while the Ethiopian remains, of greatest apparent antiquity, are yet subsequent to the reign of Amenoph III., and those, the date of which can be ascertained within moderate limits (that is, the fragments at Argo, bearing the name of Sabaco, (707, B. C.), and the temples of Tihraka, (675, B.C.), at Jebel el Birkel), belong to a comparatively recent period, when the splendour of Egyptian art had already passed its zenith. Yet even then Tihraka appears to have acknowledged the superiority of Egyptian artists, for the architecture and sculpture of his temples are all Egyptian; so that, however it may have been in the mythic age, to which our author so frequently refers, it is manifest that within the historic age, or seven centuries before the Christian era, the Ethiopians regarded the Egyptians as their instructors in the arts.

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The advocates of Ethiopian antiquity will not find their case improve as they ascend the river still higher. At Assur, near which is supposed to be the site of the ancient city of Meroe, there are no remains of palaces or temples. Further on, indeed, at Abu Naga, Mr Hoskins found a clumsy fragment of a portico, which, as it bore no specific marks of age, save such as are at the arbitrament of taste, he deemed to be original, and, therefore, of great antiquity. But the extensive edifice in Wady el Owataib, he yields up despondingly to the age of the Ptolemies. As to the temples further south, at Beit Naga and Jebel Calefaat, the concurrent testimonies of Lord Prudhoe and M. Cailliaud will not permit us to doubt that they belong to the last age of Egyptian architecture. Yes, yes,' (we think we hear Mr Hoskins reply) the temples of Meroe and of Ethiopia in general are, it must be confessed, but imitations of corrupt Egyptian architecture, with such slight modifications as usually characterise a new school. When the Egyptians taught the Ethiopians the art of building a temple, they only paid a just debt of gratitude, 'since the Ethiopians taught them how to erect a pyramid; for surely the pyramids of Meroe, of Jebel el Birkel, and of Nourri, 'must be allowed to be the most ancient edifices near the Nile.' Thus argues our author, but we could as easily believe that the city arose, after the population had all perished, as that the dynasties of Ethiopia were all sepulchred in pyramids ages before the erection of those edifices which dignified the religion of the state. Why should there be such a chasm, such a distance of time, between the royal tombs of Ethiopia and every other edifice of that country, indicating the existence of a civilized community? In truth, we must confess our belief that the only ground on which the pretended antiquity of the pyramids of Meroe rests, is this, that they bear on them no positive indication whatever of their age. Whatever buildings in Ethiopia have graven on them,

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the names of their founders, or any other clues to their date, all evidently belong to a time subsequent to the Augustan age of Egypt; but, on the other hand, every structure which has not its age stamped on it in characters hieroglyphical or architectural, is referred by Mr Hoskins to a remote age, not merely antecedent 'to the arts of Egypt,' but when even Egypt itself had not yet 'emerged from the Nile.' Yet these two classes of edifices, with and without dates, are not the scattered fragments of separate social systems. On the contrary, they are respectively the temples and the tombs, both compatible with, or rather indispensably belonging to, the same system, between which Mr Hoskins thus arbitrarily interposes a period of some thousands of years.

It is ridiculous to assert that the sunburnt and mouldering condition of the pyramids of Jebel el Birkel or of Meroe bespeak an unrivalled antiquity; or that the elegance and originality of their design prove that they could not be copies, and must, therefore, have been the models of the pyramids of Egypt. Two thousand years beneath the scorching rays of a tropical sun are quite sufficient to discolour an unsheltered pile of sandstone; and that buildings constructed with small stones, and within the limits of the periodical rains, should remain at all, after the lapse of 2000 years, is much more surprising, than that they should remain. in a mouldering state. It is certainly very strange that Mr Hoskins should discover for the first time, at the southern termination of his journey and within the limits of the rains, that the decayed state of a building is a sure proof of its great antiquity. With respect to the elegance and originality of the design of those pyramids, the former of these merits appears to us so prominent as to throw a shadow over the latter. The Ethiopian pyramid is more elongated than that of Egypt, or more like an obelisk—a mode of the pyramidal form which cannot for a moment be regarded as the germ or first conception of the true pyramid; on the contrary, it naturally results from the reduction of the pyramid. The porticoes attached to the Ethiopian pyramids also detract from the character of original simplicity; and on these accounts, we cannot help adopting the remark of Cailliaud.It must be confessed that these pyramids and their porticoes ' are but the miniature copies of the pyramids of Memphis and of the fine porticoes of Edfu.'

Finally, as Mr Hoskins lays much stress on his intimate acquaintance with the styles of different ages, and his practised discernment, we will proceed to examine to what extent his judgment is borne out by the opinion of others. In his preface we find him, to our surprise, averring that, according to Heeren, Champollion, Rosellini, and other eminent enquirers, this

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(Ethiopia) was the land whence the arts and learning of Egypt, and ultimately of Greece and Rome, derived their origin.' Such an opinion is certainly entertained by Heeren, from whom, however, it comes with very little weight; but we can scarcely credit that it is to be found any where in the writings of Champollion or Rosellini. These two gentlemen never ascended the Nile higher than Amarah, and never, as far as we know, relinquished the path of acute research for that of gratuitous hypothesis. But Mr Hoskins omits to state, that those travellers, who have actually visited, and closely examined the ruins of Meroe, Cailliaud, Rüppell, and Lord Prudhoe, who is an authority of great value, all agree in declaring them to be comparatively modern; that is to say, to be corrupt imitations of Egyptian art in the latter periods of its decline. This weight of authority is alone sufficient to decide the question against the Ethiopians. Heeren, often ingenious and always plausible, shows very little sagacity or soundness of judgment; but on approaching Meroe he gets involved in a labyrinth of error. When Rüppell describes the pyramids of Assur or Meroe, he supposes him to speak of pyramids on the islands of Kurgos; and when that traveller refers to Jebel el Birkel (which he calls Meroe), Heeren understands him to mean Assur. But, overlooking these mistakes, what support can Mr Hoskins derive from the authority of Heeren, who, with very confused notions of Ethiopian greatness and antiquity, asks, was not Assur built by Egyptian artists in the splendid age of Tihraka and Sabaco ?'* That is to say, did not art begin to flourish in Ethiopia under the 25th dynasty of Egypt, when Egyptian art was already falling into decline? Thus Mr Hoskins is deserted at the very point where he most needs support by the only authority from whom he could have reasonably expected it; and he stands alone in maintaining that Ethiopia was a rich, populous, and civilized country before Egypt emerged from the Nile.'

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We will now, for our readers' sake, recapitulate the chief of the preceding arguments, and endeavour to exhibit within a small compass the true state of the question at issue. Edifices of Egyptian construction, or their remains, are found along the Nile as far up as Jebel el Birkel, their ages being generally from 1700 to 1400 B.C. The Ethiopian structures, intermingled with, or covering them, are of much more recent date (where date is assignable); and the best of them, erected by the Ethiopian kings

* Tom. v. p. 134, of the French translation of Heeren's work. Vol. iv. p. 413 of the original.

who ruled Egypt from 719 to 675 B.C. appear to owe their architectural merits to Egyptian skill. Higher up the river, the palaces or temples of Beit Naga, Jebel Calefaat, &c. appear to of still more recent origin-exhibiting corruptions of the GræcoEgyptian style. The pyramids of Ethiopia are quite modern in comparison with those of Egypt, as their form and mode of construction at once evince. The sculptures with which they as well as the temples are adorned, are always inferior to those of Egypt, and in general execrably bad. Yet in their style, which differs from that of Egyptian sculpture, they hear to one another that degree of resemblance which characterises one school of art; so that it cannot be admitted that the art of sculpture, as preserved on some of the monuments of Ethiopia, descended the Nile, and, reaching its perfection in Egypt, returned, after some thousands of years, to reassume its old character in Meroe. The hieroglyphics of the Ethiopian monuments are still worse than their sculpture : they are ill cut, ill grouped, and some times, through ignorance, inverted or otherwise misplaced. A mistake of this kind may be observed in the signet of Osortasen 1st of Egypt, borrowed by an Ethiopian king in an inscription at Jebel Calefaat. Of the origin and rise of hieroglyphic writing in Egypt, no traces can be found; the oldest discovered monuments exhibiting the art already in perfection. The pyramids of Meroe or Assur, on the antiquity of which Mr Hoskins chiefly relies, are considered by Rüppell to be more recent than those of Jebel el Birkel, and these, according to Lord Prudhoe, were probably erected between 400 B.C. and 400 A.D.

Of the political and commercial pre-eminence of Meroe, there is not, in ancient writers, any evidence whatever. There is no trace of a frequent, much less of a regular and periodical intercourse between that state and Egypt or the Red Sea. The trade and caravan routes of Ethiopia, respecting which Heeren writes so profusely, had hardly any existence before the age of the Ptolemies. Then, as to the power and greatness of Meroe, let us see how they are magnified. Texts are collected relating to Western Africa or Modern Morocco, to Eastern Africa, perhaps as far as Sofala, to Abyssinia, and to Bejat or the Bishárye country; and all these texts involving the vague term, Ethiopia, are applied at once to Meroe. Again, all the kings or queens of Ethiopia ever heard of, from Memnon the son of Aurora, who is said (not by the author of the Iliad) to have been present at the siege of Troy, to Silco, a petty chief of Nubia, who inscribed his own praises, in barbarous Greek, on the temple of Kelabshy in the sixth century of our era, are unhesitatingly exalted into sovereigns of Meroe; and thus the crown of Meroe is made to resemble the fantastical

tiara of Lord Peter in the Tale of a Tub, when in a fit of pride he placed his brother's hats on top of his own.

We now dismiss the Ethiopians, with an admonition not again to appear before us with pretensions at once so lofty and so illfounded, if they do not choose to be treated as impostors. To Mr Hoskins we readily confess that he has made the best of his cause. He has done for it all that could be expected from ingenuity and fervid conviction. The praiseworthy enthusiasm which urged him onward from the gaiety of European cities to the Nubian deserts, powerfully stimulated his imagination; and amidst the imposing ruins now fast sinking into the sands of Ethiopia, he could not help reflecting on the time when Meroe (if she flourished at all) flourished unrivalled, because Egypt had not yet risen from the flood: he forgot at the same time that the apocryphal age on which his attention was riveted, belongs exclusively to the domain of imagination; and is forbidden ground to discreet historical speculation. But while we dissent from the doctrines of Mr Hoskins respecting the pre-eminent antiquity of Meroe, we gratefully acknowledge the pleasure and instruction which we have derived from the perusal of his work.

ART. IV. The Hind and Panther. Part IV. By PHILIP WILLIAMS, Esq. Vinerian Professor of Law in the University of Oxford. 8vo. London: 1835.

THE

'Hind and Panther' of Dryden is a vivid sketch of the positions, offensive and defensive, political and polemical, which the Church of Rome and the Church of England had respectively taken up; and whence they were regarding each other, in a spirit half hostile and half negotiating, at the extraordinary crisis of 1687. It has probably been less read than any poem of equal merit that ever existed. None of the caprices of poetical fashion have turned up to its advantage. From first to last, the public appear, in this respect, to have been quite consistent. The producers and consumers of poetry are alike concerned in enquiring, to what circumstances it is owing that an author of the experience and ability of Dryden should have been exposed to this unlooked-for mortification in one of the principal works which he addressed to the passions of his contemporaries, as well as to the taste and judgment of his countrymen of all succeeding

ages.

At the moment when it appeared, the Hind and Panther' was