derful and shifting scenes, its strange and grand actings and decorations. There are also other senses which in their measure may be gratified. That is a poor mystery of gastronomy, which feeds the eyes and leaves the stomach famished.

If these philosopherlings cannot learn from the constitution and history of their own species what is due to themselves and their kind, let them turn to the animal creation and gather an example. They at least remind us of one class of feathered bipeds. Of all the fowls of the air, the most contemptible is a mongrel heron, known familiarly as the Mudpoke. The mudpoke we take to be your best natural disciple of Grahamism. He feeds little, and that little does him small good. His digestion, such as it is, is rapid indeed, but dry. Lean-visaged and cadaverous, he sits upon a hard branch or rail, and looking heaven in the face with a pharisaical expression of countenance, he drawls a short denunciation in loud treble against high livers and good feeders. His skin hangs about his bones like a coat ill cut. He keeps good hours, it is true-is never out late at night, like the nightingale-is never found at a merry-making-nor high in the air at morn with the lark, singing out his gratitude to the Giver of all good. He feeds solitary on crusts and scraps, drinks but little, and that of the stalest puddle; and is in fact a Graham in feathers, a deliverer of dry lectures from sapless tree-tops; and his only fault is that his digestion is a trifle too lively.

Those who have advocated in public the spare system of diet, have generally been men who had made a previous pilgrimage through the catalogue of maladies, and who, therefore, assume to be the most profoundly skilled in the prescription necessary for each. From having suffered much themselves, they believe that they have an equitable privilege to make others suffer in a like degree. They become skilled in the gnostics of every complaint, and by a sweeping specific, purge the Materia Medica of every malady save that with which they, as patients, had been afflicted. Now, of all sorts of tampering, we think tampering with the human system is the most abominable and pernicious. There is a class of sciolists, and those of whom we have spoken belong to it, who believe that all kinds of experiments are to be ventured upon the human constitution: that it is to be hoisted by pullies and depressed by weights: pushed forward by rotary principles, and pulled back by stop-springs and regulators. They have finally succeeded in looking upon the human frame, much as a neighbouring alliance of stronger powers regard a petty state which is doing well in the world and is ambitious of rising in it. It

must be kept under. It must be fettered by treaties and protocols without number. This river it must not cross: at the foot of that mountain it must pause. An attempt to include yonder forest in its territories would awaken the wrath of its powerful superiors, and they would crush it instantly. Or the body is treated somewhat as a small-spirited carter treats his horse; it must be kept on a handful of oats and made to do a full day's work. Famine has become custodian of the key which unlocks the gate to health, to knowledge, to religious improvement, and the millennium!

Unless checked, this wild Fanaticism will sweep through the land overthrowing every social comfort, every physical enjoyment, every pleasure that springs from sense and refers to sense. Indulgence in the common luxuries of air and water will be soon set down in the Index Expurgatorial as a crime; and punishments and penalties be attached to every gradation of bodily comfort. To feel the pulse throb with joy, or the cheek glow with delight, or the heart beat under the genial influence of spring-time or autumn; in fine, to yield in any way to the generous and universal emotions of humanity, will next be deemed a damnable heresy and perversion of our moral faculties. The adventurous champions of this dietetical Quixotism would ride through the country armed cap-a-pié with argument and denunciation, and, like the moss-troopers of the Scottish border, snatch from the peasant's pot his haunch of mutton or round of beef, and force him to dine on kale and cold-water.

These men know not-they have no dream-of the injury they would inflict on the Poor by depriving them of animal food, and the little (what seems to us at least little) luxury of a healthy and savoury meal.

We bid them, however, not be deluded by reformers who would take away their beef and pork, and confine them to bran-bread and vegetables. Let them eat in God's name, thankfully, temperately indeed, yet sufficiently, of strong meat. They need it for strength to perform their sturdy tasks of daily labour. They enjoy it a thousand times better than the gourmand does his salmi or his patè. Let them enjoy it. God meant they should. And finally, let all sorts and conditions of good Christian people, who, in other respects, will live so rationally and temperately as not to reduce their stomachs to the worn-out diseased condition of a dietetic lecturer's,-let them use their teeth as God meant they should, all their teeth, both the carnivorous and herbivorous ones, in the mastication both of meat and vegetables. Let them eat

flesh spite of Graham; let them eat as much of it (being careful to masticate slowly) as their stomachs crave, spite of Hitchcock's vagaries and prescriptions.

ART. V.-Incidents of Travel in Egypt, Arabia Petræa, and the Holy Land. By an AMERICAN. New-York, Harper & Brothers. 1837. 2 vols. 12mo.

MR. Stephens has here given us two volumes of more than ordinary interest-written with a freshness of manner, and evincing a manliness of feeling, both worthy of high consideration. Although in some respects deficient, the work too presents some points of moment to the geographer, to the antiquarian, and more especially to the theologian. Viewed only as one of a class of writings whose direct tendency is to throw light upon the Book of Books, it has strong claims upon the attention of all who read. While the vast importance of critical and philological research in dissipating the obscurities and determining the exact sense of the Scriptures, cannot be too readily conceded, it may be doubted whether the collateral illustration derivable from records of travel be not deserving at least equal consideration. Certainly, the evidence thus afforded, exerting an enkindling influence upon the popular imagination, and so taking palpable hold upon the popular understanding, will not fail to become in time a most powerful because easily available instrument in the downfal of unbelief. Infidelity itself has often afforded unwilling and unwitting testimony to the truth. It is surprising to find with what unintentional precision both Gibbon and Volney (among others) have used, for the purpose of description, in their accounts of nations and countries, the identical phraseology employed by the inspired writers when foretelling the most improbable events. In this manner scepticism has been made the root of belief, and the providence of the Deity has been no less remarkable in the extent and nature of the means for bringing to light the evidence of his accomplished word, than in working the accomplishment itself.

Of late days, the immense stores of biblical elucidation derivable from the East have been rapidly accumulating in the hands of the student. When the "Observations" of Harmer were given to the public, he had access to few other works than the travels of Chardin, Pococke, Shaw, Maundrell, Pitts,

and D'Arvieux, with perhaps those of Nau and Troilo, and Russell's "Natural History of Aleppo." We have now a vast accession to our knowledge of Oriental regions. Intelligent and observing men, impelled by the various motives of Christian zeal, military adventure, the love of gain, and the love of science, have made their way, often at imminent risk, into every land rendered holy by the words of revelation. Through the medium of the pencil, as well as of the pen, we are even familiarly acquainted with the territories of the Bible. Valuable books of eastern travel are abundant-of which the labours of Niebuhr, Mariti, Volney, Porter, Clarke, Chateaubriand, Burckhardt, Buckingham, Morier, Seetzen, De Lamartine, Laborde, Tournefort, Madden, Maddox, Wilkinson, Arundell, Mangles, Leigh and Hogg, besides those already mentioned, are merely the principal, or the most extensively known. As we have said, however, the work before us is not to be lightly regarded: highly agreeable, interesting, and instructive, in a general view, it also has, in the connexion now adverted to, claims to public attention possessed by no other book of its kind.

In an article prepared for this journal some months ago, we had traced the route of Mr. Stephens with a degree of minuteness not desirable now, when the work has been so long in the hands of the public. At this late day we must be content with saying, briefly, in regard to the earlier portion of the narrative, that, arriving at Alexandria in December, 1835, he thence passed up the Nile as far as the Lower Cataracts. One or two passages from this part of the tour may still be noted for observation. The annexed speculations, in regard to the present city of Alexandria, are well worth attention.

"The present city of Alexandria, even after the dreadful ravages made by the plague last year, is still supposed to contain more than 50,000 inhabitants, and is decidedly growing. It stands outside the Delta in the Libyan Desert, and, as Volney remarks, It is only by the canal which conducts the waters of the Nile into the reservoirs in the time of inundation, that Alexandria can be considered as connected with Egypt.' Founded by the great Alexander, to secure his conquests in the East, being the only safe harbour along the coast of Syria or Africa, and possessing peculiar commercial advantages, it soon grew into a giant city. Fifteen miles in circumference, containing a population of 300,000 citizens and as many slaves, one magnificent street 2000 feet broad ran the whole length of the city, from the Gate of the Sea to the Canopie Gate, commanding a view, at each end, of the shipping, either in the Me diterranean or in the Mareotic Lake, and another of equal length intersected it at right angles; a spacious circus without the Cano

pie Gate, for chariot-races, and on the east a splendid gymnasium, more than six hundred feet in length, with theatres, baths, and all that could make it a desirable residence for a luxurious people. When it fell into the hands of the Saracens, according to the report of the Saracen general to the Calif Omar, it was impossible to enumerate the variety of its riches and beauties;' and it is said to 'have contained four thousand palaces, four thousand baths, four hundred theatres or public edifices, twelve thousand shops, and forty thousand tributary Jews.' From that time, like every thing else which falls in the hands of the Mussulman, it has been going to ruin, and the discovery of the passage to India by the Cape of Good Hope gave the death-blow to its commercial greatness. At present it stands a phenomenon in the history of a Turkish dominion. It appears once more to be raising its head from the dust. It remains to be seen whether this rise is the legitimate and permanent effect of a wise and politic government, combined with natural advantages, or whether the pacha is not forcing it to an unnatural elevation, at the expense, if not upon the ruins, of the rest of Egypt. It is almost presumptuous, on the threshold of my entrance into Egypt, to speculate upon the future condition of this interesting country; but it is clear that the pacha is determined to build up the city of Alexandria if he can: his fleet is here, his army, his arsenal, and his forts are here; and he has forced and centred here a commerce that was before divided between several places. Rosetta has lost more than two thirds of its population. Damietta has become a mere nothing, and even Cairo the Grand has become tributary to what is called the regenerated city." Vol. I. pp. 21, 22.

We see no presumption in this attempt to speculate upon the future condition of Egypt. Its destinies are matter for the attentive consideration of every reader of the Bible. No words can be more definitive, more utterly free from ambiguity, than the prophecies concerning this region. No events could be more wonderful in their nature, nor more impossible to have been foreseen by the eye of man, than the events foretold concerning it. With the earliest ages of the world its line of monarchs began, and the annihilation of the entire dynasty was predicted during the zenith of that dynasty's power. One of the most lucid of the biblical commentators has justly observed that the very attempt once made by infidels to show, from the recorded number of its monarchs and the duration of their reigns, that Egypt was a kingdom previous to the Mosaic era of the deluge, places in the most striking view the extraordinary character of the prophecies regarding it. During two thousand years prior to these predictions Egypt had never been without a prince of its own; and how oppressive was its tyranny over Judea and the neighbouring nations!