below, floats upon his eye through the serene sky as the ideal of that mighty temple which Egyptian architecture struggles to realize-and he feels that he beholds the seed that flowered at last in the Parthenon and all Greek architecture.

The beginnings seem to have been the sculpture of the hills into their own forms,-vast regular chambers cut in the rock or earth, vaulted like the sky that hung over the hills, and like that, starred with gold in a blue space.

From these came the erection of separate buildings-but always of the same grand and solemn character. In them the majesty of the mountain is repeated. Man cons the lesson which Nature has taught him.

Exquisite details follow. The fine flower-like forms and foliage that have arrested the quick sensitive eye of artistic genius, appear presently as ornaments of his work. Man as the master, and the symbol of power, stands calm with folded hands in the Osiride columns. Twisted water reeds and palms, whose flowing crests are natural capitals, are addded. Then the lotus and acanthus are wreathed around the columns, and so the most delicate detail of the Egyptian landscape reappeared in its art.

But Egyptian art never loses this character of

solemn sublimity. It is not simply infancy, it was the law of its life. The art of Egypt never offered to emancipate itself from this character,—it changed only when strangers came.

Greece fulfilled Egypt. To the austere grandeur of simple natural forms, Greek art succeeded, as the flower to foliage. The essential strength is retained, but an aerial grace and elegance, an exquisite elaboration followed, as Eve followed Adam. For Grecian temples have a fine feminineness of character when measured with the Egyptian. That hushed harmony of grace-even the snow-sparkling marble, and the general impression, have this dif ference.

Such hints are simple and obvious-and there is no fairer or more frequent flower upon these charmed shores, than the revelations they make of the simple naturalness of primitive art.

VIII.

TRACKING.

OUR angels of annunciation, this Christmas eve, were the crews of the boats at Benisoeth, the first important town upon the river. They blew pipes, not unlike those of the pifferari in Rome, who come from the Abruzzi at the annunciation, and play before the Madonna shrines until her son is born. The evening was not too cool for us to smoke our chibouques on the upper deck. There, in the gray moonlight, too, Aboo Seyd was turned to Mecca, and genuflexing and ground-kissing to a degree that proved his hopeless sinfulness.

Courteous reader, that Christmas eve, for the first time, the Howadji went to bed in Levinge's bag. It is a net, warranted to keep mosquitoes out, and the occupant in, and much recommended by those who have been persuaded to buy, and those who have them to sell. I struggled into mine, and was comfortable. But the Pacha of two shirt tails

was in a trying situation. For this perplexing

problemn presented itself—the candle being extinguished, to get in; or being in, to blow out the candle. "Peace on earth' there may be," said the Pacha, holding with one hand the candlestick, and with the other the chimney of the bag, “but there is none upon the water;" and he stood irresolute, until, placing the candlestick upon the floor, and struggling into the bag, as into an unwilling shirt, the hand was protruded-seized the candlestick, and genius had cut the gordian knot of doubt.

A calm Christmas dawned. It was a day to dream of the rose-radiance that trembles over the Mountains of the Moon: a day to read Werne's White Nile Journal, with its hourly record of tropical life among the simple races of the equator, and enchanting stories of acres of lotus bloom in Ethiopia. It was not difficult to fancy that we were following him, as we slid away from the shore and saw the half-naked people, the mud huts, and every sign of race forever young.

We sprang ashore for a ramble, and the Pacha took his gun for a little bird-murder. Climbing the bank from the water, we emerged upon the level plain, covered with an endless mesh of flowering lupin. The palm-grove beckoned friendly with its pleasant branches, through which the breath of the warm morning was whispering sweet secrets.

I heard them. Fine Ear had not delicater senses than the Howadji may have in Egypt. I knew that the calm Christmas morning was toying with the subtle-winged Summer, under those palms-the Summer that had fled before me from Switzerland over the Italian vintage. Above my head was the dreamy murmurousness of summer insects swarming in the warm air. The grain was green, and the weeds were flowering at my feet. The repose of August weather brooded in the radiant sky. Whoso would follow the Summer, will find her lingering and loitering under the palm-groves of the Nile, when she is only a remembrance and a hope upon the vineyards of the Rhine, and the gardens of the Hudson.

Aboo Seyd followed us, and we suddenly encountered a brace of unknown Howadji. They proved to be Frenchmen, and had each a gun Why is a Frenchman so unsphered, out of Paris? They inquired for their boat with a tricolor, which we had not seen, and told us that there were wild boars in the palm-groves. Then they stalked away among the coarse, high, hilfeh grass, with both gunbarrels cocked. Presently the charge of one of them came rustling around our legs, through the grass. We hailed, and informed the hunters that we were pervious to shot. They protested and