cally alluded to in " the burden of Egypt," denounced in the name of the Lord by the prophet Isaiah.

The burden of Egypt. Behold, the LORD rideth upon a swift cloud, and shall come into Egypt; and the idols of Egypt shall be moved at his presence, and the heart of Egypt shall melt in the midst of it. And I will set the Egyptians against the Egyptians: and they shall fight every one against his brother, and every one against his neighbour; city against city, and kingdom against kingdom. And the spirit of Egypt shall fail in the midst thereof; and I will destroy the counsel thereof: and they shall seek to the idols, and to the charmers, and to them that have familiar spirits, and to the wizards. And the Egyptians will I give over into the hand of a cruel lord; and a fierce king shall rule over them, saith the Lord, the LORD of hosts. And the waters shall fail from the sea, and the river shall be wasted and dried up. And they shall turn the rivers far away, and the brooks of defence shall be emptied and dried up: the reeds and flags shall wither. The paper-reeds by the brooks, by the mouth of the brooks, and everything sown by the brooks, shall wither, be driven away, and be no more. The fishers also shall mourn, and all they that cast angle into the brooks shall lament, and they that spread nets upon the waters shall languish. Moreover, they that work in fine flax, and they that weave net-works, shall be confounded. And they shall be broken in the purposes thereof, all that make sluices and ponds for fish. Isa. xix. 1-10.

The fourth caste seems to have consisted, principally, of the various artisans and labourers; but as we shall have a more fit occasion to enter into details concerning these, when we come to speak of the state of the arts in Egypt, we dismiss them here with this notice; as we may also that class of unfortunates who, for their crimes or other causes, were degraded below caste, and reduced to the servile condition and unmitigated toil of the foreign captives taken in war. Of the latter, however, we may just observe, that

the monuments give decisive records of the existence of these outcasts; and thus afford an additional illustration of two or three passages of Sacred Scripture. The "mixed multitude," (or great rabble, 7) that went up with the escaping Israelites,* were doubtless their companions in bondage, native Egyptians who had no possessions, no rights, nothing to forsake but their toils and stripes, and who gladly availed themselves of the opportunity of throwing off the yoke. When fairly out of the land, it was this same "mixed multitude" that "fell a lusting" after the food of Egypt,† and began the discontent in the Hebrew camp that was so dishonouring to God, and so fatal to themselves. That these Egyptians who accompanied the tribes were indeed the poorest and meanest, we have additional evidence from the manner in which they are spoken of in the solemn covenant which was renewed at the close of the desert-wandering;—" thy stranger that is in thy camp, from the hewer of thy wood to the drawer of thy water." These expressions are well known to have been proverbial of the most menial and laborious offices, those of the very lowest grade in society; and are used in describing the slavery to which the Gibeonites afterwards were reduced, when their lives were spared on account of the fraudulent compact into which the princes of Israel had been betrayed with them. How very forcible, because so utterly beyond suspicion of contrivance, are such confirmations of historical verity as these!

* Exod. xii. 38.

+ Numb. xi. 4.

Deut. xxix. 11.

MANNERS OF PRIVATE LIFE.

THE real condition of a people, as regards their progress in civilisation, refinement, and comfort, is to be judged from their private life. There may be much pomp and display, much magnificence, and even a high degree of skill in many of the arts, existing among a nation scarcely removed from a semi-barbarous state. If ingenuity, and taste, and artistic skill are devoted to the pleasing of a few, to the embellishment of royal courts or princely mansions, they will necessarily remain stunted in their own growth, and ineffective in their results. The aristocracy of a nation may be familiar with splendour and luxury, while the great mass of the people are sunk in unmitigated squalor and brutish ignorance. Palaces, temples, votive columns, and triumphal arches may abound in a city, where the private dwellings of the citizens are for the most part sordid hovels, ill-lighted, worse ventilated, and almost destitute of all attention to convenience, health, or comfort.

Such was not the condition of the Egyptian people under the early Pharaohs. The abundant details of domestic manners which the sepulchral paintings have preserved to us, make it manifest that the various arts which were cultivated with so much

success, depended for their support on the patronage of the many, not of the few. Proof of this we shall discover as we proceed with this investigation it is sufficient here to allude to but one example: the constant recurrence of cheap imitations of costly manufactures. Imitations of gems in coloured pastes and glasses; furniture of common wood, grained and painted to resemble that which was foreign and costly; vessels of common ware counterfeiting porcelain, enabled a purchaser of limited means to gratify the desire, so common in all ages, of maintaining a reputation for gentility and fashion. "Such inventions and successful endeavours to imitate costly ornaments by humbler materials, not only show the progress of art among the Egyptians, but strongly argue the great advancement they had made in the customs of civilised life; since it is certain that, until society has arrived at a high degree of luxury and refinement, artificial wants of this nature are not created, and the lower classes do not yet feel the desire of imitating their wealthier superiors, in the adoption of objects dependent on taste or accidental caprice."*

The houses of the Egyptians, except those of the poorest classes, seem to have been roomy and commodious; extending over a considerable space, and consisting of from one to four, or even five † stories above the ground floor. In the cities and towns they were built with attention to regularity and unity of appearance; nor was there that frequent contrast of

mansions and hovels that so offends the eye in most oriental cities. They were, for the most part, built of sun-dried bricks, which in a climate where rain so rarely falls, possessed all the permanence and stability requisite; while in ancient Babylon, the frequent recurrence of rain required that the bricks used should be "burnt throughly,"* as we accordingly find them.

The following representation of a gentleman's mansion will greatly aid us in understanding the mode in which an Egyptian house was ordinarily laid out; premising, however, that the artist has mingled the elevation with the ground-plan, and that it is only the basement of the building, or the ground floor that is depicted: of the stories that surmounted this we are left in ignorance, as to their number, subdivision, and arrangement.

At A on the side which fronted the street is the principal entrance, beneath a portico, the columns of which are adorned with little streamers or banners. In some instances (not in this), a flight of four or five broad steps led up to the door. On each side of the portico, a smaller door (a, a,) leading into the same hall, was probably used by servants, or visitors of humble pretensions. No window, at least on this floor, is represented as looking into the street; beside the three doors, the front presented nothing but a dead wall, relieved by a row of trees growing in ornamental pots, or else surrounded by a low wall to preserve them from injury. The principal door under the portico, as well as the two side doors, led

* Gen. xi. 3.