x, or an unknown quantity of them? The runaway Mohammed who returned penitent at Syene, shall officiate as chamberlain with the torch-crate.

Now down-but hold!—The kings are not there. They are in the Vatican, in the Louvre, in London, at Berlin, at Vienna, in choice museums, and scattered undistinguished upon the rocks. The master of the house being out, of course you will not en

ter.

Leave them to museums and histories. What are they to us? Their tombs, not themselves, are our shrines to-day. Ramses's tomb is at this moment of greater moment to us than his whole life. Were he sitting now on Memnon's pedestal, would the Howadji sacrifice seeing his tomb to seeing him?

XXXVIII.

BURIED.

THE Howadji descended into the tomb. It is the trump tomb of the kings' valley, and is named Belzoni, from the traveller. The peasants observed the ground sinking at this point of the hill, and suggested as much to Dr. Rüppell. But Germania, though sure, is slow, and while the Doctor whiffed meditative meerschaums over it, Belzoni opened it, thereby linking his name with one of the most perfect of Theban remains.

We went perpendicularly down a range of shattered stone steps, and, entering the tomb, advanced through a passage still sloping downward. The walls were covered with hieroglyphs fresh as of yesterday. They are a most graceful ornament in their general impression, although the details are always graceless, excepting the figures of birds, which in all Egyptian sculptures are singularly lifelike. In the wall and ceiling painting of these tomb-passages is the germ of the arabesques of the

Roman epoch. Here is clearly the dawn of the exquisite delicacy of the ceilings of the baths of Titus, and the later loveliness of the Loggie. Looking at these rude lines, but multitudinous and fresh, I saw the beginnings of what Raphael perfected.

Still advancing, the Howadji descended steps and emerged in a hall. It is small, but the walls are all carefully painted. The gods are there, and the heroes some simple epic of heroic life, doubtless, which we do not quite understand, although we interpret it very fluently. Other chambers and one large hall succeed. In this latter are figures of four races upon the central columns, supposed to indicate the four colored races of the world. The walls and ceilings are all painted with figures of the king Osirei, father of Ramses, whose tomb it was, offering gifts to the gods and receiving grace from them.

These subterranean halls are very solemn. The mind perpetually reverts to their host, to the embalmed body that was sealed in the sarcophagus as in a rock-surrounded in night and stillness with this sculptured society of earth and heaven. It is hard to realize that these so finely-finished halls were to be closed forever. Nor were they so; for the kings, after three thousand years, were to come again upon the earth, and their eyes should first light

upon the history and the faith of their former life. How much of this was pride, how much reverence of royalty, how much veneration for the human body?

Break a sarcophagus with Cambyses, and ask the tenant-or, mayhap, our thoughtful Theban has also meditated that theme. While you await the answer, we pass into a fourth room, and find that death, too enamored of a king, did not tarry for the tomb's completion; for here are unfinished drawings-completed outlines only and no color.

The effect is finer than that of the finished pictures. The boldness and vigor of the lines are full of power. There are boats and birds, simple lines only, which we should admire to-day upon any canvas. That old Egyptian artist was as sure of his hand and eye, as the French artist, who cut his pupil's paper whith his thumb nail, to indicate that the line should run so, and not otherwise. The coloring is rude and inexpressive. The drawing of the human figure conventional, for the church or the priests ordained how the human form should be drawn. Later, the church and priests ordained how the human form should be governed. Yet, O sumptuous scarlet queen, sitting on seven hills, you were generous to art, while you were wronging nature.

There was going down dangerous steps afterward, and explorations of chambers dim, whose

farther end had fallen in and shut out investigation. The same song was everywhere sung in different keys. Three hundred and twenty feet we advanced into the earth, and one hundred and twenty downward. In that space all the gods were gathered, could we have known them, and wondrous histories. told, could we have heard them. Fresh and fair the walls, but the passages and steps were broken, and the darkness was intolerably warm and stifling. Students of hieroglyphs, artists, the versed in Egyptian mythology, jackals and mummy-merchants had longer tarried and increased their stores. But the Howadji did what the owner and builder of the tomb could not do. They crept out of it, and sat down upon the shattered steps of the entrance, to smoke peaceful chibouques.

At the door of this tomb, as of all others, were mummy-merchants, who gathered round us and outspread their wares. Images, necklaces, rings, arms, heads, feet, hands, bits of the mummy-case, and little jars of seed, charms, lamps, all the rich robbery of the tombs, placidly awaited inspection. The mummy-merchants are the population of the Theban ruins. Grave ghouls, they live upon dead bodies. They come out spectrally from columns and walls, as if they were the paintings just peeled off, and sit at tomb doors like suspicious spirits, and accost