stood for nearly a thousand years—a mountain of masonry a furlong in length and breadth; and in temples which covered acres of land, and where colossal figures towered up a hundred feet in height, sculpture did its best to rescue kingly memories from the tooth of Time, and awaken in the spectator's mind awful ideas of the immense and invisible, so that all the opulence and activity of the present were visibly linked to a remote and stupendous past, and through the sunny stir of the passing hour there fell constant and gigantic shadows from the surrounding" silent land."

The people who then inhabited this country,—and since then three millenniums and a half have passed away,—were more refined and intelligent than any race of which we possess the memorials. But when we say this we speak of the privileged orders: for just as the soil was the property of the sovereign, so learning was the monopoly of the priests or professional caste, and in all likelihood the mass of the people were as poor and ignorant as they usually were under all the ancient despotisms. But by the arrangements of Providence Moses was brought up a member of the privileged class. Adopted by one of the royal family, his princess-mother obtained for him the best instructors. He would be taught to read the curious character to which Egyptian sages had consigned their speculations and their learning,

and his own meditations he would be taught to consign to a scroll of papyrus. In that geometry which the land-surveying exigencies of their inundated land made so necessary, and in the cognate astronomy in which they were wonderful adepts, it is likely that he would be in due time initiated; and from the fact that he was afterwards able to reduce a golden image to dust, it has been surmised that he was no stranger to the processes of their practical chemistry, which had already presented them with glass and bronze and many pure and exquisite pigments. At the same time it is right to confess that a great deal of that Egyptian wisdom was the merest foolishness, and, if Moses ever mastered it, it would seem to have dropped from the memory of his more enlightened years, as baby gewgaws drop from the open hand of manhood; and of their historical mythology there is no more trace in the Book of Genesis than there is in the worship of Jehovah trace of their ridiculous idolatry.

But Moses was not only a scholar; as years went on he had an opportunity of earning distinction as a warrior. According to Josephus, and we have no reason to doubt the correctness of his statement, the Ethiopians made an incursion into Egypt, and routed the army which was sent to resist them. Panic spread over the country, and Pharaoh trembled at the approach of the swarthy savages, who were

already close to Memphis. The oracles were consulted; that is to say, advice was asked from the best-informed and most sagacious body of men in the capital, the heads of the priesthood; and, well aware of his remarkable abilities, they advised that the command should be intrusted to Moses. He immediately took the field, and by a rapid though round-about march surprised the enemy, defeated them with heavy slaughter, drove them back into their own territories, and followed them up so hard, capturing one city after another, that they found no asylum till they reached the swamp-girdled city of Meroë. Here Moses lay down with his army, and Iwould have found the blockade both tedious and difficult had he not happened to gain the affections of an Ethiopian lady, whom he promised to marry provided she put them in the way to gain possession of the city. Her admiration of the handsome Hebrew was too strong for her patriotism, and the conqueror returned from his triumphant campaign, bringing with him his sable princess and the spoils of Meroë, and filling the minds of all his fellow-countrymen with hope and exultation.1

The substantial truth of this statement there is no reason to doubt. It could be no invention of Josephus, and it is adopted by Irenæus, a Christian father of the second century, and receives incidental

1 Josephus, Antiquities, book ii. chap. 10.

confirmation from the fact that Stephen speaks of Moses as "mighty in words and in deeds,"-a man of brilliant achievements whilst still a resident at the Egyptian court, and it is still more confirmed by Moses himself, who casually mentions that his wife was a native of Ethiopia.1 With the capacity which Moses had by this time abundantly indicated, and with the position which he occupied so near the person of the sovereign, nothing could be more natural than to intrust him with the command of an important expedition; nor is the probability diminished by the hint which Josephus gives, that the counsellors who suggested it calculated on one if not both of two alternatives: they were bound to hope that Moses might rid Egypt of the invader; if not, they would not be sorry that the invaders should rid themselves of an unwelcome rival and the court of Pharaoh of a powerful and dangerous upstart.

In some respects the nearest modern counterpart to Moses was that great Prince of Orange known to history as William the Self-contained or Silent. Like Moses, the son of a pious mother, her lessons were not lost, but for a long time they continued latent. Like Moses, he soon left his home, and in early boyhood became a page to the great Emperor Charles the Fifth. The shrewd old Kaiser soon perceived the wonderful depth and quickness of the child, and by the time he was fifteen years of

1 Numb. xii. 1.

age, the page had become a sort of privy councillor-present at the most confidential interviews, and master of all the Emperor's policy. Under the ablest tutor of the time, he learned a science far more arduous than Egyptian hieroglyphics, till he could read at a glance the hearts of princes, and from the lies of statesmen could enucleate their meaning and their motive; and under the greatest captain of the age he learned to be the cautious campaigner and the resourceful warrior ;-such a favourite pupil that when the famous abdication took place it was on William's shoulder that the feeble Emperor leaned his hand whilst addressing the States-General. Charles resigned-Charles, who with his exterminating edicts and remorseless executions had been a Pharaoh to the Protestants; Charles resigned, and was succeeded by a Pharaoh of narrower intellect and harder heart-Philip the Second. But all this while William was the gay and hilarious courtier, captivating every acquaintance by his exquisite address, and charming wide circles by the bright overflow of spirits on which no burden pressed. When one day hunting with the King of France in the forest of Vincennes, as the two rode along together, Henry told William of a secret league into which Henry of France had entered with Philip of Spain to extinguish Protestantism throughout Europe, by extirpating every Protestant. Too good a