Who knows?-perhaps they were.

Harriet Martineau, indeed, and the other poetical Howadji, are inclined to doubt whether there were any wry necks, or squint-eyes in those days of giants, and you cannot say yea, or nay, for the great darkness.

Who knows?-perhaps there were not.

Great they clearly were, for they built these temples, and graved the walls with their own glory. But they have the advantage of the dark, while Mehemet Ali and Julius Cæsar stand in the broad daylight, with all their wrinkles. Besides, when men have been dead a few thousand years, if their names escape to us across the great gulf of Time, it is only decent to take them in and entertain them kindly; especially is it becoming to those Howadji, who sail their river along the shores they so ponderously piled with grandeur.

But the Ptolemies, also-Luxor, Dendereh, Edfoo, Kum Ombos, Philæ, and the temples at Karnak-these are part of Egypt. O poetic and antiquity-adoring Howadji, this jealousy of the Greeks is sadly unpoetic. Look at this little Dekkar temple, and confess it. Remember Philæ, and ask forgiveness. Why love the Ptolemies less, because you love the Pharaohs more? Spite of Volney and this Nubian moonlight, itself a rich reward of

long voyaging, the Howadji will not be sad and solemn about the Egyptians, because they were a great people, and are gone. The Greeks had a much finer architecture, and a much more graceful nature-they were not so old as these. But there were elder than the Egyptians, and wiser, and fairer, even the sons of the morning; for heaven lies around the world in its infancy, as well as around us.

The Howadji left the little temple to the moonlight and the jackals. The village was startled from sleep again by our return, and the crew were sleeping upon the deck; but in a few moments there was no more noise, and the junk was floating down in the moonlight, while its choicer freight was clouded in the azure mist of Latakia, and heard only the sakias and the throbbing oars, and, at times, the wild, satanic rowing-song of the men, which Satan Saleh led with his diabolical quaver and cry.

Yet when another day had burnt away, the same moonlight showed us Kalab-sheh, the largest Nubian ruin. It is directly upon the tropic, which makes it pleasant to the imagination, but is a mass of uninteresting rubbish of Roman days. For the Howadji will not plead for Roman remains in Egypt, which have no more character than Roman art elsewhere; and Roman art in Baalbec, in Egypt, and in Italy, is only Grecian art thickened from poetry

into prose. It is one vast imitation, and the essential character is forever lost. But close by is a small rock temple of the "golden prime" of Ramses the Great, and passing the animated sculptures, and entering, the Howadji stands between two Doric columns. They are fluted, and except that they are low, like foundation columns, have all the grace of the Greek Doric. These columns occur once more near Minyeh, in Egypt, at the caves or tombs of Beni Hassan, and are there quite as perfect as in any Grecian temple. In this moonlight, upon the very tropic, that fact looms very significantly upon the Howadji's mind. But how can he indulge speculation, or reach conclusions, while Saleh who bears the torch-crate is perpetually drawing his attention to the walls, on which are sculptured processions bearing offerings to great Ramses, who built this temple, and who seems to have done every thing else in Egypt until the Ptolemies came? There are rings and bags of gold, leopard-skins, ostrich-eggs, huge fans, and beasts, lions, gazelles, oxen, then plants and skins. A historical sketch occupies another wall-the great Ramses, represented as three times the size of his foes, pursuing them into perdition. There is a little touch of a wounded man taken home by his comrades, while a child runs to "announce the sad

news to its mother," pathetically says Sir Gardner, speaking of sculptures that, to the Howadji's eye, have no more human interest, or tenderness, or variety of expression, than the chance forms of clouds or foliage.

But the Nubian days were ending, and the great gate of the cataract was already audible, roaring as it turned. Hassan piloted us safely through the half-cataracts; and the fantastic rock-vistas about Philæ were already around us. Beautiful in the mild morning stood the holy island, full of fairyfigures that came and went, and looked, and lingered -Ariel-beauties among the Caliban grotesqueness of the pass. It was the vision of a moment only, scarcely more distinct than in memory, and the next we were pausing at Mahratta, where the reis of the cataract, by the terms of the treaty, was bound to pilot the boat back again to Syene.

11*

XXXIII.

BY THE GRACE OF GOD.

It was a bright, sparkling morning, and all the people of Mahratta seemed to be grouped upon the shore to receive, with staring wonder, the boat that had undergone in itself the Pythagorean metempsychosis taught by the old teachers at neighboring Philæ-the boat that had flown southward a widewinged Ibis, and floated slowly back again a cumbrous junk-a swift bird no longer, but a heavy bug rather, sprawling upon the water with the long clumsy oars for its legs. There were two or three slave-boats at Mahratta-although we had passed scarce a sail in lonely Nubia. The brisk, busy shore was like awaking again after a long sleep-yet, believe me, it was only as one seems to awake in dreams. For the spell was not dissolved at Mahratta-nor yet at Cairo-and if at Beyrout to the eye, yet it still thralls the mind and memory.

The captain of the cataract was absent, piloting an English Howadji through the rapids; but his