In all the tombs was one god, a foxy-headed divinity, who greatly charmed us. He was in all societies, in all situations. Generally he was tapping a surprised figure upon the shoulder, and pricking the fox ears forward, saying, like an impertinent conscience, "Attend, if you please." Then he sits in the very council of heaven and hobnobs with Amun Re, and again farther on, taps another victim. Such sleepless pertness was never divine before. Yet he is always good-humored, always ready for pot-luck. Gods, kings, or Howadji, all is fish to the foxy. He seemed the only live thing in the tombs. Much more alive than sundry be-goggled and be-veiled male and female Howadji who explored with us these realms of royal death. We asked the foxy to join us in a sandwich and chibouque in the entrance of Memnon's tomb. But he was too busy with an individual who seemed not to heed himand remained tapping him upon the walls.

In the late afternoon we crossed the mountains into the valley of priests' tombs. The landscape was lovely beyond words, and at sunset, from the crumbling Sphinxes of El Kurneh, we turned toward Memnon as the faithful turn to Mecca. The Howadji fleet, mostly English, lay at the opposite Luxor shore, gay with flags and streamers, and boats with mingled Frank and Muslim freight

glided across the gleaming river. The huge pylon of Karnak towered, like the side of a pyramid, over the palms; and in a clumsy tub of a boat, and rowed by a brace of the common right angular oars, trimmed boughs of trees, we were forced through the rosy calm to our dismantled Ibis.

XXXIX.

DEAD QUEENS.

FOR even Re-ni-no-fre must die and be buried suitably. Love and beauty were no more talismans then, than now. Death looked on queens with the evil eye. What bowels of beauty and royalty have not the Libyan hills! What Sultan so splendid

that he has a hareem so precious!

The ladies lie lonely and apart from their lords. The kings are at one end of the old Libyan suburb -the queens at the other. We approached the queens' tomb through an ascending sand and stone defile. But, as becomes, it is not entirely sequestered from the green of the valley, and the door of a queen's tomb framed as fair an Egyptian picture as I saw. These tombs are smaller and less important than those of the kings. The kings who, as at Dahr-el-Baree, inserted their cartouches or escutcheons over those of their predecessors, and so

strove to cheat posterity, could not suffer their wives to be buried as nobly as themselves.

Yet after the elaboration and mystic figuring, and toiling thought, and depth, and darkness, and weariness of the kings' tombs, the smallness and openness of the queens' is refreshing. They are mere caves in the rock, usually of three or four chambers. The sculptures and paintings are gracious and simple. They are not graceful, but suggest the grace and repose which the ideal of female life requires.

Simple landscapes, gardens, fruit, and flowers, are the subjects of the paintings. No bewildering grandeurs of human-headed and footed serpents— of gods inconceivable, bearing inexplicable symbols, all which, and the tangled mesh of other theological emblems, is merely human. But the largeness and simplicity of natural forms, as true and touching to us, as to those who painted them.

This simplicity, which was intended, doubtless, in the royal mind, to symbolize the lesser glory of the spouse, is now the surpassing beauty of the tombs. In the graceful largeness and simplicity of the character of the decorations, it seems as if the secret of reverence for womanly character and influence, which was to be later revealed, was instinctively suggested by those who knew them not.

Eve was truly created long and long after Adam, and at rural Worcester, they doubt if she be quite completed yet. Those wise Egyptian priests knew many things, but knew not the best. And the profound difference of modern civilization from ancient, as of the western from the eastern, what is it but the advent of Eve? In Cairo and Damascus, to-day, Adam sits alone with his chibouque and fingan of mocha; but his wives, like the dogs and horses of the Western, are excluded from the seats of equality and honor.

The cheerful yellow hues of the walls, and their exposure to the day, the warm silence of the hill seclusion, and the rich, luminous landscape in the vista of the steep valley, made these tombs pleasant pavilions of memory. We wandered through them refreshed, as in gardens. They are all the same, and you will not explore many. But the mind digests them easily and at once-while those kings' tombs may yet give thought a dyspepsia.

While the Howadji loitered, ecco mi qua, stood our foxy friend upon the bright walls. "Well said, old mole! canst work i' the earth so fast?" "Yes,"

said he, "I thought I'd step over; their majesties might be lonely."

Foxy, Foxy! I elect thee to my Penates. To