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shocked to think how the labours of my contemporaries had been cleared from the face of the earth, and themselves forgotten. "What changes!'

"The bridges? Oh yes, they are gone some time ago. We thought the Thames was unwholesome, so we arched the whole of it over-indeed we did not want it when once we had discovered the means of sailing in the air-but I believe I must leave you; I ordered my dinner to be ready at one; I live in Madeira. Good day.'

He left me, and as I sat in the sunshine in that beautiful London, my heart was so oppressed with the thought of my despised generation, all its toils, so many and great, useless to those who came after it-all its inventions superseded or forgotten-all its struggles made light of—that I covered my face with my hands, and gave way to a passion of tears. I looked back to the stormy wind and rain during which I had stepped out of my century. I thought they were more congenial to me than this constant sunshine; and though these great changes were almost all for the better, I shrank from them with a painful sense of desolateness and isolation.

“I heard a woman's voice speaking close to me, and asking why I wept? I looked up and saw a young mother with an infant in her arms; her face was so candid and kind that I told her my sorrow for all these changes, and the sweeping away of every thing belonging to my century; then I added—' Nevertheless, I perceive that though all else may have changed, no change has come over the tenderness of woman, and her kind compassion.'

"She looked surprised, but did not answer. She had seated herself near me on the grass, and while I remained moody and miserable, she suddenly began to sing to me and to her child, and soothe our common humanity with the music of the twentieth century.

"The city (he saith) is fairer far

Than in the days of old,

It gleams in the light all crimson bright
With shifting glimmers of gold-
Where be the homes my fathers built
The houses where they prayed;

E

I see not in the sod the paths they trod
Nor the stones my fathers laid.

On the city they raised, the works they reared
Has passed the levelling tide,

My fathers lie low, and their sons outgrow
The bounds of their skill and pride.

Sweeping, sweeping, Change,
It plays with man's endeavour,
To day those names are strange,
Carved yesterday to last for ever." "

"The city (I say) lieth far away

Whereto no change may come,

It hath rays many-fold of crimson and gold,
But I cannot count their sum-

They know no change, the many who range
By its shores; forboding not

Either waning away of a changeful day,

Or changing of life or lot

They dream no more on earth's changing face,
Or mutable wind and sea,-

Thou that art changeless, grant me a place

In that far city with Thee!

There record my name,

Forget, forget, me never,

Thou that art still the same,

Yesterday, to day, and for ever.'"

"I was going to tell you, Orris, how I got back to my own century, and what I thought of it, but there is not time. Another day perhaps I shall have more leisure; in the mean while, I remain, your affectionate cousin,

"E. D."

THE WRITTEN MOUNTAINS OF SINAI.

(From Kitto's Daily Bible Illustrations.)

LET us to-day return to the passage in which Job desires for his words some enduring monument. He says, "Oh, that my words were now written. Oh, that they were printed in a book! That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever!”—(Job xix. 24.)

In an antiquarian point of view, this is a deeply interesting passage, being the earliest existing reference to the most ancient modes of writing-not to one of them, but to several, to all, in fact, that appear to have been known at the time this book was written.

The strange blunder of the translators about printing in a book, is calculated to provoke a smile, and is on that ground alone censurable. We knew a man by no means ill-informed or unintelligent, who contended from this that printing was but the revival of an ancient invention known in the time of Job, with the only alternative that else Job predicted the invention, and declared his conviction that his words would hereafter be printed in a book—" and this has really come to pass," he triumphantly added, deeming that his acumen had added one more to the long list of fulfilled prophecies. This carelessness is the less excusable, as the earlier versions are free from this fault. In them we have, "O that they were put in a boke;" or, "O that they were written in a booke." . Still there might be something to mislead in the words "written" and "book"-not that they are absolutely incorrect, but that they have acquired more restricted signification than they anciently possessed. Not, however, to enter into questions as to the meanings of words, we shall give the translation which seems to us preferable

"O that my words were now recorded!

O that they were engraven on a tablet!
With an iron graver upon lead;

That they were graven in a rock for ever."

The careful reader will here find four ideas, rising to a climax in the grandest and most durable form of writing.

Job first expresses a wish that his words were simply written down or recorded in the ordinary mode without specifying any. The patriarch then goes on to engraving or writing on tablets. These tablets may have been of wood, earthenware, or bone. Waxen tablets we take to be of a later age, not well suited to a warm climate, and never used but for temporary memoranda, like our slates. We mention bone, in the recollection that the shoulder blades of sheep were, in ancient times, and especially among pastoral tribes, the representatives of our ivory tablets.

Then Job comes to the process of writing on tablets of soft metal with a pen or stylus of harder metal—with a pen of iron on tablets of lead. Metal tablets for the purpose of writing, were composed of plates of lead, copper, brass, and other metals. These, as also tablets of wood, mentioned before, were either single; or frequently from two to five leaves were done up into a sort of book, something like our slate books. Lead, from its comparative cheapness and softness, and from the facility of beating out or melting down writing no longer useful, was much used, and was probably first employed for this purpose, though the prominent mention of it by Job does not imply that no other metals were used. It is stated by Pliny that sheets of lead were still in his time used for important public documents. A zealous antiquary of the seventeenth century, Montfaucon, states that he purchased in 1699, at Rome, an ancient book entirely composed of lead. It was about four inches long and three inches wide: and not only were the two pieces that formed the cover and the leaves, six in number, of lead, but also the pin inserted through the rings to hold the leaves together, as well as the hinges and the nails.

He also gives from Father Bonanni's Museum Kircherianum, the representation and description of another leaden book, which had been taken from an ancient tomb, containing seven leaves inscribed with Greek, Hebrew, Etruscan, and Latin characters all of which are declared (perhaps too summarily) to have been unintelligible. Both these books are probably not older than the early ages of the Christian era; but they adequately represent a custom of more ancient date.

Brass, as a more durable metal, was used for incriptions designed to last the longest; such as laws, treaties, and alliances. These were, however, usually written on large tablets of the metal. The ornamental brasses in our own churches, many of which are still in good preservation, though many centuries old, illustrate this still more ancient use of tablets of brass. The stylus or pen for writing on metal tablets was sometimes tipped with a diamond; a circumstance to which there is an allusion in Jer. xvii. 1.

It was certainly a grand idea for man to think of committing to the living rock, and of thus giving a magnificent permanency

to the record of his history and his thoughts. There are rocks presenting cliffs so smooth, with stone of texture so soft, as absolutely to tempt the idle saunterer to write or to scrawl unmeaning figures on them. In time this would suggest the desirableness of inscribing harder rocks with memorials designed to last; and where a smooth surface was not naturally presented, the face of the rock would be levelled for the purpose.

Many such monuments of the most ancient date have been found in various countries, but none more extensive or remarkable than those in the Written Mountains of Sinai, which also derive especial interest from the locality in which they are found, so memorable in Jewish history, and not so remote from the place of Job's abode-some, indeed, making it much nearer than we do but that he might have known of them had they then been thus sculptured. It is not, however, likely that they were, though this passage shows that his view was directed to such monuments.

These inscriptions are found in the neighbourhood of Mount Sinai; or, to speak more accurately, in the hills and valleys which, branching out from its roots, run towards the north-west to the vicinity of the eastern shore of the Gulf of Suez: insomuch that travellers now-a-days, from the monastery of Mount Sinai to the town of Suez, whatever route they take (for there are many) will see these inscriptions upon the rocks of most of the valleys through which they pass, to within half a day's journey, or a little more, of the coast. Besides these localities, similar inscriptions are met with, and these in great numbers, on Mount Serbal, lying to the south of the above-mentioned routes; as also, but more rarely, in some valleys to the south of Mount Serbal itself. But the valley which, byond all the rest, claims especial notice, is that which stretches from the neighbourhood of the eastern shore of the Gulf of Suez for the space of three hours' journey in a southern direction. Here, to the left of the road, the traveller finds a chain of steep sandstone rocks, perpendicular as walls, which afford shelter at mid-day, and in the afternoon, from the burning rays of the sun. These, beyond all besides, contain a vast multitude of tolerably well preserved inscriptions, whence this valley has obtained the name of Wady Mokatteb, or the Written Valley.

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