and pleasure, depicted in the processions, dancing, choruses, and bacchantes; the figures of voluptuous women reclining on soft couches, all breathe the luxurious ease, elegance, and grace of the goddess of love. The profusion of figures and hieroglyphics scattered over the façade of the portico is astonishing, and imagination loses itself in conjectures as to the mysterious history which lies concealed in their emblematic language." The so-called Zodiac of Denderah, which has given rise to such varied disquisitions, may be seen at Paris.

From the temple of Luxor, near the bank of the Nile, the great valley of Thebes lies extended before the traveller; to the east the avenue of Sphinxes reaches the colossal piles of Karnac, with its two lofty obelisks; the statue of Memnon, now, alas! silent and unmusical. "The surrounding plain is covered with the skeletons of temples and palaces; among which the eye rests with pleasure upon the welldefined outlines of the temples of Gournou and the Memnonium. A circlet of mountains, in whose bowels are entombed the kings and people of the 'hundredgated' Thebes, inclosed the valley against the incursions of the desert."

We regret that our limits will not allow us to give a description of the great hall of Karnac, probably the grandest work of human architecture. Denon says, “The imagination which rises above our porticoes sinks abashed at the foot of the one hundred and thirty-four columns of the hypostyle hall of Karnac ;" and Belzoni declares that the most sublime ideas which can be formed from the most magnificent specimens of our present architecture, would give a very inadequate idea of these views. Four such churches as St. Martin's in the fields, in London, might staud side by side in the area of this hall without occupying the whole space. "Nothing could be finer than the coup d'œil of this immense plain, bounded by bold ridges of mountains which, with the Nile, coming from remote regions in the south, seemed to do homage to the mighty monuments of human greatness that cover its surface. This slendid picture of mountain, plain, river, palm-groves, temples, palaces, obelisks, over-canopied by the stainless blue of an Egyptian sky, and set in an horizon which enclosed it with a band of gold, formed the richest combination of the beautiful in nature, and the sublime in human productions, that I had ever seen."

Ruined temples, which yield, and scarcely yield, in magnificence and extent to those to which we have thus briefly alluded, accompany the traveller on both sides of the banks as he ascends the river up to the cataracts of Assouan. Amongst the grandest of these are the ruins of Ombi, or Ombos, now called Koum Ombou, or the Hill of Ombos. It stands on the brow of a high bluff above the river, from which nothing is to be seen but the boundless expanse of the Arabian desert, and the pillars and gateways of the temple projecting above the ocean of sand which surrounds them. The inhabitants of Ombos were celebrated for the worship of the

crocodile, and were involved in constant war with the inhabitants of Dendera respecting the worship of this and other monstrous deities. The ruins of the ancient city are said to cover a space of ground more than four miles in circumference.

The ruins, which are portrayed in the plate before us, lie about twenty miles to the north of the cataracts. This ancient city, with its remains, is now deeply covered with sand, which has likewise encroached upon the adjacent plain. The village to which this once magnificent city dwindled is likewise deserted; no tree offers shade to the wanderer against the tropical heat of the climate. The remains of two temples, which, like so many other of these edifices in Egypt, are in a good state of preservation, are inclosed in a wall about half a mile in circumference, and nearly nine yards thick. The larger is remarkable among all the Egyptian antiquities with which we are acquainted, for its division into two principal parts, which are perfectly symmetrical. Three halls are extant; the other compartments are either destroyed or inaccessible from the accumulation of sand. Its length seems to have been one hundred and eighty-five feet, its width one hundred and fourteen feet; the height of the columns at the first porch is thirty-seven feet, their circumference nearly nineteen feet. This sublime monument of ancient art appears to have been destroyed by fire, from which the decorations with which it was ornamented have suffered considerably. The roof of the portico still shows us a row of gigantic vultures on a blue ground; the hieroglyphics and figures are painted blue, red, yellow, and green. Everywhere we see a lavish profusion of painting and sculpture. The god is always represented on one side of the temple, with the head of a sparrowhawk; on the other with that of a crocodile. The former represents Osiris as the sun, the latter as the fertilizing deity of the Nile; for the sparrowhawk is the symbol of the sun, the crocodile the symbol of drinkable water. About fifty yards to the north-west of the great temple of Ombos is a smaller temple, seventy feet long, twenty-eight feet high, and sixty broad. Only four columns and a part of the wall remain.

It is singular, that whilst so many of the ancient temples of Egypt have remained almost entire, there exist no vestiges of dwellings or towns.

SCHULPFORTE.

THIS famous grammar-school, which has recently celebrated its third centenary jubilee, formerly belonged to Saxony, but formed part of the territory which, by the congress of Vienna, was made over to Prussia. In the first half of the twelfth cen2 G

VOL. II.

tury Count Bruno, Lord of Pleissen, in Altenburg, had the misfortune to kill his only son, Oetwin, whilst hunting; and being induced to make over his estates to the church, he founded a monastery at Schmoellen, in the year 1127. As the monastery was exposed to the incursions of the Sclavonic tribes of the vicinity, in the year 1132 Bishop Udo, of Naumburg, allowed the monks an asylum in the picturesque country between Koesen and Naumburg, where the present buildings of Schulpforte now stand. In a few years the Benedictines made room for the Cistercians, who established the monastery of Pforta, under the name of the Porta Beatæ Mariæ, or, Gate of the Blessed Virgin. It was also called Porta Cali, or, Gate of Heaven. The Cistercians were more fortunate than their predecessors; for the monastery soon became very rich, and the monks enjoyed their wealth in ease and comfort until the Reformation drove them from their cells. The last abbot retired in 1541. In consequence of the change of religion the Elector, Maurice, of Saxony, decreed by a patent, May 21st, 1543, that the wealthy cloisters of Pforta, Meissen, and Merseburg should be transformed into public grammar-schools; the last was subsequently removed to Grimma, on the Mulde, in Saxony. A hundred scholars should be gratuitously boarded, lodged, and instructed; and, besides the former revenues of Pforta, those of the cloister of Memleben were likewise devoted to defraying the expenses of the new establishment, which received the appropriate name of Schulpforte. The successors of Maurice, particularly Augustus and Christian II., in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and Frederic Augustus, in his long and eventful rule in the eighteenth and nineteenth, were generous patrons to Schulpforte, which suffered so severely from the ravages of the thirty years' war, that at one period it seemed to be on the point of dissolution. The irruption of the Swedes into Saxony, in the year 1706, and the seven years' war, diminished the revenues of Sculpforte by excessive exactions; but, singularly enough, in the great battles that were frequently fought in its vicinity, during the advance of Napoleon, and in 1813, after his retreat from Moscow, although sometimes surrounded by French troops, both parties seem to have united in making the miseries and exactions of war fall as lightly as possible on this favoured place of education.

Since the year 1815, when Schulpforte was assigned to Prussia, it has enjoyed the peculiar favour of the government. It was newly organized in the year 1820, its system of instruction brought more into unison with the wants of modern times; but, although in the improved plan more time is devoted to the study of the mother tongue, to history, and the mathematics, the principal attention is still bestowed upon the Latin and Greek languages. Many distinguished men have been educated at Schulpforte, of whom, Klopstock, Fichte, and Ernesti are, perhaps, those who are best known in foreign countries.