open then! One statue and sarcophagus, brought from Memphis, was buried one hundred and thirty feet below the mound surface. Who knows but that the greater part of old Memphis, and of other glorious cities, lies almost unharmed under the sand? Who can say what armies of sphinxes, what sentinels of Colossi, might start up on the banks of the river, or come forth from the hill-sides of the interior, when the cloud of sand had been wafted away? The ruins which we now go to study might then appear occupying only eminences, while below might be ranges of pylons, miles of colonnade, temples intact, and gods and goddesses safe in their sanctuaries. What quays along the Nile, and the banks of forgotten canals! What terraces, and flights of wide, shallow steps! What architectural stages might we not find for a thousand miles along the river, where now the orange sands lie so smooth and light as to show the track-the clear footprint—of every beetle that comes out to bask in the sun! But it is better as it is. If we could once blow away the sand, to discover the temples and palaces, we should next want to rend the rocks, to lay open the tombs; and heaven knows what this would set us wishing further. It is best as it is; for the time has not come for the full discovery of the treasures of Egypt. It is best as it is. The sand is a fine means of preservation; and the present inhabitants perpetuate enough of the names to serve for guidance when the day for exploration shall come. The minds of scholars are preparing for an intelligent interpretation of what a future age may find; and science, chemical and mechanical, will probably supply such means hereafter as we have not now, for treating and removing the sand, when its conservative office has lasted long enough. We are not worthy yet of this great unveiling; and the inhabitants are not, from their ignorance, trustworthy as spectators. It is better that the world should wait, if only care be taken that the memory of no site now known be lost. True as I feel it to be that we had better wait, I was forever catching myself in a speculation, not only on the buried treasures of the mounds on shore, but on means for managing this obstinate sand.

And yet, vexatious as is its presence in many a daily scene, this sand has a bright side to its character, like everything else. Besides its great office of preserving unharmed for a future age the records of the oldest times known to man, the sand of the desert has, for many thousand years, shared equally with the Nile the function of determining the character and the destiny of a whole people, who have again operated powerfully on the characters and destiny of

other nations. Everywhere the minds and fortunes of human races are mainly determined by the characteristics of the soil on which they are born and reared. In our own small island, there are, as it were, three tribes of people, whose lives are much determined still, in spite of all modern facilities for intercourse, by the circumstance of their being born and reared on the mineral strip to the westthe pastoral strip in the middle or the eastern agricultural portion. The Welsh and Cornwall miners are as widely different from the Lincolnshire or Kentish husbandmen, and the Leicestershire herdsmen, as Englishmen can be from Englishmen. Not only their physical training is different; their intellectual faculties are differently exercised, and their moral ideas and habits vary accordingly. So it is in every country where there is a diversity of geological formation; and nowhere is the original constitution of their earth so strikingly influential on the character of its inhabitants as in Egypt. There, everything depends - life itself, and all that it includes on the state of the unintermitting conflict between the Nile and the Desert. The world has seen many struggles, but no other so pertinacious, so perdurable, and so sublime as the conflict of these two great powers. The Nile, ever young because perpetually renewing its youth, appears to the inexperienced eye to have no chance, with its stripling force, against the great old Goliath, the Desert, whose might has never relapsed, from the earliest days till now; but the giant has not conquered yet. Now and then he has prevailed for a season, and the tremblers, whose destiny hung on the event, have cried out that all was over; but he has once more been driven back, and Nilus has risen up again, to do what we see him doing in the sculptures — bind up his water plants about the throne of Egypt.

From the beginning, the people of Egypt have had everything to hope from the river, nothing from the desert; much to fear from the desert, and little from the river. What their fear may reasonably be, any one may know who looks upon a hillocky expanse of sand, where the little jerboa burrows, and the hyena prowls at night. Under these hillocks lie temples and palaces, and under the level sands a whole city. The enemy has come in from behind, and stifled and buried it. What is the hope of the people from the river, any one may witness, who, at the regular season, sees the people grouped on the eminences, watching the advancing waters, and listening for the voice of the crier, or the boom of the cannon, which

is to tell the prospect or event of the inundation of the year. Who can estimate the effect on a nation's mind and character, of a perpetual vigilance against the Desert (see what it is in Holland of a similar vigilance against the sea), and of an annual mood of hope in regard to the Nile? Who cannot see what a stimulating and enlivening influence this periodical anxiety and relief must exercise on the character of a nation?

ALEXANDER WILLIAM KINGLAKE.

Alexander William Kinglake was born in 1802, and was educated at Eton and at Cambridge. He studied law in Lincoln's Inn, was called to the bar in 1827, and became a successful practitioner. His first work was a volume of letters from the East, entitled Eothen, containing the most brilliant and entertaining pictures of Oriental life. He next published a History of the War in the Crimea, which is remarkable for its sharp arraignment of the Emperor Louis Napoleon as the author of the needless war, and for the scathing account of his treachery and brutality in the coup d'état. The fiercest enemy of the now fallen Emperor could hardly frame a more terrible indictment than is contained in this powerful book. Mr. Kinglake was elected to Parliament in 1857, and died in 1870.

INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. CAUSE OF THE WAR.

THE mystery of holy shrines lies deep in human nature. For, however the more spiritual minds may be able to rise and soar, the common man during his mortal career is tethered to the globe that is his appointed dwelling-place; and the more his affections are pure and holy, the more they seem to blend with the outward and visible world. For men strongly moved by the Christian faith it was natural to yearn after the scenes of the gospel narrative. In old times this feeling had strength to impel the chivalry of Europe to undertake the conquest of a barren and distant land; and although in later days the aggregate faith of the nations grew chill, and Christendom no longer claimed with the sword, still there were always many who were willing to brave toil and danger for the sake of attaining to the actual and visible Sion. These venturesome men came to be called Pelerins, or Pilgrims. At first, as it would seem, they were impelled by deep feeling acting upon bold and resolute natures. Holding close to the faith that the Son of God, being also in mystic sense the great God himself, had for our sakes and for our salvation become a babe, growing up to be an anxious and suffering man, and submitting to be cruelly tortured and killed by the hands

1 The East, or, The Early Dawn.

of his own creatures, they longed to touch and to kiss the spots which were believed to be the silent witnesses of his life upon earth, and of his cross and passion. And, since also these men were of the churches which sanctioned the adoration of the Virgin, they were taught alike, by their conception of duty and by nature's low whispering voice, to touch and to kiss the holy ground where Mary, pure and young, was ordained to become the link between God and the race of fallen man. And because the rocky land abounded in recesses and caves yielding shelter against sun and rain, it was possible for the churches to declare, and very easy for trustful men to believe, that a hollow in a rock at Bethlehem was the manger which held the infant Redeemer, and that a grotto at Nazareth was the very home of the blessed Virgin. Priests fastened upon this sentiment, and although in its beginning their design was not sordid, they found themselves driven by the course of events to convert the alluring mystery of the holy places into a source of revenue. But, since it happened that, because of the manner in which the toll was levied, every one of the holy places was a distinct source of revenue, the prerogative of the Turks as owners of the ground was necessarily brought into play, and it rested with them to determine which of the rival churches should have the control and usufruct of every holy shrine. In the contest now about to be raised between France and Russia, it would be wrong to suppose that, so far as concerned strength of motive and sincerity of purpose, there was any approach to an equality between the contending governments. In the Greek church the right of pilgrimage is held to be of such deep import that if a family can command the means of journeying to Palestine even from the far distant provinces of Russia, they can scarcely remain in the sensation of being truly devout without undertaking the holy enterprise; and to this end the fruits of parsimony and labor enduring through all the best years of manhood are joyfully devoted. The compassing of vast distances with the narrow means at the command of a peasant is not achieved without suffering so great as to destroy many lives. This danger does not deter the brave, pious people of the north. As the reward of their sacrifices, their priests, speaking boldly in the name of Heaven, promise them ineffable blessings. The advantages held out are not understood to be dependent upon the volition and motive of the pilgrim, for they hold good, as baptism does, for children of tender years. Of course every man who thus came from afar to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was the representative of many more who would do the

like if they could. When the Emperor of Russia sought to gain or to keep for his church the holy shrines of Palestine, he spoke on behalf of fifty millions of brave, pious, devoted subjects, of whom thousands for the sake of the cause would joyfully risk their lives. From the serf in his hut even up to the great Czar himself, the faith professed was the faith really glowing in the heart, and violently swaying the will. It was the part of wise statesmen to treat with much deference an honest and pious desire which was rooted thus deep in the bosom of the Russian people. On the other hand, the Latin church seems not to have inculcated pilgrimage so earnestly as its Eastern rival; and if it did, it obtained but slight compliance with its precept, for whilst the Greek pilgrim ships poured out upon the landing-place of Jaffa the multitudes of those who had survived the misery and the trials of the journey, the closest likeness of a pilgrim which the Latin church could supply was often a mere French tourist, with a journal and a theory, and a plan of writing

a book.

Stated in bare terms, the question was whether, for the purpose of passing through the building into their grotto, the Latin monks should have the key of the chief door of the Church of Bethlehem, and also one of the keys of each of the two doors of the sacred manger, and whether they should be at liberty to place in the sanctuary of the Nativity a silver star adorned with the arms of France. The Latins also claimed a privilege of worshipping once a year at the shrine of the Blessed Mary in the Church of Gethsemane, and they went on to assert their right to have "a cupboard and a lamp in the tomb of the Virgin;" but in this last pretension they were not well supported by France, and virtually, it was their claim to have a key of the great door of the Church of Bethlehem, instead of being put off with a key of the lesser door, which long remained insoluble, and had to be decided by the advance of armies and the threatening movements of fleets. The pressure of France was applied with increasing force, and it produced its effect. In the month of December, 1852, the silver star was brought with much pomp from the coast. Some of the Moslem Effendis went down to Jaffa to escort it, and others rode out a good way on the road that they might bring it into Jerusalem with triumph; and on Wednesday, the 22d of the same month, the Latin patriarch, with joy and with a great ceremony, replaced the glittering star in the sanctuary of Bethlehem, and at the same time the key of the great door of the church, together with the keys of the sacred manger, was handed