Luxor to Karnak, and from Karnak across the river, to temples on the other side.

It is impossible to wander amidst this prodigious pile, without the deepest astonishment. The intelligence, the spirit, the language, the character of a past mysterious world, seem condensed in these impressive relics of antiquity. Silent, solemn, motionless, alone, they wear an aspect, with all their gigantic vestiges of ruin, of something grave and unalterable as eternity. They are silent; but they speak to the soul, in their sombre, frowning grandeur,' with an, indefinable and almost supernatural awe. They disclaim, in the name of that departed world to which they entirely belong, all relationship with the existing economy of man and his concerns.'

6

Throughout these temples there reigns an aspect of colossal unity, never interrupted by littleness of detail; a grandeur of conception in the whole, carried out and sustained by vastness, massiveness, strength, solidity in the parts. It is almost certain that the principle of the arch was known to the ancient Egyptians; but why it should have been so entirely excluded, in the construction of their temples, is unaccountable. Mr. Wilkinson, in the course of his persevering researches, visited a tomb, in which the crude, brick roof and niches,' he observes, 'bearing the name of the first Amunoph, prove the existence of the arch at the remote period of fifteen hundred and forty years before Christ.'

In support of their idolatrous worship, in honor of a herd of hideous degraded deities, the Egyptians seem to have felt that no amount of labor, time, or expense was too great to be devoted. They wrought as for eternity, and pushed the idea of the colossal, almost of the infinite, into habitual reality. The architectural grandeur of their plans seems never to have been sacrificed by narrowness of limits: the space covered was immense; even the courts and areas of their temples were larger than modern cathedrals; their architects planned and wrought on a scale as if they had at their command unlimited expansion. There was ample room for general effect; and by the succession of gateways, with interspersed areas, and the majestic passages of sphinxes and colossal statues, like giant guardians, they kept every profane inferior structure at a distance; preserving the whole edifice in unbroken unity and undiminished majesty, for the surrounding view.

EXERCISE LXXXIX.

THE PROGRESS OF ART. - Durfee.

I lately visited an establishment for the manufacture of iron into bars. I stood by, and, for the time, witnessed the operation of its enginery. I saw the large misshapen mass of crude metal, taken blazing from the furnace, and passed through the illumined air to the appropriate machine.: I saw it there undergo the designed transformation. It was made to pass repeatedly between two grooved, revolving, iron cylinders, of immense weight. At every turn of the wheel, it took new form; it lengthened, stretched, approximating still its intended shape, till, at the end of the operation, it came forth a well-fashioned fifteen or twenty-foot bar of iron, ready for the hand of the artizan.

When I had witnessed this process, I thought I did not need to go to the banks of the Nile, to be assured either of the antiquity or the progress of the race. An older than the pyramids was before me; one which, though voiceless, told a tale that commenced before the Pharaohs, before the Memnon, before Thebes. Here was a material which had been common to the historical portion of the human family, for the space of five or six thousand years.

I went back, in imagination, to that primitive age, when the first unskilful hand, - some fur-clad barbarian or savage, drew a mass of the raw material from the side of some volcanic mountain, constructed a vessel of clay for its reception; and placed it over a heap of blazing combustibles. With long and patient labor, he reduced it to a liquid mass; and then cast it into the shape of some rude implement of husbandry or war. Exulting in his success, he brandished the instrument in triumph, and deemed it the perfection of human improvement.

He disappeared; but he left a successor. I followed him, in imagination, and saw him take the art at the point at which his predecessor had left it. He had discovered that the material was not only fusible but ductile; and, with sweat and toil that knew no fatigue, he gradually beat the heated mass into the shape of something like a hatchet or a sword. At this point he also disappeared; but his successor came, and still improved on the labors of his predecessor.

Generation thus followed generation of apt apprentices in

the art; they formed a community of masters skilful to direct, and of servants prompt to obey. They fashioned new implements as their numbers increased, and the wants of advancing civilization varied and multiplied.

The master-minds studied, and studied successfully, all the various qualities and susceptibilities of the metal. They became skilful in all its various uses in agriculture, commerce, manufactures, and war. Yes, ye philanthropists, in war! For humanity actually armed herself against humanity, to draw out and discipline the faculties of the human mind, and bring the art to perfection. She instituted a school of her own, and was herself its stern and unyielding preceptress. She chastened her laggard and truant children, as with a rod of iron. I saw her force her sons into bondage, by thousands, ay, by millions; I saw them sweat and toil at the anvil, like so many living machines. They were once free barbarians; but they were now in the school of civilization. Their willing task-masters grew strong and powerful in the labors of the barbarous masses, that superior knowledge and power had subjected to their will. They took counsel together, and still went forth to conquer and enslave.

Ages, centuries, epochs passed away, and still the same process was going on. They built up for themselves a bright and glorious intellectual civilization, that extended far and wide over the earth; yet it was but the gilding of the surface; for it had its deep and dark foundations upon mind in bondage, upon masses in slavery; and their power grew feeble from expansion. The numbers of the free would not suffice to sustain their dominion; and they sought for aid, but could conceive of none, save in the enslaved masses beneath them.

And now came, improved by long ages of civilization, the scientific and inventive Genius to their aid. She glanced back upon the past: she discovered the point of departure from the progress direct, and the source of the errors, whence this appalling result. She sought, and sought not in vain, to substitute the brute forces of nature for the labor of human hands. Then began the water-wheel to turn at the falls, and the trip-hammer to sound upon the anvil, and the manacles of the slave to fall off, as improvement was built upon improvement, in regular consecutive order, till the burning bar shot from the perfected machinery almost unaided by human strength.

EXERCISE XC.

THE REMOVAL. -Anon.

A nervous old gentleman, tired of trade,

By which, though, it seems, he a fortune had made,
Took a house 'twixt two sheds, at the skirts of the town,
Which he meant at his leisure to buy and pull down.

This thought struck his mind, when he viewed the estate.
But, alas! when he entered, he found it too late;
For in each dwelt a smith: a more hard-working two
Never doctored a patient, or put on a shoe.

At six in the morning, their anvils at work,
Awoke our new squire, who raged like a Turk :
'These fellows,' he cried, 'such a clattering keep,
That I never can get above eight hours' sleep.'

From morning till night they kept thumping away,-
No sound but the anvil the whole of the day:
His afternoon nap, and his daughter's new song,
Were banished and spoiled by their hammer's ding-dong.

He offered each Vulcan to purchase his shop;
But no, they were stubborn, determined to stop :
At length, (both his spirits and health to improve,)
He cried, 'I'll give each fifty guineas to move."

'Agreed,' said the pair, 'that will make us amends.'
'Then come home,' said the squire, and let us part friends:
You shall dine; and we'll drink on this joyful occasion,
That each may live long in his new habitation.'

He gave the two blacksmiths a sumptuous regale;
He spared not provisions, his wine nor his ale;

So much was he pleased with the thought, that each guest
Would take from him the noise, and restore to him rest.

'And now,' said he, 'tell me,- Where mean you to move? I hope to some spot where your trade will improve!'. "Why, sir,' replied one, with a grin on his phiz, 'Tom Forge moves to MY shop, and I move to HIS!'

EXERCISE

XCI.

THE PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE.

- Edward Evere

All men should seek to cultivate and inform the by the pursuit of knowledge, as the great means of happiness and usefulness. Other things being equal, the pursuit and attainment of knowledge are, at the time, the surest source of happiness.

But knowledge is still more important, as the means of being useful; and the best part of the happiness which it procures us, is of that purer and higher kind, which flows from the consciousness that, in some way or other, by good example or positive service, we have done good to our fellow-men. One of the greatest modern philosophers said, that knowledge is power; but it is power, because it is usefulness. It gives men influence over their fellow-men, because it enables its possessors to instruct, to counsel, to direct, to please, and to serve their fellow-men. Nothing of this can be done, without the cultivation and improvement of the mind.

It is the mind which enables us to be useful, even with our bodily powers. What is strength, without knowledge to apply it? What are our curiously organized hands, without skill to direct their motion? The idiot has all the bodily organs and senses of the most intelligent and useful citizen. It is through mind, that man has obtained the mastery of nature and all its elements, and subjected the inferior races of animals to himself. Take an uninformed savage, a brutalized Hottentot, in short, any human being in whom the divine spark of reason has never been kindled to a flame, and place him on the seashore, in a furious storm, when the waves are rolling in, as if the fountains of the deep were broken up. Did you not know, from experience, that man, by the cultivation of his mind, and the application of the useful arts, had constructed vessels, in which he floats securely on the top of these angry waves, you would not think it possible that a being, like that we have mentioned, could, for one moment, resist their fury.

It is related of some of the North American Indians, a race of men who are trained, from their infancy, to the total suppression of their emotions of every kind, and who endure the most excruciating torments at the stake, without signs of