"As scarabæi existed long before we had any account of idols, I do not doubt that they were originally the invention of some really devout mind; and they speak to us in strong language as to the danger of making material symbols of immaterial things. First, the symbol came to be trusted in, instead of the being of whom it was the sign; then came the bodily conception and manifestation of that being, or his attributes, in the form of idols; then, the representation of all that belongs to spirits, good and bad; then the deification of every imagination of the heart of man, a written and accredited system of polytheism, and a monstrous and hydra-headed idolatry."

This was the history of the scarabæus; an insect which so early attracted the notice of man by its wonderful and industrious habits, that it was selected by him as the image of the Creator; and, cutting stones to imitate it, he first wore them in acknowledgment of the Divine presence, probably having no idea of attaching any further importance to them. This symbol, there is reason to believe, existed anterior to Abraham.

THE SEVEN-EARED WHEAT.

This is the kind of Wheat formerly raised in Egypt and Syria, and often mentioned in the Bible under the name of corn, which meant then any sort of grain of which bread was made. What the Americans call corn, that is, Indian corn, was not known except to American Indians till about two hundred years ago. Pharaoh dreamed about the seven-eared corn; and we do not know that the one-eared corn was raised in Egypt. The wisdom of God is strikingly shown in the stalk of Egyptian wheat: if it was hollow and weak, like common corn, it would break with the weight; but it is solidly filled with a sort of pith, and thus rendered sufficiently firm.

APIS, THE SACRED BULL OF EGYPT.

Apis was a black calf, with a square white spot on its forehead, the figure of an eagle on its back, a double tuft of hair on its tail, and the figure of the cantharus (the sacred beetle) under its tongue. When an animal bearing these marks was found, or manufactured, the birth of Apis was announced to the people; a temple was built on the spot, where he was fed for four months; and after various ceremonies, he was finally conveyed to Memphis, where he spent the rest of his life in a splendid palace, receiving divine honours.

Sir Gardner Wilkinson, during his late travels in the Thebaid, opened an ancient tomb, which probably had remained unvisited by man for nearly three thousand years; and from some alabaster vases therein Sir Gardner took a quantity of wheat and barley that had been there preserved. In 1840, a few of these grains were planted in an open garden at Albury,

near Guildford, and there flourished. The increase of the wheat was very great, the ears averaging seven inches long, and from fifteen to twenty ears on each root, springing from one grain: it was "bearded,” and resembled that which is sometimes called by farmers"Egyptian wheat." Other instances are related of this resuscitated wheat: thus, in 1842, a specimen of Egyptian wheat, from a mummy imported in 1839, was in luxuriant growth in the Botanic Society's Garden at Bath; and, in 1841, a sample of wheat grown from seed taken from a mummy was shown to the British Association by Mr. Long, of Hurts Hall, Suffolk.

Mr. Tupper, of Albury, who first sowed this antique wheat, believed his plant of wheat to be the product of a grain preserved since the time of the Pharaohs; and that we moderns may thus eat bread made of corn which Joseph might have reasonably thought to store in his granaries.

EGYPTIAN EMBALMING.

All that has been written by modern authors upon this interesting subject seems to have been gathered from the account first given to us by Herodotus. Those writers - Diodorus Siculus, Pliny, Dioscorides, Galen, &c.—who followed soon after, appear to have stated nothing that was not originally advanced by Herodotus. He tells us that there were three different ways of embalming. The most magnificent was bestowed only upon persons of distinguished rank, and the expense amounted to a talent of silver, about 1377. 10s. (Calmet says, about 3007.) sterling; but twenty minæ, or sixty pounds, was considered moderate; and the lowest price was very small.

When a person of distinction died, the body was put into a coffin; the upper exterior of which represented the deceased, with suitable embellishment. The coffin itself was usually made of sycamore wood, which, according to Dumont, is almost incorruptible: sometimes deal was used, in which case it was brought from abroad.

The embalming of the body occupied from forty to seventy days. It consisted mainly of the introduction of astringent drugs and spices into the body, anointing it with oils of cedar, myrrh, and cinnamon, and saturating it with nitre. It was then washed, and wrapped in linen bands dipped in myrrh and gum,—these bands in some instances being one thousand yards long, commencing at the head, and terminating at the feet, avoiding the face. The body was then restored by the embalmers to the relations, who placed it in the coffin. A less expensive process of embalming was simply to inject into the bowels a liquid extract of cedar, and wrapping up the body in salt or nitre; others were soaked, or, as some think, boiled in

a kind of bitumen made of mixed resinous substances. They were then placed, without any other covering than the bandages saturated with this substance, in sepulchres, and there deposited in rows by thousands.

USE OF MUMMIES.

That mummy is medicinal (says Sir Thomas Browne), the Arabian doctor Haly delivereth, and divers confirm; but of the particular use thereof there is much discrepancy of opinion. While Hofmannus prescribes the same to epileptics, Johan de Muralto commends the use thereof to gouty persons; Bacon likewise extols it as a styptic; and Junkenius considers it of efficacy to resolve coagulated blood. Meanwhile we hardly applaud Francis I. of France, who always carried mummies with him as a panacea against all disorders; and were the efficacy thereof more clearly made out, scarce conceive the use thereof applicable to physic, exceeding the barbarities of Cambyses, and turning old heroes into unworthy potions. Shall Egypt lend out her ancients unto chirurgeons and apothecaries, and Cheops and Psammitticus be weighed unto us for drugs? Shall we eat of Chamues and Amosis in electuaries and pills, and be cured by cannibal mixtures? Surely such diet is dismal vampirism; and exceeds in horror the black banquet of Domitian, not to be paralleled except in those Arabian feasts, wherein Ghoules feed horribly.-Fragment on Mummies, unpublished.

THE LATEST MUMMIES.

One circumstance connected with the history of mummies has much puzzed the learned, viz. what period was the latest at which mummies were prepared in Egypt? Count Caylus (Egypt. Antiq.) thought that no mummies were made after the conquest of Egypt by the Romans, which was about the time of Diodorus; but in this he was quite mistaken, for Blumenbach has shown, and St. Augustine (Opera, tom. v. p. 981) informs us, that so low down as his own times, in the early part of the fifth century, mummies were certainly made in Egypt. This being the case, there is no reason why these more recent ones may not have reached us, and the difference in their composition seems thus reasonably accounted for by the great discrepancy in the ages in which they were prepared. Thus, some mummies have been found with long beards, and hair reaching down below their knees; some have very long nails; some have tutelary idols and figures of jasper put in their bodies; some have a piece of gold placed under the tongue. Wilkinson states that he found the mummies of the poorer classes wrapped round with a number of palm sticks, and fastened together with string, like a mat.—Topography, &c. of Egypt.

Greece and Rome, Babylon and Carthage, &c.

GREECE AND EGYPT.

CHAMPOLLION says: "It is evident to me, as it must be to all who have thoroughly examined Egypt, or have an accurate knowledge of the Egyptian monuments existing in Europe, that the arts commenced in Greece by a servile imitation of the arts of Egypt, much more advanced than is vulgarly believed at the period at which the first Egyptian colonies came in contact with the savage inhabitants of Attica, or the New Peloponnesus. Without Egypt, Greece would probably never have become the classical land of the fine arts. Such is my entire belief on this great problem."

Coleridge has left this strange oracular opinion: "I cannot say that I expect much from mere Egyptian antiquities. Every thing that is really intellectually great in that country seems to me to be of Grecian origin."

LOCALITIES OF GREECE.

Colonel Mure, in his Tour in Greece, remarks, that one of the most interesting features of the history of the country is the contrast between its narrow limits and its boundless influence on the destinies of mankind. The Colonel says:

This reflection is forcibly brought home to the mind when one actually sees clustered, within the ordinary distance of English markettowns from each other, the ruins of cities far better known to fame than many a mighty empire, with its countless myriads of square miles or of population. A ride of less than twelve hours, at a foot-pace, enabled us to visit at least four places of distinction in Homer's age, with an ease and rapidity which cannot be better represented than by the flowing lines in which he has recorded their names:

Πυθῶνά τε πετρήεσσαν,

Κρισσάν τε ζαθέην, καὶ Δαυλίδα, καὶ Πανοπῆα.

'The rocky Delphi, Crissa the divine,
Daulis, and Panopea.'

The three succeeding days would have sufficed a traveller more favoured by the elements than myself, to traverse, with the same equipage, at the same pace,- besides numerous other small states of less distinction,- the territories of Thebes, Platæa, Eleusis, and Athens. Argos, Mycenæ, and Tiryns, -the cities of Danaus, Hercules, Perseus, Agamemnon, with their colossal walls, bearing living testimony to the gigantic energies by which those heroes so well deserved the renown that still attends their names,-are all within the compass of a pleasant day's walk to a tolerable pedestrian. The whole population of the

state of Athens, in its best ages, is computed to have been about onethird of that of London; while the whole of that of Greece proper at the present day, which during eight years resisted the concentrated energies of the Mahometan empire, is considerably less than that of Constantinople.

THE ANCIENT AND MODERN GREEKS.

Next to the pleasure enjoyed by the traveller in contemplating the ruins of Greece must be ranked that of comparing the singularity of the manners of the present inhabitants with those of the ancients. In many of the ordinary practices of life this resemblance is striking. The hottest hours of the day are still devoted to sleep, as they were in the times recorded by Xenophon, when Conon attempted to escape from the Lacedæmonians at Lesbos, and when Phoebidas surprised the citadel of Thebes. The Greeks still feed chiefly upon vegetables, and salted or pickled provisions. The eyebrows of the Greek women are still blackened by art, and their cheeks painted occasionally with red and white, as described by Xenophon. This latter custom in particular is universal in Zante among the upper classes. The laver, from which water is poured by the hand previous to eating, appears by many passages in the Odyssey to have been a common utensil in the time of Homer; and something like the small movable table, universally used in the Levant, seems to have been common amongst the ancient Greeks. According to Herodotus, in his description of the banquet given by the Theban Antigonus to Mardonius and the chiefs of the Persian army, there were two men, a Persian and a Theban, placed at each table; which circumstance, being so particularly remarked, was probably a deviation from the custom of each person having a table to himself.-Turner's Tour in the Levant.

DID HOMER COMPOSE THE ILIAD AND ODYSSEY?

Seneca reckons among the idle questions which were unworthy of wise men the dispute whether Homer wrote both the Iliad and the Odyssey, and in what countries Ulysses wandered. It is said that the art of writing, and the use of manageable writing materials, were entirely, or all but entirely, unknown in Greece and its islands at the supposed date of the composition of the Iliad; and that if so, this poem could not have been committed to writing during the time of its composition; that in a question of comparative probability like this, it is a much grosser improbability that even the single Iliad-amounting, after all curtailments and expungings, to upwards of 15,000 lines-should have been actually conceived and perfected in the brain of one man with no other help but his own or other's memory, than that it should, in fact,