place, there are, as you will see whenever you like to study the lists of kings given by Herodotus and Manetho, quite irreconcilable differences between them. Some

of the same names are mentioned in the lists of kings given by each, but they are placed very differently. We cannot implicitly believe them both; and therefore I think we are justified in taking a little from one and a little from another, and making them fit together in the best way we can; always, in every particular, whether the historians differ, or whether they agree, making the records on the monuments the standard by which the credibility of every statement is tested.

I believe, however, that the great discoveries in Egyptian History made of late years, have, on the whole, tended to establish the authority of the two principal ancient writers on Egyptian History. They have been proved to be correct on many points where their statements were once considered wholly incredible; and when the direct evidence of the monuments has obliged modern writers to reconsider and modify their histories, it has frequently been possible to explain how the misstatement came to have found a place in their writings, and to justify their good faith, if not their complete accuracy.

I will conclude my letter by quoting a prophecy, which the method of writing Egyptian History pursued by modern historians singularly fulfils.

"O Egypt Egypt! of thy religion fables alone shall remain and things as incredible to posterity, and words cut in stone shall alone remain, telling thy pious acts, and Egypt shall be dwelt in by Scythian or Indian or any such."*

* Hermes Trismegistus (so-called) Asclepius IX.

LETTER IV.

MY DEAR BOYS,

I TOLD you that the kings of the twelfth Diospolite dynasty deserved a Letter to themselves. We have again come to a period of Egyptian History which stands out, as the Pyramid period did, from the succeeding and preceding time, distinguished by one or two great names and striking events, made the theme by ancient historians of some strange and some picturesque stories. There are monuments of these times, too, close at hand, as interesting in their character as any that we shall see; so that I shall be able to ask you to connect some description of the country with the names and histories of these kings.

The last time we left our boat, it was to look eastward and westward, across a narrow slip of land, edged on both sides with desert; and we noticed the orange sand-hills on the eastern side already encroaching on the slender tract of cultivable land. We have been sailing through the night, and now, coming out of our cabin in the early morning, we are surprised to see how the sand-hills have grown in the night, as it seems to us, into bold rocky cliffs, lifting their heads into the

pale morning sky. They are not orange now, a faint pink hue rests on them, like a thin gauze veil, softening the barren rugged sides, which in any other atmosphere would look so bare and desolate. About halfa-mile of cultivable land divides them from the eastern river-bank at which our boat is moored; there is a still group of palm-trees close at hand, and then, as far as we can see up and down, gay chequer-work of dark green, light green, and gold. A rich dark green square of graceful castor-oil plants, then golden tops of doura, then tender light green blades of young corn-a feast of colour such as the eye never gets in England, and only here in the early and late hours of the day; in an hour or two, when the sun is higher in the heaven, there will be nothing to be seen but black shadows and burning light.

After passing through so much level country, the sight of the bold cliffs gives me more pleasure than anything else. They are such cliffs as I have seen on some sea-coasts in England, with this difference, that the barrenest cliff to be seen in England shelters somewhere or other in its rugged side, a tuft of grass or an ivy spray, or at least a stain of greenish-brown lichen, or yellow sea-weed; here, from top to base, there is no green thing, no variety, uniform dead sand and hard stone, and yet it does not look barren or desolate, the light clothes it, softening all the rugged outlines, and adorning it with the most delicate lilac shadows, so that one never gets tired of looking. To me, so long as we could see them, these Mokattam hills were always enchanted mountains. I used to try to think of there being nothing but desert behind them, no green fields, no water, nothing but sand-hills and dead sand-plains,

on and on till one reached the sea; I knew it was so, but I could never see it so; there is something in the look of the narrow valley and two ranges of hills, shutting out an unknown land on each side, which sets people fancying. I don't wonder at people believing the Arabian Nights, in Egypt, it seems only natural to suppose that if one could once get behind those hills, one would as likely as not come upon the mysterious lake with the four-coloured fish in it, which never would be cooked for the Sultan; and then going on a little further, hear the cool sound of fountains in the Prince of the Black Island's deserted garden, and be petrified with astonishment at the sight of the splendid marble porticoes of his palace.

To-day is the first day when the Mokattam hills have been near enough to us to look imposing, and I am very glad to find that we are not going to leave them immediately. The wind has fallen, and it is proposed that we should take advantage of the calm, and spend the early part of the day in the Rock Tombs of Beni Hassan, which were sculptured during the time of the twelfth Diospolite dynasty, in those very cliffs opposite us. After we had breakfasted, while Hassan is putting the saddles on the donkeys that are to take us to the hills, Mr. H— pointed out to me some little black holes in the sides of the rock, which he said were the entrances to the tombs we were going to explore. I did not like the look of them at all, they looked so very small and high up; I wondered how we were to reach them, ånd whether we should be able to stand up in them when we were there. When the donkeys were ready we had a little demur about mounting them; they were the smallest donkeys we had any of us ever seen. Mine

did not look much bigger than a good-sized Newfoundland dog; we thought of the fable of the man and the ass, and asked each other whether we should not, for shame's sake, before the day was over, be inclined to take it in turn with our donkeys, and carry them, instead of letting them carry us. Before we had ridden long, however, we forgot our scruples; the donkeys trotted capitally, and proved the strongest and best we ever had during the time we were in Egypt.

We went first to visit a rock temple, which looks down upon a kind of ravine or opening in the hills. I dare say it was once a high road leading across the desert, and that travellers paid their vows at this temple, before they began their journeys. I shall not describe this excavation to you now, however, because it does not belong to the period I want you to realize to day; and, besides, to tell you the truth, I did not examine it very particularly, I was so much more interested in trying to climb to some point of rock from which I could get a peep at the desert behind. I succeeded only in seeing a succession of stony points, rising one behind another, with here and there a deep gorge between them, half choked up with sand. As we came down, Hassan pointed out to us a ruined mud village, which was once, he said, inhabited by a robber horde, who murdered travellers, and robbed boats coming up the river, till Ibrahim Pasha, losing all patience, came with his army and destroyed them and their village together.

It was becoming rather hot when we left the Rock Temple, and we had still some distance to ride; the Rock Tombs were further away than I had thought. From the edge of the cultivated land, a broad road ascends gradually up to the entrances of the tombs.