thing seemed magnified; the majestic proportions of the temple appeared more majestic, and the miserable huts around it still more miserable, and the past glory and the present ruin of this once most favoured land, rushed upon me with a force I had not felt even at the foot of the pyramids. If the temple of that little, unknown city now stood in Hyde Park, or the garden of the Tuileries, France, England, all Europe would gaze upon it with wonder and admiration; and when thousands of years shall have rolled away, and they too shall have fallen, there will be no monument in those proudest of modern cities, like this in the little town of Edfou, to raise its majestic head and tell the passing traveller the story of their former greatness.

Some of the Arabs proposed to conduct me to the interior, through a passage opening from the ruined huts on the top; but after searching a while, the miserable village could not produce a candle, torch, or taper, to light the way. But I did not care much about it. I did not care to disturb the strong impressions and general effect of that moonlight scene; and though in this, as in other things, I subject myself to the imputation of having been but a superficial observer, I would not exchange the lively recollection of that night for the most accurate knowledge of every particular stone in the whole temple.

I returned to my boat, and, to the surprise of my rais, ordered him to pull up stake and drop down the river. I intended to drop down about two hours to Elythias, or in Arabic Elkob. No one

on board knew where it was, and, tempted by the mildness and beauty of the night, I stayed on deck till a late hour. Several times we saw fires on the banks, where Arab boatmen were passing the night, and hailed them, but no one knew the place; and though seeking and inquiring of those who had spent all their lives on the banks of the river, we passed, without knowing it, a city which once carried on an extensive commerce with the Red Sea, where the traces of a road to the emerald mines and the fallen city of Berenice are still to be seen, and the ruins of whose temples, with the beautiful paintings in its tombs, excite the admiration of every traveller.

We continued descending with the current all night, and in the morning I betook myself to my old sport of shooting at crocodiles and pelicans. At about eleven o'clock we arrived at Esneh, the ancient Latopolis, so called from the worship of a fish, now containing fifteen hundred or two thousand inhabitants. Here, too, the miserable subjects of the pacha may turn from the contemplation of their degraded state to the greatness of those who have gone before them. In the centre of the village, almost buried by the accumulation of sand from the desert, and the ruins of Arab huts, is another magnificent temple. The street is upon a level with the roof, and a hole has been dug between two columns, so as to give entrance to the interior. The traveller has by this time lost the feeling of wonder and indignation at the barbarity of converting the wonderful remains of Egyptian

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skill and labour to the meanest uses; and descending between the excavated columns, finds himself, without surprise or sorrow, in a large cleared space, filled with grain, earthen jars, and Arabs. The gigantic columns, with their lotus-leaved capitals, are familiar things; but among the devices on the ceiling, his wandering eye is fixed by certain mysterious characters which have been called the signs of the zodiac, and from which speculators in science have calculated that the temple was built more than six thousand years ago, before the time assigned by the Mosaic account as the beginning of the world.

But this little town contains objects of more interest than the ruins of a heathen temple; for here, among the bigoted followers of Mohammed, dwell fifty or sixty Christian families; being the last in Egypt, and standing on the very outposts of the Christian world. They exhibited, however, a melancholy picture of the religion they profess. The priest was a swarthy, scowling Arab, and, as Paul said, looked more like a robber than a pastor. He followed us for bucksheesh, and, attended by a crowd of boys, we went to the house of the bishop. This bishop, as he is styled by courtesy, is a miserable-looking old man; he told us he had charge of the two churches at Esneh, and of all the Christians in the world beyond it to the south. His flock consists of about two hundred, poor wanderers from the true principles of Christianity, and knowing it only as teaching them to make the sign of the cross, and to call upon the Son, and Virgin,

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and a long calendar of saints. Outside the door of the church was a school; a parcel of dirty boys sitting on the ground, under the shade of some palm-trees, with a more dirty blind man for their master, who seemed to be at the work of teaching because he was not fit for any thing else. I turned away with a feeling of melancholy, and almost blushed in the presence of the haughty Mussulmans, to recognise the ignorant and degraded objects around me as my Christian brethren.

CHAPTER IX.

Thebes, its Temples and great Ruins.—The Obelisk of Luxor, now of Paris. An Avenue of Sphinxes.-Carnac.-The Mummypits.-The Tombs of the Kings.-The Memnonium.

It was nearly noon, when, with a gentle breeze, we dropped into the harbour of Thebes. The sun was beating upon it with meridian splendour; the inhabitants were seeking shelter in their miserable huts from its scorching rays, and when we made fast near the remains of the ancient port, to which, more than thirty centuries ago, the Egyptian boatman tied his boat, a small group of Arabs smoking under the shade of some palm-trees, on a point above, and two or three stragglers who came down to the bank to gaze at us, were the only living beings we beheld in a city which had numbered its millions. When Greece was just emerging from the shades of barbarism, and before the name of Rome was known, Egypt was far advanced in science and the arts, and Thebes the most magnificent city in the world. But the Assyrian came and overthrew for ever the throne of the Pharaohs. The Persian war-cry rang through the crowded streets of Thebes, Cambyses laid his destroying hands upon the temples of its gods, and a greater than Babylon the Great fell to rise no more.