exterior should render its solidity imperfect: the outer wall is seven feet thick, not petty bricklayer's work, but every stone in itself seven feet in thickness; and as if not sufficiently stable by its own weight is held by ingots of iron. Each stone of the architrave is more than twenty feet in length, and the pillars are twenty-two feet in circumference. On the capital of every pillar is represented Isis quadrifrons, unfortunately only the lips of which remain; the other features of the face have been carefully destroyed. Had they been suitable to the lips, notwithstanding their coldness, they might have excited the idolatrous sensations of Pygmalion.

"13th.-Employed this day in examining and drawing. The pillars which had pazzled my arithmetical eye yesterday, are only twenty-four in number, they stand in four rows, the intercolumniation is not greater than the diameter of the pillar, and seven feet is too short a space between columns that are twenty-two feet in circumference; they appear crowded in a nest, and overgrown-the ceiling, instead of resting upon them, is raised upon cross beams, and consequently divided into channels. Pressed by a want of light and air, and unwilling to destroy the integral strength of the exte rior, the architect has compromised the matter by cutting embouchures, or loop-holes, which, though they may escape the eye when distant, appear to a near observer as paltry as the mouths of letter-boxes; the very celebrated zodiac occupies less than half of a ceiling, which is only twenty feet by twelve, and it is to be lamented that hieroglyphics, though beautifully executed, are obsolete and useless. The chamber of the zodiac is in the upper story of the building, near to which is a flight of steps that conducts to the highest roof or gazebo; this was probably used as an observatory. Among the hierglyphics is represented a staircase with deities ascending. The study of astronomy is natural in a country where telescopes are not required, and to hold commerce with heaven is the part of priesthood. There are very few buildings that afford so much delight as the temple of Dendera; two days at least are gratefully employed here; but a work of such labour and expense would have been preferable if undertaken by the taste and elegance of the Grecian school."

We have little inclination to enter into a controversial war, which is now raging between the savans of Paris and some of our own virtuosi, concerning the antiquity of this celebrated temple. Both Mr. Bankes and Mr. Hamilton,-no indifferent judges of such matters,-think that it is not an Egyptian building; that it is of a comparatively recent date; and that the style and the freshness of the architecture have no analogy with the ruins of ancient Egyptian temples. The question, however, is important only in one point of view. The celebrated zodiac, which occupied à large part of the ceiling, and which we lament to say has been lately carried away and transplanted by a scientific depredator to Paris, (M. Lelorrain,) was first discovered by General Desaix; and some philosophers of the revolutionary period congratulated themselves on having discovered a monument, which would throw, back the creation of the world to a point of time far beyond the Mosaic records, and thus destroy the validity of the Scriptures. Dupuis and Fourier assigned to it an antiquity of fourteen and fifteen thousand years: but the Abbe Testa contends, and on a satisfactory ground of inference, that the date of the ceiling cannot be anterior to the third century before the Christian era; and Visconti brings it down to the first century after Christ. The arguments used by the latter are ingenious, but built on an erroneous basis. The sign of the Libra, he contends, which is one of the figures on the planisphere of Dendera, was not introduced before the time of Augustus, the space dedicated to Libra having been antecedently occupied by the claws of the Scorpion. Libra, however, is an Egyptian sign. The Romans took their signs from the Greek zodiac, which wanted the sign of Libra. We have ourselves seen this celebrated astronomical monument; and we grieve to say that the spoliator, in order to reduce the weight of the block, has cut off two feet from each end, a process by which the ornamental parts of it have sustained irreparable mutilation.

We must pass over Thebes, the temple improperly called the Memnonium, the tombs of the kings, out of which Belzoni has drawn so valuable a prize, and Medinet Abou, described by Hamilton and others.

Ebsambul Sir Frederick terms the ne plus ultra of Egyptian labour, and an ample recompense for his journey: but the antiquities of this place have been too frequently and too recently described, to render the present account either novel or interesting. He was, however, obliged to dig his way through the sand, in order to get a view of the gigantic statues which support the roof of the temple; and having been buried alive for four hours, he found some difficulty in escaping, because, whenever he moved,

the sand "poured down as subtle as quicksilver." He had constructed a kind of wind-sail, which supplied them with air; and "there was really," he observes, "no danger; for had the sand descended, the wind-sail would still have supplied them with air, and they would have been dug out in a fortnight."

We cannot follow this entertaining journalist to the Oasis; but we relaxed the gravity of our critical muscles at his exact description of travelling on a camel; "The motion is very disagreeable. He goes whizzing through the air, though he does not advance three miles per hour, and at every step he causes the same sensations as a rocking boat. 27th Feb.-"I am already land-sick, and have made a calculation that in each journey of fifteen hours, I have been bumped like a school-boy fifty-eight thousand times."

The convent of Mount Sinai is well described by Sir Frederick: but, after Burkhardt's account, it would be a wearisome repetition to our readers. The raptures of the author when the vale of Ascalon burst on his view are well expressed, and show that he is endued with sufficient taste and feeling for the higher walks of composition.

"-Arrive at the top of a ridge of hills, and behold the ocean!-This was, perhaps, the most grateful moment that ever I experienced. I had been journeying in a desert, and now beheld the noblest feature in nature; I had been exposed to ceaseless danger and henceforth my safeguard is the flag of my country; I had been friendless and alone, and there is now but one step to England. The sons of Africa, mounted on the Alps, felt not such delight in surveying the plains of Italy, as I now felt in looking on the vale of Ascalon. The harassed Greeks, whose every step was toil, and every thought was wo, knew not suoh rapture when first the sea burst upon their view, as I now felt while gazing on the ocean that invited me to my country, and the waves of which were dancing round my home."

Sir Frederick was disappointed by Jerusalem; and most of the travellers who have visited that city, with the single exception perhaps of Chateaubriand, have expressed similar feelings. "It has not, says the baronet," one symptom of commerce, comfort, or happiness." On an excursion to the river Jordan, he was attacked by banditti, and the adventure must be told in his own words:

"The route is over hills, rocky, barren, and uninteresting; we arrived at a fountain, and here my two attendants paused to refresh themselves; the day was so hot that I was anxious to finish the journey, and hurried forwards. A ruined building, situate on the summit of a hill, was now within sight, and I urged my horse towards it; the janissary galloped by me, and, making signs for me not to precede him, he rode into and round the building, and then motioned me to advance. We next came to a hill, through the very apex of which has been cut a passage, the rocks overhanging it on either side. I was in the act of passing through this ditch, when a bullet whizzed by, close to my head; I saw no one, and had scarcely time to think when another was fired some short distance in advance; I could yet see no one; the janissary was beneath the brow of the hill, in his descent; I looked back, but my servant was not yet within sight. I looked up, and within a few inches of my head were three muskets, and three men taking aim at me. Escape or resistance were alike impossible. I got off my horse. Eight men jumped down from the rocks, and commenced a scramble for me: I observed also a party running towards Nicholai. At this moment the janissary galloped in among us with his sword drawn; I knew that if blood were spilt I should be sacrificed, and I called upon him to fly. He wounded one man that had hold of me; I received two violent blows, intended I believe før him; from the effect of one I was protected by my turban-I was not armed-the janissary cut down another Arab, and all the rest scrambled up the rocks, the janissary turned his horse and rode off at full gallop, calling on me to follow him, which I did on foot in the mean time the Arabs prepared their matchlocks, and opened a fire upon us, but only a few of their shots came very near. We had advanced about a league, when two of the banditti made a show of cutting us off. A sudden panic seized the janissary, he cried on the name of the Prophet, and galloped away. I called out to him that there were but two-that with his sword and pistols, if we stopped behind a stone, we could kill them both; he rode back towards the Arabs, they had guns, and the poor fellow returned full speed. As he passed I caught at a rope hanging from his saddle-I had hoped to leap upon his horse, but found myself unable;-my feet were dreadfully lacerated by the honey-combed rocks-nature would support me no longer-I fell, but still clung to the rope; in this manner I was

drawn some few yards; till, bleeding from my ancle to my shoulder, I resigned my. self to my fate. As soon as I stood up, one of my pursuers took aim at me, but the other casually advancing between us, prevented his firing; he then ran up, and with his sword aimed such a blow as would not have required a second; his companion prevented its full effect, so that it merely cut my ear in halves, and laid open one side of my face; they then stripped me naked. These two could not have known that their friends were wounded, or they would certainly have killed me; they had heard me vote their death, and which we should in all probability have effected, had the janissary, a Turk, understood me. I had spoken to him in Arabic,

"It was now past mid-day, and burning hot; I bled profusely; and two vultures, whose business it is to consume corpses, were hovering over me. I could scarcely have had strength to resist, had they chosen to attack me. In about twenty minutes Nicholai came up; his only sorrow was for my wound, and the loss of the sword, which was his own. You cannot live, Sir, you cannot live! they have taken away my sword; I asked them to give it back to me, but they would not.' He then related his part of the adventure-ten men had beset him—his horse was not to be depended upon the gun was not loaded; and there were many Arabs on every side, so that retreat was impossible. The janissary now came to our assistance, and put me on his horse; we passed by a rivulet of tempting water, but they would not allow me to drink, though I was almost choked with blood. At length we arrived at about three, P. M., at Jericho.-The walls of Jericho' are of mud; at a corner of the town stands a small stone building, the residence of the governor: within the walls of it is the town reservoir of water, and horses for eight Turks. My servant was unable to lift me to the ground; the janissary was lighting his pipe, and the soldiers were making preparations to pursue the robbers; not one person would assist a half-dead Christian; after some minutes a few Arabs came up, and placed me by the side of the horse-pond, just so that I could not dip my finger into the water; one of the soldiers, as he went forth, took the rug from his horse, and threw it to me as a covering. The governor armed himself, and the whole garrison sallied forth in pursuit of the banditti.-This pool is resorted to by every one in search of water, and that employment falls exclusively upon females-they surrounded me, and seemed so earnest in their sorrow, that, notwithstanding their veils, I almost felt pleasure at my wound; one of them in particular held her pitcher to my lips, till she was sent away by the Chous. I called her, she returned, and was sent away again; and the third time she was turned out of the yard; she wore a red veil, and therefore there was something unpardonable in her attention to any man, especially to a Christian: she, however, returned with her mother, and brought me a lemon and some milk. I believe that Mungo Park, on some dangerous occasion during his travels, received considerable assistance from the compassionate sex.

"About sunset, the secretary of the governor provided me with a shirt. I was then put into a mat, and deposited in a small dark cell, but even there I was not at rest, for a cat made two pulls at my ear during the night—it was a very Mohamme

dan cat.

"Early on the following morning, the governor informed me, that he had scoured the roads of the banditti; and that as there was no doctor in Jericho, every thing was ready to convey me to Jerusalem. He had furnished me with some of his own cavalry, and had added a few pedestrians from the town; I was then tied on a camel, like a dead sheep, the Turkish horsemen preceded me, and, scouting over the rocks, afforded, I doubt not, a very pretty scene; but I was complaining of the motion of the camel, of the ropes that bound me, and the want of covering, while at every step my wound opened and shut like a quivering door. I begged to be transposed to a horse, but my guides refused to stop under pretence of danger."

In consequence of this melancholy accident, Sir F. H. kept his bed twenty days: when, impatient of the penance of so long a journey in the Latin convent, it was with no little pleasure that he at length took leave of "the blessed city." His homeward journey was by Nazareth, Acre, Ephesus, Smyrna, Constantinople, and Vienna.

We must now also take leave, but a more reluctant leave, of this agreeable traveller; heartily thanking him for the "broad grins" into which he has so frequently distorted our melancholy visages. A professed joker cannot, indeed, be always successful, for his wit will occasionally burn dimly: but that of Sir Frederick rarely goes out, and he is never absolutely dull.

PROSE BY A POET.*

THIS is a very pretty little book, we had almost said a beautiful one; but the diversity of its style will not permit the latter term to be applied as a general descriptive title. " Prose by a Poet" is a collection of short essays on various subjects, many of them interesting, all amusing. Some of them might have been written by a prose-writer,-none of them could have been penned by a proser. Had the work been merely entitled "Prose," the reader would inevitably have added " by a Poet," from the sweetness and melody of language which pervades many of the descriptions. There is more beauty of imagery and splendour of poetic vision diffused throughout these volumes of prose, than is to be found in many poems, such by profession: if modern fancy has sometimes soared to sublimed heights, it has not often attained a purer region in the heaven of " empyrean poesy," than it floats in here. We quote from a Fable, entitled the Moon and Stars."

On the fourth day of creation, when the sun after a glorious but solitary course, went down in the evening, and darkness began to gather over the face of the uninhabited globe, already arrayed in exuberance of vegetation, and prepared by the diversity of land and water for the abode of uncreated animals and man,-a star, single and beautiful, stept forth into the firmament. Trembling with wonder and delight in new-found existence, she looked abroad, and beheld nothing in heaven or on earth resembling herself. But she was not long alone; now one, then another, here a third, and there a fourth resplendent companion had joined her, till light after light stealing through the. gloom, in the lapse of an hour, the whole hemisphere was brilliantly bespangled.

The planets and stars, with a superb comet flaming in the zenith, for a while contemplated themselves and each other; and every one from the largest to the least, was so perfectly well pleased with himself, that he imagined the rest only partakers of his felicity,-he being the central luminary of his own universe, and all the host of heaven beside displayed around him in graduated splendour. Nor were any undeceived with regard to themselves, though all saw their associates in their real situations and relative proportions, self-knowledge being the last knowledge acquired, either in the sky, or below it; till, bending over the ocean in their turns, they discovered what they imagined at first to be a new heaven, peopled with beings of their own species: but, when they perceived further that no sooner had any one of their company touched the horizon than he instantly disappeared, they then recognised themselves in their indivi dual forms, reflected beneath, according to their places and configurations above, from seeing others whom they previously knew, reflected in like manner. By an attentive but mournful self-examination in that mirror, they slowly learned humility, but every one learned it only for himself, none believing what others insinuated respecting their own inferiority, till they reached the western slope, from whence they could identify their true images in the nether element. Nor was this very surprising,-stars being only visible points, without any distinction of limbs, each was all eye, and though he could see others most correctly, he could neither see himself nor any part of himself,-till he came to reflection! The comet however, having a long train of brightness streaming sunward, could review that, and did review it with ineffable self-complacency: indeed, after all pretensions to precedence, he was, at length, acknowledged

* Prose by a Poet. Longman and Co. London, 1824.

king of the hemisphere, if not by the universal assent, by the silent envy of all his rivals.

But the object which attracted most attention, and astonishment, too, was a slender thread of light, that scarcely could be discerned through the blush of evening, and vanished soon after nightfall, as if ashamed to appear in so scanty a form, like an unfinished work of creation. It was the moon,-the first new moon;-timidly she looked round upon the glittering multitude that crowded through the dark serenity of space, and filled it with life and beauty. Minute, indeed, they seemed to her, but perfect in symmetry, and formed to shine for ever; while she was unshapen, incomplete, and evanescent. In her humility, she was glad to hide herself from their keen glances in the friendly bosom of the ocean, wishing for immediate extinction. When she was gone, the stars looked one at another, with inquisitive surprise, as much as to say, "What a figure!" It was so evident that they all thought alike, and thought contemptu. ously of the apparition (though, at first, they almost doubted whether they should not be frightened,) that they soon began to talk freely concerning her,of course, not with audible accents, but in the language of intelligent sparkles, in which stars are accustomed to converse with telegraphic precision from one end of heaven to the other,—and which no dialect on earth so nearly resembles as the language of eyes,-the only one, probably, that has survived in its purity, not only the confusion of Babel, but the revolutions of all ages, &c.

Our limits stop us: we are almost ashamed to disturb the reader's admiration of these passages, by the truly critic-like objection, that our author in passing from one to the other, has unceremoniously and injudiciously changed the gender of his stars; they are feminine in the first paragraph (as they ought to be,) and masculine in the second.

"The Life of a Flower," supposed to be written by itself, which precedes this, is also, exquisitely told, in a strain of playful elegance, and light, graceful, natural language. The specimen above, will perhaps, excuse us the necessity of illustrating our opinion by another; nor do we think it quite fair in the Reviewers to plagiarise by wholesale from an author's works, extracting the honey, and leaving the empty combs for the purchaser of the book.

There is some bonâ fide poetry in these volumes; yet strange to say, it is far less poetical than some of the prose beside it. It is not exactly Poetry by a Proser; on the contrary, there are many of the disjecti membra to be recognized, here and there, by an industrious anatomist: but we certainly never should have suspected the author of poetry to any amount, had he not betrayed his propensity in a more unequivocal manner than shines through his verse.

A reader who begins (as some readers may) at the beginning of this work will, perhaps, be prejudiced (as we were) against it, by the flippant tone which reigns through the introductory piece, a kind of deprecatory dialogue between the reader and the book, needless in any case, and injurious in this. Perhaps the author wrote it merely to cover paper; but this innocent design has a fatal result,-that of proving very evidently, that, whatever faculties of mind he may enjoy, wit is not one of them. He should be careful how he endeavours to indulge a disposition to be witty; there is nothing more exalted in the scale of intellect than wit, nothing more contemptible than the pertness which is frequently mistaken for it. Advice, we are aware, is more generously offered, than gratefully received; yet we will venture to advise our "Poet," in his future composition, not to be witty. His temperament is evidently