Egyptian. Any development of the language must then have taken place in the interval between the separation between the parent stem in the plains of Central Asia and the earliest of the Egyptian monuments, and after this period it underwent no change. It was in this interval that the language and the civilization slowly developed themselves; we say slowly advisedly, for the changes in a nation's development are only hastened by the introduction of foreign elements, and such foreign elements were not likely to have hastened the progress of the Egyptian. At the time of Menes the language was not in its infancy, not even in its youth, and had already entered on a period of decay.

But language may exist in oral form, and never be committed to writing, for writing is purely accidental and artificial. Like language, however, writing does not spring at once into perfect form, it passes through progressive stages: there is first the ideogrammatic, then the syllabic, and finally the alphabetic, or the phonetic, stage. But here, again, it is important to note the fact that in the earliest of the monuments the writing is already alphabetical. It still retained its ideogrammatic character, but it had reached the alphabetic stage, and in this form it was accepted by the Phoenicians and conveyed by them to the Greeks and other European nations. In Papyri, some of which it is claimed belong to the second dynasty, we have even a cursive form of writing, called hieratic. As in the case of the language, so of the writing also, it had reached its highest development at the earliest period, the establishment of the monarchy. It must, therefore, have been developed in that indefinite prehistoric period which we most reckon by cycles and not by years. But writing is never developed when a nation is in the nomadic stage: not till it has settled permanently in a home, not till it has gathered a store of oral traditions, is writing or literature developed; and in the medical papyrus at Berlin we have reference to a medical literature of the first dynasty. Egyptian writing must then have been developed between the founding of the monarchy and the settlement in Egypt. But the Egyptian religion and government, as well as art, present facts equally remarkable with what we find in reference to lan

guage and writing. We accept the verdict of Brugsch, of J. de Rougé, and of Robiou, that the original form of the Egyptian religion was undoubtedly monotheistic, though we cannot agree with Robiou in thinking that it continued monotheistic till the period of the second dynasty. Before the establishment of the monarchy mythical elements had grown up around the original type. The oldest known papyrus of the Book of the Dead only dates back to the eighteenth dynasty; but the sacred ritual preserved in it belongs to a period very much earlier, for extracts from it are found on sarcophagi and in tombs of the earliest dynasties, and there is a reference to it in the Prisse Papyrus, as if to an old and well-known ritual. On the site of old Memphis, and near the Sphinx, there were lately unearthed some ruins evidently of a very early period, and which have been recognized as the remains of an old temple of Isis. From records of Cheops, the builder of the great Pyramid, we learn that he had discovered at Memphis the ruins of an earlier city, and especially of a temple of Isis. The ruins lately discovered are believed to be the same as were discovered by Cheops, confirming the view that Memphis was built on the site of a city still earlier. The existence of such a temple carries the religion of the Egyptian very far back; but every student of mythology knows that the mythology of each nation has been developed after its separation from its kindred tribes, and this is especially true regarding the mythology of Egypt; it is indigenous to the banks of the Nile. Bunsen remarks that "Egyptian mythology could have developed nowhere else but under an African sky, and the overpowering influence of a solar symbolism." And we may be allowed to add that it is as strongly marked by the peculiar features of the fertilizing Nile. If the religious system of the Egyptians was very complex it was still very well developed and of great excellence; it was a religious system which presented a very pure morality, which clearly taught of a future life of rewards and punishments, and which, in its ritual, addressed the supreme God by that name so dear to every Christian-of Father; a religious system to which the Hebrew system was very deeply indebted, from which it borrowed very many of its precepts, and

copied much of its ritualistic service as well as many of its temple forms, and the mode of its priestly garments with their rich Eastern ornamentations, a religious system, in fact, as much older than the Hebrew as the language and the writing of the Egyptians exceeded in age by many centuries, the language and writing of the Phoenicians or the Hebrews.

A study of Egyptian art still further confirms our view of the very great antiquity of Egypt's civilization. Only one who has visited Egypt can form any idea of the massiveness of its ancient structures, and the artistic merit of its architecture. Its tombs excavated for acres, and the walls of which are covered with wellcut bas-reliefs, or with brilliant paintings, which reveal the social life of the period; its magnificent temples, built of massive blocks and adorned with majestic columns and beautiful caryatides; its gigantic pyramids, built with wonderful symmetry and in strict obedience to the laws of art; the Sphinx, which for ages has remained so expressive of mysterious majesty; its obelisks, so gracefully pointing heavenward-all speak of a wonderful development of art and culture, yet breathe the air of a far distant past. We quote the very highest authority on the subject, Sir James Ferguson :-"We are startled to find Egyptian art nearly as perfect in the oldest pyramids as in any of the later, or as it afterward became when all the refinement and all the science of the Greeks had been applied to its elaboration. Even at the earliest period the Egyptians had attained the art of transporting the heaviest blocks of granite from Syene to Memphis, of squaring them with a mathematical precision never surpassed, of polishing them to a surface as smooth as glass, and of raising them higher than any such blocks have ever been raised in any other building in the world, and setting them with a truth and precision so wonderful that they now lie without flaw or settlement after thousands of years have passed over them, and swept the more modern buildings of other nations from the face of the earth, or laid them in undefinable and indiscriminate ruin. At that early period, too, the art of sculpture was as perfect as it ever afterward became; the hieroglyphics are as perfectly cut, as beautifully colored, and told their tale with the same quaint distinctness which afterward characterized

them." Indeed, it is very remarkable that the oldest monuments are not only the most massive, but show the most artistic taste. After the twentieth dynasty there is a very perceptible decline both in the art and size of materials of the buildings; down to the twentieth dynasty they are of the hard granite or syenite from the Upper Nile, but after that period they are of the more easily worked and less beautiful sandstone of the Lower Nile. But it is not only in the more massive buildings that this very wonderful artistic merit appears it is, also, in small objects, as trinkets and jewelry, which possess great artistic beauty. The argument in favor of a great antiquity of civilization, especially in regard to Egypt, is of a very accumulative character, and still other facts disclose themselves to us. We learn that at the time of the earliest monuments the population was divided not only into different social classes, but into the different trades and occupations, into the military and priestly orders, and also the agricul tural and manufacturing and trading classes. Indeed, Egyptian civilization seems to have been at once many-sided and highly developed, the position of the several classes being remarkably well defined. But the very existence of these social distinctions, and of the various occupations, must have necessitated laws and government which might afford security, not only to life, but to the requirements of society, to the various industries, to the development of trade and commerce. fact, a settled state of society implies that the obligations and responsibilities of the several classes must have been fully recognized before there could have been any real development. The peculiar character of agriculture in Egypt seems to have required from the very first a well-regulated administration and a close and careful supervision. The soil of Egypt owes its great fertility to the overflowing of the Nile, but in order to take full advantage of this peculiar feature a canal and dyke system has been at all times necessary. Classical writers, as Herodotus and Eratosthenes, allude to the wonderful system of artificial irrigation in Egypt, and to the lakes and canals which had been formed to retain the waters of the receding river. But tradition places the origin of this system at a very early date, long before the establishment of the monarchy,

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and late researches have tended to verify this tradition. There is every reason to believe that the government by nomes, or districts, grew out of this system of irrigation. Each nome seems early to have felt the necessity of looking after its own interests, and to have begun a system of irrigation to meet its requirements. The nomes existed long prior to any historic period, and each exercised its own independent government, apparently in the patriarchal form. There were forty-two of these nomes, each quite distinct from the others. Bunsen concludes that these nomes existed separately 6000 years before Menes, but Bunsen's dates are largely imaginative, and, yet, we must acknowledge that he was very learned, generally judicious, and thoroughly honest in all his re searches. After a time these nomes combined, and later still they became united into separate kingdoms, the one of Upper and the other of Lower Egypt. Under Menes, or rather under an unknown predecessor, the kingdom of Upper Egypt was reduced to subjection by the king of Lower Egypt, and the kings of this united kingdom always after bore the double title of Upper and Lower Egypt, and wore the double crown.

From the facts which we have considered, we are led to the conclusion that the civilization of Egypt carries us back to a very remote period. The establishment of the monarchy cannot have been less than 4000 years before Christ, but this rests upon a previous period, which we are not able to define, and regarding which we can only say that then the Egyptian language and writing, art and religion, society and government, were being developed. We are confident too that the scene of this development must have been the Nile valley. The writing, and especially the religion, and the system of government bear too strongly the impress of the peculiar features of the country to admit any doubt of this. We are not inclined to attempt assigning any dates to this prehistoric period, for it cannot possibly be done. The prehistoric development must have been slow, and we can only repeat that we must calculate it by cycles and not by years. But we must bear in mind that when we have marked the origin of that distinct Egyptian development we have only reached lengthened stage backward in the history

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of the Egyptian people. Though the Egyptian language never reached great perfection, for it early became stratified in what we may call the Miocene state, between the monosyllabic and the confixative, yet there is enough to assure us that it is of the Semitic branch, and we are carried back to the home of the Semitic family in Central Asia; we have to watch the growth of the Semitic people till they became numerous and formed themselves into separate tribes; we have to notice the development of distinct dialects; we have to trace the successive advance from the rudest state to the nomadic, the pas toral, and there is reason to believe the earlier forms of agricultural life. Then we must follow them in their migrations till their settlement in Egypt. Sir William Dawson displays a most lamentable ignorance when he assigns one generation to the period between the flood and the establishment of the Egyptian monarchy. We think that we have shown the utter absurdity of such an idea. We have confined ourselves to the development of Egyptian civilization, because this is the field that Sir William has chosen, but the development of other nations of antiquity reveals very similar facts. The Aryans, and especially the Indians or Sanskritspeaking people, at a very early period developed civilizations essentially different from that of the Egyptians, yet equally remarkable.

The Indians were the last to leave the home of the Aryan family; they had seen the Celts, and Teutons, and the GræcoItalic tribes leave, and turn their faces westward, before they, in company with the Persians, directed their course to the East. From the first book of the Zendavesta we learn that the combined Indians and Persians travelled north-east, but later turned toward the Himalayas. These migrations must have occupied a long time, for the Vendidad mentions sixteen lands which they visited, and where they made lengthened sojourns, for linguistic deposits from this Indo-Persic migration. are still discernible. The quarrel which resulted in the separation of the Indians and Persians took place after the passage of the Himalayas, yet subsequently to this period the Indians and the Persians each developed their respective systems, which are in every respect very different from one another, but which, nevertheless, ap

pear in their most perfect form in the earliest of the Vedas, and in the Avesta. In the earliest of the Vedas the Sanskrit language, with its remarkably full and perfect grammar, is in its highest development a development only compatible with the highest civilization; but the language of the Vedas had already become hieratic in its character and had ceased to be the common language of the people. The language also of the Avesta, the Zend, was a dead language in the time of Alexander. Here again we have to do with cycles during which the civilization of the

Indians or the Persians was developed-a civilization which was already effete at the time of the composition of the Vedas or of the Avesta, if we may judge from the language as well as from the character of these works respectively. In whatever direction we study the development of the Semitic or the Aryan nations, we cannot fail to be impressed with the antiquity of their civilization, and we cannot accept those chronological tables which assign a limited period to this development and which are based on data utterly inadequate.-Westminster Review.

THERE is a charm in India which cannot be defined. It may be the infinite variety of form, color, and character in every-day life, it may be that here more than in any other land the past is not a dead past. You live among palaces, men, and manners which have remained unchanged for centuries, while you see the strong rule of a conquering modern race, not destroying but organizing the empire to which it has succeeded, and, by virtue of your English birth, you become, not a mere student of bygone history, but an actual part of that great drama which is continually unrolled from the silent hills to the sounding sea."

After the English traveller has duly admired the stately modern buildings and the gay native bazaar of Bombay, a city which East and West have combined to rear as a fitting portal to their joint land, perhaps the first thing which strikes him is the immensity of India. He may have been told that India is not a country but a continent inhabited by races speaking a hundred and six different languages besides dialects, but it is not till he begins to journey from place to place that he realizes the vast distances which he must traverse. Now he ascends among precipitous mountains whose summits are flattened into the semblance of giant fortifications by the tropical storms, now the train bears him through marshy paddy-fields often under floods over which the natives paddle their little boats, while the rising or setting sun glows through the palm

trees, turning the muddy waters to vivid red. Again he crosses interminable plains soon to be rich with corn and grain of every kind, or with yellow-flowering cotton, unless perchance he finds himself in some stony wilderness where a ready legend explains that Hanouman's monkeys dropped great boulders on their way from the Himalayas to build a bridge to Ceylon over which the great hero Rama might pass to the rescue of his lost Sita.

In the Deccan, castle after castle rises on little mounds fortified like Norman

strongholds. In Oude the villages are fortresses surrounded by mud walls and telling their own story of tribal disputes and midnight raids. The district, however, which brings most vividly before the mind the days of wild horsemen scouring the fields and sweeping down the mountain passes is Rajpootana, where the descendants of genuine feudal chiefs still keep their feudal state. The capital of any one among them may stand for a type of the rest. The palace, a graceful irregular mass of buildings, with its zenana, armory, and durbar hall, surrounds a courtyard in which saunter and squat armed and unarmed retainers. The interior is decorated in a compromise between Oriental and European taste-the more Oriental the better, as when an untravelled native noble begins to invest in English furniture, the result is apt to suggest a modern hotel furnished on the sweating system. The great object in any case is to hang the ceilings with as many

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chandeliers and colored glass balls as possible. The walls and columns are generally gayly painted, and a favorite fancy is a hall of mirrors" in which walls and ceiling are inlaid with innumerable little looking-glasses or pieces of talc, or of colored glass. Occasionally you find a durbar hall with real marble carved columns worthy of all admiration.

The idea of order is still far to seek. At the entrance of the finest palace you find the shoes, bedding, and old clothes of the guards thrown about, and piled up promiscuously; and framed cuttings from illustrated papers, cheap prints, or photographs will be nailed up quite crooked on decorated palace walls. The hall of the old Palace of Tanjore in the south, which is used as a depository for the royal valuables, contains among its treasures a framed colored advertisement of Coats's cotton. To return to Rajpootana. The chiefs themselves are generally handsome young men, gorgeously attired in long silk or velvet coats and tightly fitting colored trousers; their turbans on state occasions glitter with gems, and they wear splendid necklaces of pearls and diamonds. Their manners are courteous and they are most hospitable to visitors. Some who have been educated in the Rajcot College speak English well. Those of their subjects who can trace their descent to a common ancestor form their clan and may number hundreds, or even thousands, varying in wealth and position from the highest zemindar to the poorest ryot, but all claiming a species of equality. At Jeypore the rich young blood-relations of the Maharajah from whom he claims feudal service are obliged, in addition to their country seats, to have town houses, in order to attend the special class in his college which has been formed for their instruction. This college educates boys of all classes; the chiefs are taught apart from the others, and their studies are less severe, but it is hoped "to make men of them." This shows wisdom and foresight. Hitherto education has been mainly confined to the middle-classes, and the natural leaders of the people have allowed themselves to be outstripped in the intellectual race. Sons of clerks and shopkeepers graduate in the Calcutta and Bombay universities, studying in the local colleges and going up to the centres for examination. By dint of the marvellous

memory and calculating powers of the Hindu, they acquire a verbal acquaintance with English literature and a knowledge of mathematics which are astounding. These are the men who, instigated by discontented English agitators, demand "representative institutions." They cannot dig, and though they cannot justly be accused of being ashamed to beg, they would prefer the chance of voting themselves large salaries for exercising their undeniably fluent powers of speech. Most of the native States have colleges, high schools, and jails on approved systems. When you see such generous and enlightened rulers as, for instance, the Maharajah of Bhownuggur, the impression carried away is that the British raj exercises a wise discretion in allowing these provinces to continue under native government, with the assistance of British Residents and Agents, if only caution is observed in not bestowing the much-coveted rewards and decorations on the chiefs when they first succeed to their dominions. Those who have worked hard and spent their revenues to improve the condition of their subjects well deserve recognition; but if young gentlemen who have been British wards during their minority at once get all they have to hope for, they lose a great incentive to action, and are apt to become careless and absentee rulers. One curious feature is the universal use of the English language for notices and time-tables in institutions under purely native management, as also for the words of command in the armies of native princes. These armies do not look very formidable at present, whatever they may become when drilled by English officers, and brigaded with English troops. The prospect of this drill has given rise to some curious rumors. A Eurasian officer at Ulwur asked whether it was true that the Russians were near at hand, and a battle to be fought in a few days.

No one can be surprised at the rapidity with which reports circulate in India when he watches the out-of-door existence led by the people. The day begins at the tanks or river-side. There may be seen numberless men and women washing themselves and their clothes all at once. woman unrolls one end of her colored sari, or cloth, about eight yards long, and washes that, standing herself meanwhile in the water; then she winds herself up in the wet end, and washes the other-a

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