domestic manufactures, of shoes made of palm or of papyrus leaves and of leather, of ropes and skins, with the females employed in distilling the essences of flowers, the perfumers to the queens of the Pharaohs.

We proceed to the mansion of an Egyptian of rank, perhaps to the royal palace, where we are admitted to the private chambers of the females, ornamented in the most sumptuous manner, opening upon a garden, and supported by slender pillars with lotus capitals, which have a singular Indian appearance.* In the garden which follows we should expect, of course, that Egyptian taste would partake of the formal regularity of artificial gardening, and so it is— Grove nods at grove, each alley has its brother,

And half the platform just reflects the other.'

Four square fish-ponds are marked by rows of aquatic birds of exactly the same shape, and the avenues of trees are trimmed into a rounded form. The vineyard forms the centre, and appears trained in not ungraceful festoons. The late Mr. Hope, the reformer of English taste in furniture-a taste, we beg to observe, on which a great deal of the elegance and comfort of private life depends-would have been amused to find that some of his designs were rivalled in splendour and grace by the Gillows of Thebes and Abydos. Our carpet and floorcloth manufacturers might find it worth their while to study some of the Egyptian patterns; and several of the chairs might furnish models for the most splendid palace in Europe. Their furniture, says Mr. Wilkinson, resembles that of an European drawing-room; and stools, chairs, fauteuils, ottomans, and simple couches (the three last precisely similar to many that we now use), were the only seats met with in the mansions of the most opulent of the Egyptians. But we do not remain in the saloon-we ascend to the royal bed-chamber, where the Pharaoh reposed on a couch without curtains, but ornamented with what appear to be candelabra on each side; there is a wardrobe, as like a modern one as can be, to receive the royal vestments; a tiger's skin is spread out for a carpet. His majesty is arisen, and the toilet begins. There stands the barber, and a formidable weapon he wields, performing his office upon the royal head; the

* These houses, whose construction differed according to circumstances, consisted frequently of a ground-floor and an upper story, with a terrace, cooled by the air, which a wooden múlquf conducted down its slope. The entrance, either at the corner or centre of the front, was closed by a door of a single or double valve, and the windows had shutters of a similar form. Sometimes the interior was laid out in a series of chambers, encompassing a square court, in whose centre stood a tree or a font of water. Many were surrounded by an extensive garden, with a large reservoir for the purpose of irrigation; lotus flowers floated on the surface, rows of trees shaded its banks, and the proprietor and his friends frequently amused themselves there by angling, or by an excursion in a light boat towed by his servants.'—Wilkinson, pp. 199, 200,

valets approach with the robes, the collars, the girdle, the bow. Her majesty's ladies of the bedchamber are likewise in waiting with the female paraphernalia. The next print is a curious one, and deserves a close investigation: it seems to represent offerings of food, and of ornaments, and other honours to the dead. It is followed by a kitchen-scene, and then a banquet of the living. The former commences as usual, ab ovo, at least with the slaughterhouse. The beasts are killed, flayed, cut up; the geese and other fowl flutter in the barbarous hands of the poulterers; the lambs are carried along in baskets, like our milk-pails; the ox is bleeding his life away into a pitcher; the cooks and bakers are as busy as if preparing for a city festival, their cauldrons and kettles boiling over the fire, their flesh-hooks in active work, and one artiste peeling leeks for the sauce. The guests at the dinner thus bountifully provided are not arrayed along or round a table, but in separate groups, containing from one to three ;-one only is seated on a kind of chair, the rest sit with their legs straight under them, in what appears to us a more uncomfortable posture than that of the modern Orientals.* The slaves are waiting and bearing different luxuries, whether of perfumes or food. Next come music and dancing-harps with six, nine, ten, or twelve strings, wind instruments of great diversity of form, ancient Almès displaying their shapes in the dance, and among them appear four grotesque figures playing and dancing, as if in a kind of masque or fancy ball. Wrestlers are next seen in every possible distortion of form, and female tumblers, not always in the most decent attitudes. Then some other games which we cannot make out, and chess, or a game like chess, with men all of the same shape.

The forms of the boats and the way of rowing, the men standing in rows sometimes one above the other, are very curious, as well as the barks, in which,

With adventurous oar and ready sail,

The dusky people drive before the gale.'

In some of the sailing-boats, with their chequered sails, we catch a resemblance to the boats and mat-sails of the South Sea Islanders. One or two of the more splendid barks realize the description of Cleopatra's :

* 'Wine and other refreshments were then brought, and they indulged so freely in the former, that the ladies now and then gave those proofs of its potent effects which they could no longer conceal. In the mean time, dinner was prepared, and joints of beef, geese, fish, and game, with a profusion of vegetables and fruit, were laid, at mid-day, upon several small tables; two or more of the guests being seated at each. Knives and forks were of course unknown, and the mode of carving and eating with the fingers was similar to that adopted at present in Egypt and throughout the East; water or wine being brought in earthen bardaks, or in gold, silver, or porcelain cups.'-Wilkinson.

The

The bark she sat on, like a burnished throne,

Burnt on the waters.'

The last Number of the engravings closes with the enrolment, the muster, and exercise of the military. The scribe is writing down their names on the muster-roll, the recruits are learning to march, and we must say, thanks perhaps to the artist, they move in excellent step, and with the most symmetrical regularity. The rest of the plates represent military gymnastics. The following Numbers will probably make us better acquainted with the armies of the Pharaohs : we shall await them with great and undiminished interest.

The literary part of Signor Rosellini's work is composed in the spirit, with the acquirements, and with the diligence of an accomplished scholar. On some historical points of considerable importance we entertain different views; but it is impossible not to feel the highest respect for one who unites so much candour with so much erudition-so much liberality towards all his colleagues in his branch of inquiry, with such high qualifications for the cultivation of that branch of learning to which he has devoted his studies. Those, however, who wish to obtain a more rapid and compendious view of the progress made in Egyptian discovery will consult the volume of Mr. Wilkinson. His long residence in the country-his patient and repeated investigation of the different objects of interest-his intimate acquaintance with the vernacular languages and modern customs, render him a high authority on all points which depend on actual observation: while, if the arrangement of his work might be improved, the matter is full of the most curious information; and the whole set forth, if in an unpolished, yet in a plain, forcible, and unaffected style. To future travellers in the East this book will be an indispensable manual.

ART. VI.-Evidence of the Truth of the Christian Religion, derived from the literal fulfilment of Prophecy-particularly as illustrated by the History of the Jews, and by the Discoveries of recent Travellers. By Alexander Keith, D.D. 12th edit. Edin. 1834.

OUR readers may be surprised at seeing, by the title of the work which is placed at the head of our Article, that we are about to review a book which has already passed through twelve editions. Such success and such a lapse of time since its original publication, as those circumstances imply, might seem to exempt

it from our ephemeral jurisdiction; but there are some particulars connected with the successive editions of this work which call for special notice and indeed the later editions contain some facts, which are, we believe, as yet not extensively known, but which we consider as of considerable importance-not merely to the elucidation of particular predictions, but to the corroboration of the general scheme of Scripture prophecy.

There is, however, a preliminary topic suggested by Dr. Keith's work, which has hitherto been, as far as we are aware, wholly unnoticed, but which, even as a literary question, requires explanation for, as it at present stands, it seems to us to derogate very much from the personal character of Dr. Keith for candour and fair dealing; and of course the want of these qualities on the part of the author would have a tendency to diminish any favour and confidence to which his work might otherwise, and on its own intrinsic merit, be entitled. We mean the extraordinary and to us incomprehensible manner in which Dr. Keith has dealt with Bishop Newton's 'Dissertations on the Prophecies;'-from which he appears to have borrowed-not only without acknowledgment, but with a studious attempt at concealment-the main design and plan of the work, his most valuable facts and arguments, and most, if not all, of the authorities and illustrations which appear in his earlier editions.*

Dr. Keith states the occasion and object of his publication in the following passage of the preface to the first edition :

The idea of the propriety of such a publication was first suggested to the writer in consequence of a conversation with a person who disbelieved the truth of Christianity, but whose mind seemed considerably affected by a slight allusion to the argument of prophecy. Having in vain endeavoured to obtain for his perusal any concise treatise on the prophecies considered exclusively as a matter of EVIDENCE [sic], and having failed in soliciting others to undertake the work, who were far better qualified for the execution of it, the writer was induced to make the attempt.'-Preface, p. v.

We must, before we go farther, observe, that we do not clearly understand what Dr. Keith means by saying so emphatically, that he could find no concise treatise in which the prophecies are considered exclusively as matter of EVIDENCE.' We, on the contrary, know of no treatise on the prophecies'-concise or voluminous-which does not consider them as, in a double sense, ' matter of evidence' first, as to be tried by the evidence of posterior facts and events; and secondly, when thus substantiated, to

Of the twelve editions we have been able to see but four, but we do not appre hend that those we have not seen can be different in any essential from those we have.

be

be adduced as evidences of divine inspiration, and consequently of revealed religion.

Passing over this preliminary ambiguity, we must confess that we cannot comprehend how any man who had seen or even heard of Bishop Newton's celebrated work—a work known not only to every scholar, but, we may say, to every studious Christian in the empire-could have thus boldly denied the very existence of such a treatise; but when, in proceeding to examine Dr. Keith's own work, we find that it is, in its form and substance, its topics, its evidences, and its arguments, identically similar to the Bishop's, we indeed are exceedingly astonished, and wonder whether to attribute the Doctor's assertion to ignorance or . . . our readers may fill up the blank when they shall have finished our Article. As this is an age-still more than that in which the phrase was first used-in which books are made by pouring out of one vessel into another, we should not have complained of Dr. Keith's use or even abuse of Bishop Newton's valuable labours, if he had not, in so high a tone, disclaimed all knowledge of any such work; and it is very remarkable that throughout the first half of his volume there is no allusion which could lead any one to believe that Newton had written on the same subject. Dr. Keith, perhaps, may not think Bishop Newton's work entitled to the epithet concise.' But short and long are relative terms. In some respects, and compared with some other works, the Bishop's is, in our judgment, justly entitled to be called concise-in some instances, quite as much so as Dr. Keith's copy from it. It is the common manual on the subject; and the difference in length between it and Dr. Keith's octavo edition is very inconsiderable, when we recollect that Dr. Keith excludes a particular class of prophecy which Newton included. But the conciseness of the treatise' was not the main question; Dr. Keith, even by his mode of printing the passage, pointed our attention not to the length so much as to the nature of the work—he proposes to give us a work of a kind of which he has not been able to find any specimen; and yet precisely of that kind is the work of Bishop Newton. But even if we were to admit that Bishop Newton was not concise, and that Dr. Keith is, (neither of which admissions, however, we could make without reserve,) we should still ask was that any reason for putting altogether aside and out of sight the original work? If Dr. Keith meant to abridge Newton, why did he not avow it? Why not so much as mention the book? Why, in short, has he made a use of him so large and so entirely unacknowledged as to amount to absolute plagiarism? The whole affair is so curious and important, both as a personal and a literary question, as to require full elucidation.

The