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 serpentsof 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. "Yes," 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?” said he, "I thought I'd step over; their majesties might be lonely." Foxy, Foxy! I elect thee to my Penates. To thee shall an altar be builded, and an arm-chair erected thereupon. Thereof shall punch-bowls be the vessels, and fragrant latakia the incense. A model god is foxy, alive, active, busy-looking in at the hareem, too, lest they be lonely! XL. ET CETERA. THE mere Theben subjects died, too, and they also had to be buried. Their tombs are in the broad face of the mountains toward the river, and between those of the kings and queens. They command a fairer earthly prospect than those of their royal masters, and, Osiris favoring, their occupants reached the heavenly meads as soon. The great hillside is honey-combed with these tombs. There is no wonder so wonderful that it shall not be realized, and the Prophet's coffin shall be miraculous no longer; for here the dwellings of the dead overhang the temples and the houses. The romantic Theban could not look at the sunset, but he must needs see tombs and find the sunset too seriously symbolical. Clearly with the Thebans, death was the great end of life. The patient little donkeys would have tugged us up the steep sand and rock-slope, from the plain of Thebes. But we toiled up on foot through a vil lage of dust, and barking dogs, and filthy people, inconceivable, and on and higher, through mummyswathings, cast off from rifled mummies and bleaching bones. If a civilized being lived in modern Thebes, he would certainly inhabit a tomb for its greater cleanliness and comfort, and would find it, too, freshly frescoed. In the kings' tombs, we encountered the unresolvable theological enigmas, with the stately society of gods and heroes. The queens welcomed us in gardens and in barges of pleasure, while timbrels and harps rang, and the slaves danced along the walls, offering fruit and flowers-or would have done so, had they not rejoined their spouses in choice cabinets. But the plebeians receive us in the midst of their fields and families. The hints of the Harper's tomb are minutely developed in many of the pri vate tombs. Every trade, and the detail of every process of household economy-of the chase, and all other departments of Theban life, are there pictured. Much is gone. The plaster-casing of the rock peels away. Many are caves only. But in some, the whole circle of human labor seems to be pictorially completed. The social scenes are most interesting. Very graceful is a line of guests smelling the lotus offered |