and I was at a loss what to do. I spoke to Ahasuerus the Great about it. "If you will get me a few shingles and nails, and some glass and putty, I will do it myself," said he. "If you can do it, so can I," said I, for I began to be a little jealous of Ahasuerus. Accordingly, I procured the materials, and mounting on the roof, went to work zealously. It was a devil of a business; but I got through it at last. It did not look very well, to be sure; but it kept out the rain, the snow, and the keen air. Encouraged at my unaccountable ingenuity as a carpenter, I commenced glazier, and broke six panes of glass off-hand. With the seventh, however, I succeeded; and well it was that I did so, for I had determined this should be the last, and its failure would have for ever satisfied me, that none but a man who had learned the trade of a glazier could put in a pane of glass. As it was, I passed from the extreme of depression and vexation to that of exaltation and vanity.'

We should be glad to prolong our extracts from this tale, for the author goes on to a very striking enumeration of the pleasures afforded by the aspect of solitary nature, and does not omit to interpolate some agreeable anecdotes of Mr. Ambler's progressive steps towards a cure, under the sanatory influence of border life. But our limits are already exceeded.

Such is the nature of the entertainment and instruction to be obtained from these volumes: it is vain to expect that the English reader, amidst the voluminous issues of the London Press, can have much leisure or opportunity to seek among the American importations for objects of literary gratification; we therefore heartily applaud the idea of thus selecting from time to time the more happy efforts of Transatlantic geniusand congratulate the compiler upon the successful exercise of her discriminative powers. When next we consider one of her undertakings, it will probably lie in a higher but not more useful walk of intellectual occupation.

ART. IX. Hieroglyphics. Published by the Royal Society of Literature, Part V. London. 1830.

THE magnificent remains of antiquity which adorn the valley of the Nile have for ages past been the admiration of all that beheld them. The Pyramids of Jîzah have been long since placed by universal consent among the select Wonders of the World. The mc iuments of Upper Egypt were less known, but they were equally calculat d to delight and astonish the visitant. Scarcely was it possible for even the rudest peasant to gaze without emotion on those enormous masses of masonry, which, having survived the lapse of so many centuries, and the devast VOL. XIV.- Westminster Review.

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ation of so many conquerors, still point out the sites of the principal edifices of ancient Thebes; on the groups of figures, many of them of gigantic size, which are sculptured on their sides; and on the colossal statues and obelisks, which seem to guard the approach to them. To the eye of cultivated taste a new source of wonder was opened in the exquisite symmetry which pervades every part of these buildings; in the accuracy of the proportions, and the delicacy of the execution of the sculptures; and in the richness and freshness of the colouring in those parts that had been painted. The attention of the closer observer was riveted by the multitude of different figures, of which the sculptures were composed; by the variety of features and habits, of attitudes and employments, that was observable among them; and by the strangeness of the scenery, by which they were sometimes surrounded. Few penetrated the vast and gloomy excavations, in which the mighty dead had been deposited; but they who did so were awe-struck with the solemnity of those silent chambers, at the same time that they were delighted with their gorgeous magnificence.

Until within the last few years, however, a painful sensation of ignorance was ever mingled with the gratification, which the sight of these wonders was so well calculated to produce in the mind of the beholder. The history, and even the names of those mighty sovereigns, by whom they had been constructed, were, as well as the time of their construction, wholly unknown. The half-savage Arabs, whose habitations are now polluting the palaces and temples of the once proud capital of Egypt, were on these subjects scarcely worse informed than the most enlightened antiquarians of Europe. The former ascribed all without distinction to "old king Pharaoh," the latter might know, indeed, that this ill-understood title was borne by a succession of princes, who must have reigned, at the lowest computation, for upwards of fourteen hundred years; but to which of these kings, or to what portion of this long interval of time, they should ascribe each or any of the monuments, they were wholly ignorant. The guesses that were hazarded by some had but little plausibility when they were published; and we now know that they could hardly have been more unlucky. The most magnificent of the temples, which, it was presumed, must have been the most recent, and have probably been erected at a period when the barbarous architecture of the ancient Egyptians had been improved by their intercourse with the polished Grecians, are, it is now ascertained, the work of the very oldest times, long before the period when Greece could have anything elegant to teach to her neighbours. On the other hand, the temples of Dendera

and Esneh, to which the French Savans, some thirty years ago, from arguments founded on the supposed positions of the equinoctial points in Zodiacs figured upon them, attributed a most incredible antiquity, have been proved to be among the most recent of all the monuments, having been constructed in the time of the Roman Emperors.

But the veil by which the ancient monarchs of Egypt and all their concerns have so long been hidden, is now withdrawn ; and though, as we have sometimes seen in theatric representations, a lingering mist continues to shroud those objects which were formerly totally concealed by it; that mist is evidently clearing away, and we can already distinguish through it the shadowy forms of a long line of princes, extending back into the most remote antiquity, and adorned by military exploits and architectural monuments, such as few sovereigns of any age or country have surpassed.

We are not going to engage in the controversy, which national vanity will in all probability render a very protracted one, whether it is to our late lamented countryman Dr. Young, or to M. Champollion, that the world is most indebted for that new light which has broken in upon us within the last dozen years; which has already enabled us to pronounce with certainty on a vast number of questions, respecting which the profoundest ignorance had previously prevailed; and which holds forth to us a prospect of farther information to an extent that can scarcely be estimated too largely. What we intend to do at present is to give, in a condensed form, and without the parade of learned discussion, the substance of the information which has been acquired from time to time, by the deciphering of hieroglyphical legends, respecting the ancient Egyptian Kings, and the principal monuments of each of them that are extant. We are the more desirous of doing this, because the English public can no where meet with this information collected together; nor with some of it, indeed, in any form; and because such of our cotemporaries as have undertaken to give it, have been extremely incorrect in the most important particulars.

The dynasty of kings to which the most magnificent of the Egyptian monuments are now attributed, is a very ancient one. It reigned in Thebes, in Upper Egypt, from three to four thousand years ago. We cannot state the precise period; for the inscriptions that have been hitherto discovered have rather illustrated the history and the genealogy of these monarchs than their chronology. We know the number of years in the reigns of some, but not of all of them; and if we knew it for all, we

should still want a common point to connect the series of their reigns with some known era. It is probable that this desideratum may be supplied, it is impossible to say how soon, through the intervention of the Sothiacal period, which, we know, commenced, possibly for the second time, in the 1323rd year before our era. If any given year of that period could be identified with a year of any king's reign, it would be easy to assign the year before Christ when that reign commenced. Hitherto, however, this has not been done; and we must be content to suspend our curiosity. It has been suggested that the lengths of the reigns of the different sovereigns might be known from the canon of Manetho, to whose 18th and 19th dynasties these Theban kings have been assumed to belong. But though we should admit this assumption, it can be of no avail to us beyond the first twelve or thirteen reigns in the 18th dynasty. The lengths of the subsequent ones are so discordantly set down in the different copies of Manetho, and in all the copies they are so inconsistent, both with the totals as assigned by him, and with the surer testimony of the monuments, that we must for the present dismiss them from consideration. The genuine text of Manetho may possibly be restored by the help of hieroglyphical legends; but, in the absence of the latter, the corrupted copies of Manetho that we now possess are absolutely useless as a substitute.

We must relinquish, then, for the present, the prospect of having the chronology of this line of sovereigns satisfactorily settled; and we must be content with determining the order of their succession, which we are enabled in great measure to do for a period of several hundred years. For this we are chiefly indebted to Mr. Wilkinson, the accurate copyist of most of the inscriptions contained in the work before us. In the year 1827, he took a new and most correct copy of the genealogical table of Abydos, first discovered by Mr. Bankes in 1818; and he also discovered and copied at Thebes several other lists of royal prænomens, the re-discovery of which M. Champollion has since announced. All these lists are presented to us at one view in the 98th plate of this collection. The table of Abydos appears from this last copy to have contained the prænomens of at least fifty, and probably fifty-four or fifty-eight, of the reputed ancestors of Rameses the Great. But, before we proceed further, we must explain to the uninitiated reader what a royal prænomen is.

The titles of the ancient Egyptian kings were numerous and fulsome, as those of oriental despots have always been. Several of these were borne by all of them indiscriminately, and were

employed or omitted in each case, apparently according to the caprice of the designer, or the space that he was desirous of filling up. There were some titles, however, which were peculiar to each sovereign, and which were probably selected by him at the commencement of his reign, to distinguish him from his predecessors. One at least of these peculiar groups of titles was invariably used to describe the sovereign; and if the designer was not limited in space, they were all employed. The first consisted always of the figure of Horus (or Apollo, according to Hermapion) followed by certain epithets or qualifications, which were frequently inclosed in a banner or ornamented square. The second groupe was enclosed in an oval shield, or cartouche; and uniformly commenced with a solar disk, signifying" the Sun," and read, it has been supposed, "Pharão." After this were certain other epithets, or qualifications. This cartouche with its contents is what is called "the Pranomen." Another cartouche which usually followed this, contained what is generally considered to be the historic name of the sovereign, often attended by additional titles. For distinction's sake this cartouche is called “the Name.” The indiscriminate titles which were occasionally prefixed to the prænomen were different from those prefixed to the name. The latter were 66 lord of the diadems," son of the Sun," "-who loves him," "-who honours him," and a few others; the former were more numerous; we need only mention the most frequent; "king" and "lord of the world." As a specimen of the manner in which these titles were accumulated, may be given the following, which is one of the most modest series that has been met with. It occurs on one of the columns of the temple of Amun at Elephantine: "The HORUS [powerful and reigning in truth] the good God, lord of the world (the SUN, lord of truth) the son of the Sun, who loves him, (AMENOTHPH, the moderator of the pure region) may he live like the Sun for ever!" For the translation given of the last qualification there is only the ipse dixit of M. Champollion. We accordingly print it, and some other clauses, the meaning of which is not absolutely certain, in the italic character; and we wish we could prevail on the gentleman that we have just named to adopt a similar course in his future works. The silly affectation of being able to translate with certainty all that he finds written in hieroglyphical characters has involved him in such a labyrinth of contradictions, retractions, and corrections, as to have led many to doubt-unreasonably indeed, but not unnaturally-whether he has attained to certainty with respect to any hieroglyphics whatsoever. The truth is, that the interpretation of very many of these characters does not rest on the