interest, and threaten arrest if they are not paid. I could compound all the claims for twenty-five thousand dollars."

"Why do you not compound then?"

"I can not, without applying the last shilling I am worth.'

"So you prefer that you shall keep your money and let my money pay this contracted debt of yours, do you? It certainly strikes me that your proposition contains neither modesty nor merit."

"Wilson, there is an unpleasant feature about this whole matter, that I would prefer to conceal, but, believing that you will pity and forgive a poor old man, whose life has been one devoted to the accumulation of money, regardless of the means, I will disclose to you, that during the recent struggle for independence, it was my misfortune to remain loyal to the crown, not that I cared much which side won, but because better inducements, in a pecuniary point of view, were presented in espousing the cause of the crown. These parties who present these claims threaten to expose this matter, also, if I do not pay. In that event my doom is sealed; my means, what little I have, will be seized and divided among the rabble that will carry me out of the city under a coat of tar and feathers. I beg you, Wilson, to save me this misfortune and this disgrace. My poor boy Henry—”

"You have said enough, villain! traitor! get out of my house. while I can restrain my indignation. Scoundrel! marauder! enemy to your country! 'scape gallows, that could sell your birth-right for filthy lucre Away with you! stop not another moment under my roof! Leddington departed. The banker had but partially composed his feelings and suppressed his indignation, when Charles Preston entered.

(TO BE CONTINUED.)

ANCIENT RUINS.

Egypt, Its Arts and Architecture Thirty-four Hundred Years Ago.

BY M. W. ALFRED, A. M., M. D.

CHAPTER VII.

ANCIENT THEBES may be looked upon as the inmost envelope of the mysterious soul of this mighty nation.

In order to show the high state to which the Arts and Architecture had arrived in Egypt thirty-four hundred years ago, we need only examine the exhumed ruins of ancient Thebes. So in demonstrating the design and skill of the Supreme Artificer of the universe, we need

not seize upon the universe, but take simply the human eye. This is truly an optical instrument of great perfection. The fact that it adjusts itself to objects, near or remote, so as to produce a correct image of them on the expansion of the optic nerve, whether at one yard, ten or a hundred yards distance, demonstrates an infinite skill in optical inventions. The contracting pupil, the arrangement of the crystalline lens in the aqueous humor of the anterior chamber of the eye, and in fine, the whole instrument is a most wonderful and useful production.. That the eyes are the results of design is manifest in this, they are formed and adapted to the light before we see.

An examination of the ruins of Thebes, that once great and beautiful city, whose smouldering ashes inspire the beholder with astonishment, demonstrates the fact, that the Arts, especially the mechanical arts, were in a state of great perfection. There lie thousands of the most valuable "monuments of antiquity, upon which the utmost exertion of human genius have been employed." Those massive columns so beautifully designed, from base to capital, and whose rich architecture and entire entablature were replete with grandeur, no age has ever excelled. This great city displayed in its works of sandstone, marble, red porphyry, and rosy granite, erected into mighty temples more of the genius of Egypt thirty-four hundred years ago, than any, if not all its other cities. The sculpture of her vast sphynxes, and the greatness of her carved obelisks, attest her superiority. Here stood the Temple of Kavnac. The Central Nave of its hypostylic hall, as restored by the Egyptian commission of Napoleon Bonaparte, is most exquisitely grand and beautiful. And the long avenue of rams carved and resting on vast blocks of marble, forming the boundaries of the passage to the Temple, and ending where many a beautiful caryatid supported the rich projections looking down upon this entrance; all together possess a sublimity which Art has never excelled.

"At Essebouah stood a Temple palace, the avenue of which was formed by a double row of lions, emblematic of courage, ever on the alert." This avenue terminated in a double magnificent pylon, which was supported by "eight gigantic statues of Rameses." He ordered subternanean temples (speos) cut in the rocks, which contain his image. seated at the remote extremity of the sanctuary.

An artesian well was constructed by his command, some three thousand years before that at Artois, in France, from which the name is derived.

From a monumental stela, or stone of testimony, on which the orders of the King were reproduced for the benefit of his subjects, we learn, by the translation. of the orientalists Birch, of England, and

Lenormant, of France, the facts relating to this well, which we transcribe. "When he, (Rameses,) had subdued the land of Ethiopia, trodden the Libyans beneath his sandals, and rooted his sceptre among them, after terror had overwhelmed Wentnour and the Akars, the living and life-bestowing god, the representative of Seth and Ammon, the guardian of truth approved by Phrah, the dictator and defender of the land of Kemi, the child of the gods, the beloved one of Ammon, Rameses, the eternal life-giver, descended at Memphis to accomplish toward the divine Triad of that city ceremonies of thanksgiving. On the twenty-fourth day of the month, Paoni, in the third year of his reign, as he was seated on his throne of purest gold, and with his head adorned with two ostrich plumes, emblematic of justice, was causing the names of the regions from which gold was obtained to be registered in his presence, and was giving orders that the roads leading to them and unprovided with water, should be supplied with fountains, there was mentioned among others, the county of Okaou, where gold abounded, but the route to which was utterly destitute of springs. His Majesty was informed of the distress of the workmen employed in the extraction and preparatory washing of the precious metal, many of whom had perished of thirst on the way thither. At this moment, the officer of the palace whose business it was to lead visitors to the foot of the throne, breaking silence, announced to Rameses that the leading personages of the Okaou country were present, and humbly awaited the favor of an audience. Behold them, O King, with their arms uplifted toward thy throne, and drawing nigh with reverence to look upon thy sacred features, in order that they may unfold to thee the deplorable condition of their country, and beseech thy limitless power to remedy it.

Permission to speak having been accorded to the chiefs of Okaou, they said: Thy power has no bounds; it is like the power of Mandou and of Ammon, whose depository thou art here below. If thou wert to give orders to the night, the light would instantly appear. We come then in all haste to implore thy Majesty to do something in behalf of these gold mines, since thou art he who dost shine, at present on the throne of the world. Thou wilt not reject our prayers, thou who hast but to say to the mountains spring, and they leap forth. In order to behold the abyss of the waters, the heavens fly open at the sound of thy voice, for thou art the sun made flesh, all of whose orders are obeyed, all of whose words are made good, O thou, our lord and master." Rameses replied: "Your request is just, as you have declared, there has been no well dug near this road since the reign of the gods, and it is my will that a well be made there to yield water

* * *

* *

without ceasing, as though it sprung from the exhaustless bosom of the Nile. The gods who have heaped favors upon me, and who have flooded my heart with joy, will help me in this circumstance. Under their protecting auspices, I proclaim then an order to pierce a living well at one of the intermediate stations of the road that leads from the Nile to Okaou. Let this order, copied by the Scribes on duty, be reproduced and published by the aid of the chief of the transcribing bureau in my double dwelling of light, and let a copy of the order be sent to the royal son of my land of Koush, who continues charged with its execution." * The waters spouted four cubits above the soil, and afterward twelve cubits, according to the word of Rameses: "The king of waters has hearkened to the king of the earth, and the well has been fortunately terminated, and abundant waters leap from its mouth and pass on to a distance to fertilize the surface of the desert, and to quench the thirst of the parched traveler."

* * * *

This transpired early in the reign of Pharoah, and before Moses fled from Egypt to the Priest of Midian, and was inscribed on this stele full half a century before the ten commandments were engraved on the two "Tables of stone," which Moses hewed out. (Deut. 31, 9). These quotations also show, (not only that artesian wells were produced by the Egyptians whenever needed 4300 years ago, or while the Jews were in Egypt,) that the art of writing, and the engraving of laws on tables of stone, was a common practice in Egypt.

About 1500 years B. C. the Egyptian Empire arose to its highest condition in arts, sciences, and prosperity. I have myself seen an autography written in those palmy days, as has been previously stated. Some five hundred years after this, the Hebrew people attained their highest strength and dignity as a nation. The revolt of ten of the twelve tribes immediately after the death of Solomon, crippled its energies, and struck a blow from which it never recovered.

The Hebrew nation, however, never acquired so distinguished eminence in the arts, and in architecture, as the Egyptians acquired five hundred years before, the zenith of Hebrew prosperity in the days of Solomon.

How childish is the notion that Moses first wrote, that he first wrote laws, that the two "tables of stone" he "hewed out," were the first on which words and laws were engraved. We are forced by the developements in Egypt to reconstruct our history, and our knowledge of the origin of the arts. This with many will take a long time. There are many who believe the sun flies around this great earth of ours once a day-that it is a prodigious torch used exclusively for our benefit. They affirm that geology is not a

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science, only the opinion of a few fanatics who wish to render themselves conspicuous by their hardihood, and temerity in tampering with our chronology of the creation.

To such ones truth is lighter than eider-down, while ignorant tradition, stories about goblins and witches, and the vomiting of snakes and crows, exceeds the weight of "Holy Writ."

Diodorus, who wrote a history of Egypt, Persia, Syria, Media, Greece, Rome, and Carthage, before Christ forty-four years, has left us the description of a monument which was first deciphered by Champollion, who proved it identical with the Rameseum at Thebes. He says: "At the distance of ten stadii* from the first tombs, where according to tradition the Queens of Thebes are buried, there stood the tomb of Osymandyas. At its entrance rose a floor in marble stone, its breadth was two plethrea, and its height forty-five cubits. After passing it one entered a square peristyle each side of which measured four plethræ. It was not sustained by columns, but by animals carved in solid blocks of stone, sixteen cubits in height, and carved in the ancient style. The entire ceiling consisting of one single stone, was studded with golden stars upon a field of azure. At the end of this peristyle there was a second entrance and a pylon like the former one, but adorned with variegated carvings of perfect workmanship. Beside this second portico there were three statues each chiseled from a single block of the hard and tinted stone of Syene. One representing a person in a sitting posture, was the largest of all the statues in Egypt. * * Upon it could be read the following incription: "I am Osymandyas, King of the Kings. If any should wish to know who I am, and where I repose, let him surpass one of my works." There was also another monolithic statue representing the mother of this King separately. It was twenty cubits in height, with three diadems on its head to indicate that the personage commemorated had been the daughter, wife, and mother of "Kings."

*

CHAMPOLLION, applying the description of Diodorus to the ruins of the Ramesum put together from its fragments shattered as they were the pretended tomb of Osymandyas. Excepting the dimensions, exagera ted as ever by classical antiquity, he rediscovered every particular; the double pylons, the court of the colussus, which must have measured thirteen yards in height, the hall of the caryatides, the galleries, the colonnades, giving access into the interior apartments, and even the library with its ultra marine blue vault, studded with golden stars, and

* A Staduim is 6064 feet. The distance was about a mile and fortythree rods.