still existing and complete, refusing to submit to the ordinary destiny of mingling with the dust. What signify,' the enthusiast for the ancient world will exclaim, what signify these transitory, vulgar, living men, and their operations and their abodes, on a field occupied ' above with pyramids and beneath with catacombs? on a field 'where eternal monuments seem inhabited by the spectres of 'the dead?' Dr. Clarke displays habitually a high degree of this susceptibility to the venerable and awful character of funereal antiquity. There is however one little circumstance in the account of the visit to the Pyramids, which struck us as oddly inharmonious with this state of feeling. He says, Some Bedouin Arabs, who had received us upon our landing (from the Nile) were much amused by the eagerness 'excited in our whole party, to prove who should first set his foot upon the summit of this artificial mountain' (the great Pyramid). This, we think, was a vastly puerile sort of emotion to prevail in such a situation; and wonderfully

different from those impressions of awe, amounting even to terror, which he a little while before described as inevitably incident to a person of sensibility in approaching these stupendous monuments. We should really have thought that any one of the cultivated and reflective persons of the party, or at any rate that our Author, would have been perfectly willing to be left the last in the ascent, if by that means he might be the more abandoned to the power and impression of the scene. Or, are we to take it that this competition to get foremost was an effect of the very terror alluded to, that it was from the apprehension of being quite seized and overpowered by it if left in the rear of this sort of virtuoso mob? Indeed, it seems that into this very predicament one of the party, an officer, was actually thrown, being literally so overwhelmed with the stupendous sight around him, that about midway of the ascent he became unable to proceed. Dr. C. went down from the top, to excite and assist him, and he was at length conducted to the summit. On that summit the party were, each and

, to play another little game, that of carving their names in the stone. For to us it appears a rather ill-judging kind of vanity and egotism, to attempt to turn this awful structure to the use of recording an hour's visit of beings, whose whole life on earth is such a trifle of duration, compared with that of a work which, at the end of the world, will have been so far towards co-eval with all time. Why was exactly this circumstance to be recorded on such a monument, in preference to millions of more serious ones that have taken place in the presence of this solemn pile? Without question it was well to avoid all affectation of high and tumultuous enthusiasm, of profound and absorbing reverie, while standing for a few moments in so majestic a position; and perhaps it was rational not to be actually rapt into such a state of feeling. But we cannot well comprehend how the visible magnificence, immensity, and antiquity, the visionary musing, the impression of solemnity, the crowding access of recollections and associations, inseparable, as it may be supposed, from any susceptible, highly cultivated, and classical mind, should admit a full suspension for so trivial and at the same time protracted an employment, as that of cutting a man's name on the stone-when, too, it was the first time, and to be the last, of being in so sublime a situation, and when the situation was to be held but for a few moments.

It will be alleged, and most truly, no doubt, that it is not so easy to lose sight, even for one quarter of an hour, of the little article self, in the most striking situations on earth; in situations where the contemplative visitant is natu

rally beset by a whole host of ideas bearing no direct relation to himself. And a long list of travellers' names, which might be found inscribed on the venerable remains of antiquity in the different parts of the world, would tell us that the above remarks are somewhat hypercritical. We readily quit the topic, to say how much we are gratified by the animated and interesting description of the great Pyramid, of the objects in its vicinity, and of the grand panorama beheld from the summit. We were most powerfully arrested by the observations and experiments on the famous well, which is found in an obscure passage at the central interior of the pyramid.

In this passage we found, upon our right hand, the mysterious well. Pliny makes the depth of it equal to one hundred and twenty-nine feet; but Greaves, in sounding it with a line, made the plummet rest at the depth of twenty feet. The mouth of it is barely large enough to admit the passage of a man's body; but, as this may be effected, it is to be regretted that the French, during all their researches here, did not adopt some plan for the effectual examination of a place likely to throw considerable light upon the nature of the pyramid, and the foundation on which it stands. This would require more time than travellers usually can spare, and more apparatus than they can carry with them. In the first place it would be necessary to fasten lighted tapers at the end of a long cord, to precede the person descending, as a precaution whereby the quality of the air below may be proved, and those fatal effects prevented, which often attend an improvident descent into wells, and subterraneous chambers of every description. Many hands, too, would be required above, to manage and sustain the ropes by which any adventurer, during the experiment, must remain suspended.' We threw down some stones, and observed that they rested about the depth which Greaves has mentioned; but being at length provided with a stone nearly as large as the mouth of the well, and about fifty pounds in weight, we let it fall, listening attentively for the result from the spot where the other stones rested: we were agreeably surprised by hearing, after a length of time which must have equalled some seconds, a loud and distinct report, seeming to come from a spacious subterraneous apartment, accompanied by a splashing noise, as if the stone had been broken into pieces, and had fallen into a reservoir of water at an amazing depth. Thus does experience always tend to confirm the accounts left us by the ancients; for this exactly answers to the description given by Pliny of this well; and, in all probability, the depth of it does not much differ from that which he mentions, of eighty-six cubits, or one hundred and twenty-nine feet, making the cubit equal to eighteen inches. Pliny says that the water of the Nile was believed to communicate with this well. The inundation of the river was now nearly at its height. Can it be supposed that, by some hitherto unobserved and secret channels, it is thus conveyed to the bottom of this

well? It seems more probable that the water is nothing more than the usual result of an excavation in a stratum of limestone, carried on to the depth at which water naturally lies in other wells of the same country; as, for example, in the pit called Joseph's Well, in the citadel of Grand Caïro.'

Such a profound pit, opening in a place itself so dark and awful, is the superlative aggravation of gloom and mystery. The descent into the depth of this gulf of central night, if indeed it shall not be forbidden by a mephitic state of the air, is one of the most signal exploits yet awaiting an intelligent and daring curiosity. The adventurer for whom it is reserved, (it must not be the officer who was so completely unmanned on the outside of the pyramid, in cheerful day-light,) will have had some sensations with which he will in vain seek for persons adequately to sympathize.

So inexhaustible is the power of these Egyptian monuments over the imagination, that notwithstanding every former description we have read of the interior of the great pyramid, we feel an undiminished interest in accompanying the new explorer, through the leading passages, in the lateral ducts and recesses, and into the final grand apartment, where remains the Soros, or tomb, which once contained, but not since the earliest periods of profane history, the lifeless personage for whom the whole enormous pile was raised as an eternal sanctuary and memorial. And really, setting aside the purely superstitious part of the proud projector's anticipations, that is to say, the direct and personal advantage believed to be conferred on the condition after death, by an indestructible sepulchre, and regarding only the intention of commanding the veneration of the successive living generations, we must acknowledge the wisdom of his calculation;-provided only that he could have been certain his body should be for ever secure against profane intrusion, and that there should be an unfailing record or tradition transmitted downward, of its actually being in the unknown chambers of the inviolable structure. For a certain solemn and venerating sentiment would have been entertained, involuntarily, by all subsequent generations, for the dead personage so known to have his dwelling in the impenetrable sanctuary within such a structure. Such would have been the feeling at this very day, beyond all escape or cure; and so much the stronger the more cultivated might be the beholder's mind. Only imagine the effect of stupendous vastness, and of the continually deepening solemnity of antiquity, combined with that reverence which it is a principle of our nature to feel for the remains of the dead; and all this rendered still more emphatic by the secresy and mystery of the unexplored abode! Îf, with respect

to the second of the great pyramids, there were any record to make us quite certain that it thus contains and conceals an ancient inhabitant, much of this state of feeling would be experienced by reflective men in approaching it; at least if the beholder approached it in solitude and under the other circumstances favourable to solemn thought; though certainly the effect would be much less powerful from his seeing the mightiest of these abodes of death violated and vacant.

It is with a proper caution that we have said 'reflective 'men;' for Dr. Clarke has given a most gross and offensive instance of the total want of any thing belonging to this order of feelings, in a portion of our English invaders of Egypt. The opprobrious fact is, that the beautiful SOROS in the grand chamber of the pyramid, an object that had remained uninjured during nearly a hundred generations, having been held sacred by all sorts of barbarians, amid all manner of hostilities and ravages, is now no longer entire since Englishmen have had the free range of the country.

The soldiers and sailors of our army and navy having had frequent access to the interior of the pyramid, carried with them sledge-hammers, to break off pieces to be conveyed to England; and began, alas! the havoc of its demolition. Had it not been for the classical taste and laudable interference of Colonel, now General Stuart, then commanding officer in that district, who threatened to make an example of any individual whether officer or private, who should disgrace his country by thus waging hostility against History and the Arts, not a particle of the SOROS would have remained. Yet, as a proof of the difficulty which attended this worse than Scythian ravage, the persons who thus left behind them a sad memorial of the British name, had only succeeded in accomplishing a fracture near one of the angles. It was thus disfigured when we arrived; and every traveller of taste will join in reprobating any future attempt to increase the injury it has so lamentably sustained.'

Thus, in a place more majestically monumental than any other on earth, in the peculiar region of perpetuity, our people have secured a permanent monument to their disgrace. By means also of dilapidation, the French have left a lasting memorial, but which will not be among the recorded dishonours of their Egyptian expedition. They made a vigorous and persevering attempt to force an entrance into the interior of the third pyramid; and had there been time for prosecuting the operation, they would perhaps have disclosed another magnificent sanctuary of death, and found a tomb not deserted by its ancient inhabitant.

In the above observations we have assumed that the intention and use of the pyramids were such as history has represented; that the Egyptian monarchs constructed them