But at the same time this wheel, which was placed opposite to him in a large open place above the ivory doors, by its motion made him feel a violent agitation of the air. The candidate being in this manner let down again to the place from whence the machine had lifted him up, the two leaves of the ivory door opened by the motion of the lowermost trigger, and presented to his view a place where it was broad day, or, if in the night-time, was illuminated with lamps, which caused a light equal to it."

When Sethos thus emerged from what was in fact the hollow pedestal of the triple statue of Osiris, Isis, and Horus, he was received by the high priest, who administers to him the waters of forgetfulness and the draught of Mnemosyne, and then solemnly consecrates him to the great goddess of the Egyptians. After this his mental trials commence, which last fourscore and one days, during which he is obliged to observe a fast, in different degrees of austerity. This probation is described as severe enough; but in all its varieties, in solitude or society, in observing an enjoined silence or answering proposed questions, Sethos acquits himself to admiration. He is then instructed in the esoteric doctrines, and taught that there is but one First Cause; though, "to comply with the frailty of mankind, they were allowed to adore the different attributes of his essence, and the different effects of his goodness, under the symbols of the stars, as the sun and the planets; of renowned personages, as Osiris, Jupiter, Mercury; and even of terrestrial bodies, as animals and plants ;" and the physical and historical origins of these secondary deities are explained to him. At length his curiosity is fully satisfied by a díscovery of the sacred mysteries of the Egyptian priesthood; and, after a tremendous oath of secresy, he visits their subterraneous mansions, gardens, and temples, or, in classical language, descends into hell. Here he beholds the original Tartarus, where a mortal Sisyphus rolled his stone, living Danaïdes drew water, and vultures gnawed the heart of the Prometheus who had divulged their secrets. Here too he walked in Elysian fields, open to the day, but on which their depth made the light fall weak and softened, while the lofty wall that fenced the opening above seemed to support the heavens on its entablature. And here was the Pantheon of Egypt, where the priests and initiates performed their holiest ceremonies. The induction being now complete, the new initiate is exhibited in a public procession through the city, in which is borne in state the tabernacle of Isis, "a large coffer, covered with a veil of white silk, embroidered with hieroglyphics in gold, over which was a black gauze, to signify the secret of the mysteries of the goddess." Priestesses dance before it, and the smoke of perfumes envelopes it in a cloud of incense.

The measures of Daluca having involved Memphis in a war

with the kingdoms of Thebes and This, Sethos commences his military career very brilliantly, by the assistance which he renders to the governor of Coptos, to which the enemy had laid siege. By his own ardent valour, and the treachery of the Memphian general, who was a creature of the queen's, he is placed in a situation of extreme peril, left for dead on the field of battle, and revives to find himself the prisoner of some Ethiopian soldiers. Resolving to consult his safety and seek for glory, by leaving Memphis and Egypt for a while, he conceals his rank, takes the name of Cheres, and is sold at the nearest port for a slave to some Phoenicians, who present him to Astartus, the commander of an expedition fitted out to relieve the Phoenician colony at Taprobane (Ceylon) from the attacks of the native sovereigns, who menaced its destruction. His exhaustless knowledge and consummate wisdom soon made him the friend rather than the slave of Astartus, whom he conducts, by his counsels and valour, first to a complete victory over the Taprobane fleet, and then to an honourable and advantageous accommodation. Having thus won the gratitude and confidence of both parties, who are emulous of recompensing him, he seizes the opportunity to gratify a long-cherished desire of verifying the geographical discoveries, or speculations, of some Egyptian priests, by sailing along the eastern coast of Africa, practically refuting the prejudice that the torrid zone was a barrier of separation between the two hemispheres divided by the equinoctial line, doubling the Cape, and returning to Egypt by the Pillars of Hercules. The kings of Taprobane and the Phoenician commander join to fit out a fleet for him, leaving his impartiality to assign their proportion of the spoils of the expedition, and he departs on his voyage of discovery, conquest, and civilization, in which he becomes acquainted with much more of Africa than the ancients ever knew; founds very flourishing colonies, which perished before any historian told their tale; and introduces amongst the natives many radical reforms of church and state, which might be beneficially applied to their present laws and practices. In Guinea he finds a horrible corruption of the mysteries, in which the initiates were brutally tortured, and not recompensed by any secret worth knowing. The priests" led them into a grove, where they furrowed their bodies with sharp stones, or with scourges of cord, which made the blood flow from every part, and left scars never to be effaced. They were next obliged to undergo horrid fasts, of which some of the first were for three whole days, in which they were not allowed the least food or drink. The priests' wives made the females undergo pretty nearly the same: but whereas the young men were obliged to suffer all their trials with a steady and even countenance, the maidens were allowed to make wry faces and contor

tions, provided they did not cry out." These rites were brought back, by his interference, to the standard of Egyptian orthodoxy. His discoveries end with a visit to the Hesperides, the Utopia of the work, where all was simplicity, peace, and enjoyment; where their cattle and their fruits were so beautiful as to occasion the fable of the golden fleece and the golden apples; where the public purse paid all the bills of strangers; where every citizen in his turn feasted with his sovereign; where the priests were not, as they had been in former and less happy times, "too holy;" where the laws made people play when they were not at work, and appointed magistrates to superintend their public merriment," that the citizens, being unemployed, might not give themselves up to slandering one another, or censuring the government;" where the wife of the king was not queen; and where nobody studied politics, because there was no occasion. Our hero soon leaves this highly-favoured country, to become the deliverer of Carthage from an unjust, but successful, invasion; and, having rendered the name of Cheres sufficiently illustrious, he begins to think of resuming that of Sethos, when he finds it already occupied by an adventurer, formerly his slave, who by its aid had raised an army of Arabians, and invaded Egypt, for the purpose of placing himself on the throne of Memphis. Without discovering himself, Sethos repulses this attack, and takes his counterfeit prisoner, for which public benefit the four kings confer on him the title of Conservator of Egypt, and General of the Egyptian forces in foreign wars, and the King of Tanis offers him his daughter's hand. He now hastens to Memphis, and re-appears in his own character: Daluca, whose sons proved too virtuous to enter into her plans, poisons herself in despair, and Osoroth resigns to him the crown. But the King of Tanis is so careful of the independence of his kingdom, that he had resolved never to marry his daughter to a monarch, or the heir to a crown; a resolution of which unfortunately the disguised Sethos was ignorant till he had become deeply enamoured of the princess. This resolution compels him to sacrifice either the hand of the lady or the sovereignty of Memphis; while the jealousy of the other kings of Egypt makes his possession of either inconsistent with his new and glorious office of Conservator. Patriotism is completely triumphant; the sons of his step-mother had shewn themselves worthy of his esteem, and, having bestowed his kingdom on one brother, and his mistress on the other, he retires to the college of priests, and devotes himself to the general good of Egypt.

The tale is needlessly complicated by the introduction of an Alexandrian Greek of the second century as its author, and of the Egyptian Anecdotes (probably written by the priests who accompanied Sethos) as his authority. We like not such go

betweens. It is well if a writer can manage his hero so as to excite and keep alive our sympathies, without incumbering himself with an intermediate biographer. The contrivance required more dramatic power than the Abbé Terasson possessed; and those who have it may use it in a thousand ways more interesting to their readers. Matthews playing Macheath in the manner of Incledon was a much easier and pleasanter thing than a Frenchman telling an Egyptian tale in the character of a Greek. Even when such imitations are most successful, they do not blend well with the legitimate enjoyment of romance or drama. The more deeply we are affected by a tale, the less we think of the narrator. It is quite enough that in Sethos we are so often reminded of the Abbé himself; the additional intrusion of the Greek is intolerable. Indeed the latter seems to be aware that we have no very strong impression of his share in the work before us, and so he deems it necessary to make himself seen and heard. All at once, when nobody could be further from our thoughts, he bustles in, with his Egyptian Anecdotes under his arm, to tell us something about our good Emperor Aurelius, or the present state of the arts amongst us Greeks; as if he were imitating the reasoning of Descartes, and, by speaking, demonstrating his existence. His impertinent fit does not last long, however; he makes his remarks, and then makes his exit: Sethos reappears, and we forget him. Not so the Abbé: he is much more visible than he intended. Nobody but a Frenchman could, or would, have given so much the air of " la bonne compagnie" to the Memphian court. The description of the Egyptian assemblies is quite enchanting. He says, in his dedication of the work to Madame la Comtesse de," les personnes choisies, qui ont l'avantage de fréquenter votre maison, y reconnoîtront aisément votre caractère ;" and she might safely believe him. Who else would have aggravated the severity of the initiatory trials by the agency of the wives and daughters of the priests? In three several ways was Sethos afflicted by these amiable ladies during his noviciate. At first, when he met them in the gardens and galleries of the temple, he was prohibited taking any notice of them, however intimate they might have been at court; " and what will appear, without doubt, mortifying to well-bred gentlemen, these ladies, who were most of them of singular beauty, never passed by him without paying him their respect, and he was not suffered to make the least show of a return." His fortitude was next tried by their ceasing to notice him and at last, when the restriction is removed from his own politeness, it is transferred to theirs, and to all his bows and civil speeches they are dumb and motionless. "This was the unkindest cut of all." Sethos is French in his diplomacy, and has no scruples about performing something like the ko-tou to the King of Congo.

His Phoenician colleagues remonstrated on behalf of "the dignity of their kings, and even that of their own persons, which they esteemed far preferable to all the species of animals they had met with in Africa;" but on his assuring them that "the true honour of an embassy was to succeed in the business proposed, and disputes about precedency ought never to be a hinderance to a design which is really advantageous," they submitted, and made the required prostrations to a half-naked savage. All this, and much more of the same sort (besides the confirmatory references to classical authors, which are really valuable), make the Frenchman share our attention with the Egyptian, and render the inartificial obtrusion of the Greek very annoying. The author, like many others, adopted this expedient, to give an air of authenticity to the narrative. The execution must be excellent indeed, not to produce an opposite effect; and, even when most excellent, it is superfluous. The novelist, who can interest us in the scenes, persons, and transactions, which he invents or describes, needs no better claim upon all the credence which the nature of his work requires. We resign ourselves to his dictation with implicit faith. He is the creator of his heroes; and, as to them, omnipotent and omniscient. He knows their motives, and decides their destiny. Antiquity of time or distance of country are nothing to him his power is as plenary as ever was claimed by the holy father, and we devoutly rely on his infallibility. We believe as firmly in Isaac the Jew as if he had lent us money upon bond; we have no more doubt of the excellence of Parson Adams' sermon on vanity than if we had actually heard it; the autograph of the Judge's minutes would nothing increase our knowledge of Mac Ivor's trial; nor have we the least occasion for extracts from the parish registers to certify us of the births, marriages, or deaths, of any of the natural children of the Deucalions, who have peopled the world of fancy. They are magicians, whose wand is as much the type of absolute sway as the conqueror's sword or despot's sceptre. We should as soon think of asking the Autocrat of the North for his title-deeds as of calling on them to produce their verifying documents, and bring their witnesses into court. There is also another kind of evidence, which renders needless the contrivance in questionour personal knowledge of the heroes and heroines, with their friends, enemies, attendants, &c., of all real masters of their art. They have a substantial and permanent existence in our minds. We have the evidence not only of faith, but of sight. We have seen the noble-minded Don, with Mambrino's helmet on his head, glittering in the sunshine; and ourselves fished up a pullet or so from the mighty kettle at Camacho's wedding. We have revelled many a night at the Boar's Head in Eastcheap,