to intermit this toil; but a preacher may and should yield to the incitements and resist the temptations. Our fourth reply is: In the general a preacher may and should so intermingle the three fundamental methods of preaching as to secure his best possible preparation for the entire series of his sermons; to secure likewise such an amount of immediate preparation for each one of his sermons as that one proportionally requires. A French rhetorician adopts the following language in allowing the preacher to speak on some themes impromptu:

"You are accustomed to consult nature, to study it, to follow it. Practised in writing and speaking upon different subjects in private, you cultivate your memory by oft-repeated reading on the same subjects. It is a fund of eloquence that you have always at command. You have good rules upon every theme; you are acquainted with morals; the best authors are familiar to you; you repeat the scriptures and the writings of the Fathers as your mother-tongue; you express yourself easily and with grace; you have accurate and profound judgment, much order and precision in the arranging of arguments, uniting the different parts by natural transitions, saying all and only that which is exactly appropriate to your theme. Take, then, only a day, only an hour, to meditate on your theme; arrange your proofs; consult your memory; choose, prepare a certain number of figures; so appear in public. I consent to it; the common expressions which ought to make the body of your discourse will come to you of themselves; things will flow from their source. Your periods will be perhaps less harmonious, your transitions less fine, a misplaced expression may escape you. I will pardon it; the vehemence of your action will atone for these irregularities; you will be the master of your movements. A certain disorder will perhaps reign; but these negligences will not prevent me from being pleased and touched; your action, as well as your words, will appear to me the more natural."1

Apparently, but by no means necessarily, inconsistent with the graphic words of Dinouart are the following remarks of Lord Brougham and Robert Hall; and these words may fitly conclude this Treatise. Lord Brougham had said, in his Inaugural Address, at Glasgow:

"I should lay it down as a rule admitting of no exception, that a man will speak well in proportion as he has written much; and that, with equal talents, he will be the finest extempore speaker, when no time for pre1 Dinouart Sur L'Eloquence, pp. 58, 59.

paring is allowed, who has prepared himself the most sedulously when he had an opportunity of delivering a premeditated speech. All the exceptions which I have ever heard cited to this principle are apparent ones only, proving nothing more than that some few men, of rare genius, have become great speakers without preparation; in nowise showing that with preparation they would not have reached a much higher pitch of excellence. The admitted superiority of the ancients in all oratorical accomplishments is the best proof of my position; for their careful preparation is undeniable: nay, in Demosthenes (of whom Quintilian says, that his style indicates more preparation - plus curae - than Cicero's) we can trace, by the recurrence of the same passage with progressive improvements in different speeches, how nicely he polished the more exquisite parts of his compositions. I could point out favorite passages, occurring as often as three several times, with variations and manifest amendment."

Robert Hall spoke in "glowing terms of this address," and added:

66

Brougham is quite right, Sir. Preparation is everything. If I were asked what is the chief requisite for eloquence, I should reply: Preparation. And what the second: Preparation. And what the third: Preparation.” Then (with a sigh): "If I had prepared more for the pulpit, I should have been a much better preacher. There are, Sir, heights and depths and breadths and lengths in eloquence, yet to be attained, that we know nothing about."1

1 Greene's Reminiscences of Robert Hall, p. 138.

ARTICLE VIII.

NOTES ON EGYPTOLOGY.

BY REV. JOSEPH P. THOMPSON, D.D., BERLIN, GERMANY.

THE war between Germany and France has left an ineffaceable mark even upon the literature of archaeology. In September 1870 the Revue Archéologique came to a sudden pause, and the Number for that month was not distributed to subscribers until the close of 1871. When finally delivered it brought with it the announcement that the two years, 1870-1871, would be merged into one, and the Numbers for October, November, and December 1871 would fill out the subscription lists for the year preceding. Happily the leading contributors to the Revue have survived the calamities of the seige of Paris, and Mons. F. Lenormant continues his Memoir upon the Ethiopian Epoch in Egyptian History, and Mons. Jacques de Rouge completes his analysis of the Geographical Inscriptions of the Temple of Edfou. Lenormant's essay has relations to Biblical history and chronology, the definitive results of which will in due time be laid before the readers of the Bibliotheca Sacra.

Among the tablets brought by Mariette from Djebel Barkal in Ethiopia, and now deposited in the Museum at Boulak, is one containing a decree of excommunication from the king against certain evil and heretical priests who had profaned the temple and corrupted the sacrifices, the language of which reminds one of the imprecations of David and the denunciations of Jeremiah against the false prophets. Not content with forbidding these prophets and priests of evil deeds to enter the temple, and denouncing against them the severest penalties, his majesty prays that God may utterly destroy them; that he may not suffer their feet to walk the earth, nor permit them to have a posterity still to pollute the temple with their errors and their crimes. How like all this is to David's outbursts of holy indignation in Psalm lxix: "Let their table become a snare before them, and their welfare a trap. Let them be blotted out of the book of the living. Let their habitation be desolate; and let none dwell in their tents." The Ethiopian decree belongs probably to the sixth or seventh century before our era, and well illustrates the style in which religion was vindicated by eastern monarchs. It is reproduced in the decree of Germany against the Jesuits.

The development of the arts in ancient Egypt and the influence of Egyptian art upon later nations are discussed by Dr. Lepsius in two essays read before the Berlin Academy of Science, and now published as inde

1 G. Maspero in Revue Arch., Dec. 1871.

pendent monographs: "Ueber einige aegyptische Kunstformen und ihre Entwickelung"; and " Die Metalle in den aegyptischen Inschriften.” In the last edition of his "History of Architecture" Mr. Fergusson gives it as the result of his studies in comparative architecture, that "the Greeks borrowed nearly every peculiarity of their arts from the banks of the Nile. We possess tangible evidence of peristylar temples and proto-Doric pillars, erected in Egypt centuries before the oldest known specimen in Greece. We need therefore hardly hesitate to award the palm of invention of these things to the Egyptians, as we should probably be forced to do of most of the arts and sciences of the Greeks if we had only knowledge sufficient to connect them. Taken altogether, we may perhaps safely assert that the Egyptians were the most essentially a building people of all those we are acquainted with, and the most generally successful in all they attempted in this way. The Greeks, it is true, surpassed them in refinement and beauty of detail, and in the class of sculpture with which they ornamented their buildings, while the Gothic architects far excelled them in constructive cleverness; but with these exceptions no other styles can be put in competition with them. At the same time, neither Grecian nor Gothic architects understood more perfectly all the gradations of art, and the exact character that should be given to every form and every detail. Whether it was the plain flat-sided pyramid, the crowded and massive hypostyle hall, the playful pavilion, or the luxurious dwelling in all these the Egyptian understood perfectly both how to make the general design express exactly what he wanted, and to make every detail, and all the various materials, contribute to the general effect. They understood, also, better than any other nation, how to use sculpture in combination with architecture, and to make their colossi and avenues of sphinxes group themselves into parts of one great design, and at the same time to use historical paintings, fading by insensible degrees into hieroglyphics on the one hand, and into sculpture on the other; linking the whole together with the highest class of phonetic utterance. With the most brilliant coloring they thus harmonized all these arts into one great whole, unsurpassed by anything the world has seen during the thirty centuries of struggle and aspiration that have elapsed since the brilliant days of the great kingdom of the Pharaohs."

These generalizations of Fergusson-in which he was partly anticipated by Julius Braun in his Geschichte der Kunst- are borne out by the details which Dr. Lepsius has given of the development of Art-forms in Egypt, and the influence of these upon the growth of art in Greece. The artistic feeling in ancient Egyptian works shows itself, in the first instance, in the adaptation of material to conditions and ends. The country and its surroundings furnished varieties of stone, clay, wood, metals, precious stones, available for the purposes of art; and in their buildings, their 1 Vol. i. pp. 114, 125, 126. 2 See Vol. i. pp. 137-139 (ed. 1856).

monuments, their decorations, the Egyptians exhibit a nice sense of the relative uses and values of these crude materials-limestone, sandstone, syenite, granite, alabaster, serpentine, porphyry, each being employed in its turn according to the demands of strength, durability, or luxury. For purposes of luxury also the precious metals and precious stones were used, as appears not only from the mention of these in inscriptions, but from specimens to be seen in the collections of the Louvre, the Berlin, and the British Museums. Gold (Nub), Silver (Hat), Electrum (Asem), Lapis-lazuli (Xesbet), Emerald (Mafek), Ruby (Xenem), Turquoise (Nesem), Topaz (Tehen), often occur in the inscriptions, and the processes of working in them are delineated in pictures. Iron, copper, and lead are named, but no hieroglyphic equivalents have been ascertained for tin, though mirrors and other articles of bronze are found to contain as high as fourteen per cent of this metal. Neither is there any mention of zinc in the hieroglyphics. Gold and silver appear in the form of coins, rings, dishes, plates, vessels of divers shapes, and are pictured also in the lump and in large masses, ready for the artificer. Electrum, a compound of gold and silver, was used for coins and rings. The lapis-lazuli was imitated in glass, in various shades of blue; as were also the emerald, malachite, and other. greens. Brilliancy of effect, which their climate favored, was studied by the Egyptians in their decorative arts, through variety and combination of colors.

In the next place, even the rigid conventionalism which presides over all the monuments of ancient Egypt, had its origin in a feeling kindred to that of the modern pre-Raphaelite school in painting- the desire to copy nature servilely in the minutest details without idealizing or harmonizing for general effect; — each particular member of the human body, for instance, being drawn independently of its relations to other members, the head in profile, the hand with its five fingers always visible, the two shoulders made to appear even when the legs were drawn in profile. But these peculiarities were transmitted to the earlier forms of Greek art, and may still be seen in coins, vases, and bas-reliefs prior to the free and graceful handling of the human figure as a whole in sculpture. And moreover somewhat of the same conventionalism holds its place in modern art, and justifies itself upon artistic grounds, as in bas-reliefs, heraldic symbols, and also upon the stage of the theatre.

But with all their conventionalism of style, the Egyptians observed a canon of proportion, which is a third mark of their devotion to art as a study. This canon of proportion was based upon a network of squares, which answered to the measurements of a modern sculptor when modelling in clay a bust from life. A fine example of the Egyptian method is to be seen in one of the three sepulchral chambers which Dr. Lepsius caused to be transported from Gizeh and set up in the New Museum at Berlin. Upon one wall of this tomb are the completed figures of animals, cut with