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three months yields a hundred and sometimes a hundred and fifty fold. During the whole winter months the soil is covered with the richest harvests, besprinkled with flowers, and dotted by innumerable flocks; but in March the great heats begin, the earth cracks from excessive drought, vegetation disappears, and the country is fast relapsing into the sterility of the desert, when the annual floods of the Nile again cover it with their vivifying waters.-ALISON.

1. It got this name from its resemblance to the Greek letter, delta, A. The base of the letter was constituted by the shore of the Mediterranean, and the two sides by the outside branches of the Nile, which used to fall into the sea by

seven mouths.

2. By Nilometer is meant an instrument for measuring the rise of water in the Nile during the flood. It consisted anciently of a rod or pillar, marked with the necessary divisions for the purpose of ascertaining the proportionate increase of the flood. It is said by several Arabian writers to have been first set up by Joseph, during his regency in Egypt. It was sixteen cubits high.

the rains are pretty heavy. In this respect there is a great variety in the seasons; and, according to Marshal Marmont, falls of rain would appear latterly to have become comparatively frequent. He says that in Lower Egypt they have now pretty generally from thirty to forty rainy days in the year; and that the Pacha has constructed immense warehouses for the securing of products in harvest, which were formerly exposed without inconvenience to the open air. No doubt, however, the rains have been quite as frequent and heavy in Egypt in past times, as at present. In proof of this we may mention that the learned and accurate Mr. Greaves, who visited 3. This is by far too strongly put by Egypt in 1638 and 1639, states that the Mr. Alison, and as the error is an im- rains were heavier at Alexandria in portant one I shall here endeavour to December and January than he had counteract it by an extract from M'Cul-known in London; and that there were Joch's Geographical Dictionary-a work that ought to be in the hands of every teacher: "In consequence of the extreme dryness of the air, comparatively little rain falls in Egypt: and some seasons have passed away without the occurrence of a single shower. But this is not usually the case, and occasionally

Explore.

also at the same time very heavy falls in Cairo. Hail showers occasionally occur in winter at Alexandria, and sometimes, though rarely, in Cairo. Snow is totally, and thunder and lightning nearly, unknown in Egypt. Earthquakes occur but seldom, but they are not unknown."

THE PYRAMIDS OF EGYPT.

Approach.

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I WENT to see and to explore the Pyramids. Familiar to one from the days of early childhood are the forms of the Egyptian Pyramids, and now, as I approach' them from the banks of the Nile, I had no print, no picture before me, and yet the old shapes were there; there was no change; they were just as I had always known them. I straightened myself in my stirrups, and strived to persuade my understanding that this was real Egypt, and that those angles which stood up between me and the west

were of harder stuff, and more ancient than the paper pyramids of the green portfolio. Yet it was not till I came to the base of the great Pyramid that reality began to weigh upon my mind. Strange to say, the bigness of the distinct blocks of stones was the first sign by which I attained to feel the immensity of the whole pile. When I came, and trod, and touched with my hands, and climbed, in order that by climbing I might come to the top of one single stone, then and almost suddenly a cold sense and understanding of the Pyramid's enormity came down, overcasting my brain. Now try to endure this homely, sicknursish illustration of the effect produced upon one's mind by the mere vastness of the great Pyramid: when I was very young (between the ages, I believe, of three and five years old), being then of delicate health, I was often in time of night the victim of a strange kind of mental oppression; I lay in my bed perfectly conscious, and with open eyes but without power to speak or to move, and all the while my brain was oppressed to distraction by the presence of a single, an abstract idea-the idea of solid Immensity. It seemed to me, in my agonies, that the horror of this visitation arose from its coming upon me without form or shape that the close presence of the direst monster ever bred in hell would have been a thousand times more tolerable than that simple idea of solid size; my aching mind was fixed and riveted down upon the mere quality of vastness, vastness, vastness; and was not permitted to invest with it any particular object. If I could have done so the torment would have ceased. When at last I was roused from this state of suffering, I could not of course in those days (knowing no verbal metaphysics,* and no metaphysics at all, except by the dreadful experience of an abstract idea), I could not of course find words to describe the nature of my sensations, and even now I cannot explain why it is that the forced contemplation of a mere quality, distinct from matter, should be so terrible. Well, now my eyes saw and knew, and my hands and my feet informed my understanding that there was nothing at all abstract about the great Pyramid,it was a big triangle, sufficiently concrete, easy to see, and rough to the touch; it could not, of course, affect me with the peculiar sensation I have been talking of, but yet there was something akin to that old nightmare agony in the terrible completeness with which a mere mass of masonry could fill and load my mind. - Eöthen.'

1. This use of the present tense in relating a past event is known among grammarians under the name of the historical present. It is often more vivid than the regular past tense, as it makes

the things or events described pass before the eye of the reader as in a panorama.

2. Portfolio, a case the size of a large book, to keep pictures or loose papers of any sort in.

3. An abstract idea is an idea separated | lecting facts, its possibility is no more from a complex object or from other questionable than that of chemistry. ideas which naturally accompany it, as Some of the greatest metaphysicians of the solidity of marble, contemplated our country are Locke, Berkeley, Butler, apart from its colour or figure. Hume, Reid, Stewart, Brown, Mill, Hamilton, &c.

4. Metaphysics is usually applied to denote the philosophy of mind as distinguished from that of matter. This science treats of the association of ideas, memory, and various phenomena of mind; and as it consists merely in col

5. Concrete is the opposite of abstract. Whiteness is an abstract term, but white is a concrete, and must always have a noun along with it.

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WE are at present qualified to view the advantageous position of Constantinople, which appears to have been formed by nature for the centre and capital of a great monarchy. Situated in the fortyfirst degree of latitude,' the imperial city commanded, from her seven hills, the opposite shores of Europe and Asia; the climate was healthy and temperate, the soil fertile, the harbour secure and capacious, and the approach on the side of the continent was of small extent and easy defence. The Bosphorus and Hellespont may be considered as the two gates of Constantinople; and the prince who possessed those important passages could always shut them against a naval enemy, and open them to the fleets of commerce.

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The preservation of the eastern provinces may, in some degree, be ascribed to the policy of Constantine, as the barbarians of the Euxine, who, in the preceding age, had poured their armaments into the heart of the Mediterranean, soon desisted from the exercise of piracy, and despaired of forcing this insurmountable barrier. When the gates of the Hellespont and Bosphorus were shut, the capital still enjoyed, within her spacious enclosure, every production which could supply the wants or gratify the luxury of its3 numerous inhabitants. The sea coasts of Thrace and Bithynia, which languish under the weight of Turkish oppression, still exhibit a rich prospect of vineyards, of gardens, and of plentiful harvests; and the Propontis has ever been renowned for an inexhaustible store of the most exquisite fish that are taken in their stated seasons, without skill and almost without labour. But when the passages of the straits were thrown open for trade, they alternately admitted the natural and artificial riches of the north and south, of the Euxine

and of the Mediterranean. Whatever rude commodities were collected in the forests of Germany and Scythia, as far as the sources of the Tanais and the Borysthenes; whatsoever was manufactured by the skill of Europe and Asia; the corns of Egypt, and the gems and spices of the farthest India, were brought by the varying winds into the ports of Constantinople, which, for many ages, attracted the commerce of the ancient world.-GIBBON.

1. In Geography, latitude means the distance of any place, north or south of the equator, measured on its meridian. When the term was introduced, more of the earth was known from east to west than from north to south. From E. to W. was, therefore, naturally spoken of as length or longitude, and from N. to S. as breadth or latitude.

2. Piracy is the act, practice, or crime of robbing on the high seas; the taking of property from others by open violence

and without authority on the sea; a crime that answers to robbery on land.

3. This change of the pronoun is not good. The city may correctly enough be personified, and so have a feminine pronoun referring to it, but we ought not to have the neuter applied to it in the next line. Consistency ought to be observed throughout the sentence.

4. The ancient names of the Don and the Dnieper in Russia. They fall into the Euxine or Black Sea, after running upwards of a thousand miles each.

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EVEN if we do not take a part in the chaunt' about " Mosques and Minarets," we can still yield praises to Stamboul. We can chaunt about the harbour: we can say and sing that nowhere else does the sea come so home to a city; there are no pebbly shores-no sand-bars—no slimy river-beds—no black canals-no locks nor docks to divide the very heart of the place from the deep waters: if, being in the noisiest mart of Stamboul, you would stroll to the quiet side of the way amidst those cypresses opposite, you will cross the fathomless Bosphorus; if you would go from your hotel to the Bazaars, you must pass by the bright blue pathway of the Golden Horn, that can carry a thousand sail of the line. You are accustomed to the gondolas that glide among the palaces of St. Mark, but here at Stamboul it is a hundred-andtwenty-gun-ship that meets you in the street. Venice strains out from the steadfast land, and in old times would send forth the chief of the state to woo and wed the reluctant sea; but the stormy bride of the Doge is the bowing slave of the Sultan-she comes to his feet with the treasures of the world-she bears him from palace to palace-by some unfailing witchcraft, she entices the breezes to follow her and fan the pale cheek of her lord—she lifts his armed navies to the very gates of his garden-she

watches the walls of his Serail"-she stifles the intrigues of his ministers she quiets the scandals of his court-she extinguishes his rivals, and hushes his naughty wives all one by one, so vast are the wonders of the deep!-' Eöthen.'

1. Generally chant, and here used synonymously with cantrepeating phrases that have little or no meaning in them.

2. The Turkish name of Constantinople, and evidently a corruption of that word. The ancient name of the city was Byzantium, after its founder Byzas the Megarean, B.C. 656.

3. Among the Turks, the Persians, and Easterns generally, bazaar is used to mean an exchange, market-place, or place where goods are exposed to sale.

4. A gondola is a flat-bottomed boat, very long and narrow, used at Venice, in Italy, on the canals. A gondola of middle size is about thirty feet long and four broad, terminating at each end in a sharp point or peak, rising to the height of a man. It is usually rowed by two men, called gondoliers, who propel the

boat by pushing the oars. The gondola is also used in other parts of Italy for a passage boat.

5. The serail, more commonly called the seraglio, is the part of Constantinople where the palace is. It is about three miles in circuit, and entirely surrounded by walls. Its whole surface is "irregularly covered with detached suites of apartments, baths, mosques, kiosks, gardens, and groves of cypress. The apartments are chiefly on the top of the hill, and the gardens below stretching to the, sea. Though externally picturesque, from the contrast of its light and elegant minarets, with its dark, solemn, and stately trees, the seraglio is unmarked by anything to characterize it as the habitation of royalty." -M CULLOCH's Geo. Dic.

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IN the vacant space between Persia, Syria, Egypt and Ethiopia, the Arabian peninsula may be conceived as a triangle of spacious but irregular dimensions. From the northern point of Beles on the Euphrates a line of fifteen hundred miles is terminated by the straits of Babelmandel and the land of frankincense. About half this length may be allowed for the middle breadth, from east to west, from Bassora to Suez, from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea. The sides of the triangle are gradually enlarged, and the southern basis presents a front of a thousand miles to the Indian Ocean. The entire surface of the peninsula exceeds in a fourfold proportion that of Germany or France, but the far greater part has been justly stigmatised with the epithets of the stony and sandy. Even the wilds of Tartary are decked by the hand of nature, with lofty trees and luxuriant herbage, and the lonesome traveller derives a sort of comfort and society from the presence of vegetable life. But in the dreary waste of Arabia, a boundless level of sand is intersected by sharp and

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