found in the ruins of a mosque at Cairo.

I have suppressed every detail which would have weakened the interest. This simple tale, in describing the courage, and the misfortunes of Mycerine, displays to us all the energy of which a woman was capable, even at a time, and in a country, in which superstition predominated.

AMENOPHIS AND MYCERINE.

AN EGYPTIAN TALE.

"THERE exists not any thing more barbarous than a race of men swayed by superstition.

"It is known that the Egyptians adopted animals for their deities, and that they worshipped them with idolatrous reverence. Each cast or tribe had its peculiar god: one adopted the

ox, another scarabs, and even shrewmice, &c. The hatred which divided these different sects partook of the absurdity which gave it rise. Under some pretexts the worshippers of the ox would not even associate, much less intermarry, with the worshippers of scarabs. To the misfortune of the youthful Amenophis and the beautiful Mycerine, their parents were of different persuasions. Such were the insurmountable obstacles that opposed their union, and the reader may smile at them; but in the eyes of a reflecting man they are not, perhaps, more absurd than those to which many in our own times sacrifice the happiness of their children. In impartially examining mankind in every country, and in every age, we shall find that they hardly ever differ in any thing but in the kind of their folly.

"In ancient Egypt, while the women were yet too young to be tormented by their husbands, their lives were embit

tered by their parents; who made them serve a cruel apprenticeship to those evils for which they were destined. The vile practice, of which I have spoken above, and which subjected the girls, in their childhood, to a painful operation that almost deprived them of the use of their feet, rendered it yet more difficult for the women to evade the vigilance of their guardians. It was only with the profoundest secrecy that Amenophis and Mycerine beheld and loved one another. Mycerine, abandoning at length all hopes of being united to her lover, determined she would not give her hand to another, and solemnly consecrated herself to the care of the interior of a temple; an occupation highly respected, and which, in some measure, rendered her person sacred, and more independent of the authority of her parents. This sacrifice effectually preserved her against being given up to any other than the object of her love; but raised,

at the same time, between herself and him a barrier never to be surmounted. Amenophis, wretched, and despairing of the future, was yet ignorant of the torments which the fidelity of his mistress had prepared for him. The season of the festival of Isis was at hand. It is known that at these licentious festivals the Egyptian priests raised, by their address, the passions of the two sexes to the highest excesses of which they are capable. Amenophis, too delicate to owe to those moments of intoxication a happiness which he only valued when obtained by love, hoped that those days of liberty would bring him near to his Mycerine.-All restraints were then banished, and all their powers were unfelt. The politic priesthood diverted, by this means, the attention of the people, and restrained them from directing it to the source of the usurped authority which they exercised. There was only one class which did not participate in the plea

sures of this unbounded freedom; and that consisted of the women to whom was committed the care of the sacred animals. Thus the thoughts of the two lovers were at the same móment directed to these festivals; the one anticipated them with hope, the other with apprehension. These unfortunate beings felt the full weight of their af flictions. Buris, a priest of the goddess Isis, came to aggravate them. It was established as a point in their worship that the young women, consecrated to rear the sacred animals, should submit to that deity only to whom they had devoted themselves. It was sufficiently understood that they were subjected altogether to the priests. Abusing their authority over their innocent virgins, these men concealed, in the privacy of the religious mysteries, their crimes and their pleasures.

"Mycerine, lovely as the morning star, had before, at the festival of the "Great River," attracted the notice of