selected from some dissenting psalm-book; but, even as it was, the aggregate of voices made up a most impressive harmony. The preacher subsequently referred to this when speaking of the voice of many waters, and the voice of a great thunder, and the voice of harpers harping with their harps,' as also to his own sensations at different times when under such influences; and indeed he seemed to well understand what modern divines have mostly yet to learn, that an example from their own experience, or drawn from the present circumstances of their audience, is worth a thousand metaphors from earth, and sea, and sky. Boanerges never missed an illustration because of its homeliness, and, leaving abstract virtues and vices to abstract men and women, addressed himself to folks of flesh and blood. 'When I say mammon, I don't mean idle dukes or greedy merchant-princes; my small adulterating shopkeeper, I mean you.' And again, upon the importance of seeming trifles: There is many a man who will lose a thousand pounds without a murmur, and yet blaspheme about a shirt-button.' In the prayer before the sermon, he touched upon the subjects at present interesting the national mind, expressing in a brief, rough manner, too, the healthy popular opinion upon most things. For the country, for the Queen, he prayed; for the confounding of despots, for the extinction of slavery, and for peace; and for the high court of parliament, that it may do this coming session something, and not nothing, and that it may be vouchsafed, if it be but a little, wisdom. Before this prayer, he gave a short exposition of the hundred and third psalm, more remarkable for eloquence than learning, in which he rejected, somewhat violently, the eagle's renewal of its youth as a wicked fable, and limited the parallel to the ordinary process of moulting; then followed more singing, and then the sermon, which was taken from the Revelations. It is not of course my purpose to repeat it in this Journal, or in any way to deprive the Penny Pulpit of its lawful prey; my only intention has been, and is, to give a brief impartial account of the public preaching of a very remarkable man. Now that I have been to hear him, and since scarcely any of my acquaintance have had the same opportunity, I feel that there is something to be said for Boanerges as well as against him. He seems to me to be thoroughly in earnest, to have great command of language, and to know his way to the feelings of his congregation; at all events, he knows their weaknesses, and attacks them boldly, face to face, without any masked batteries whatever; while that great voice of his is rolling over their heads, there is not a sound to interrupt or weaken it; and when he pauses to refresh himself at his glass of water, a tempest of coughing and nose-blowing proclaims at once the willing patience and real attention of his hearers. I know many wittier men than Boanerges, and I know one or two as eloquent, but I know none who could have preached such passages as this man did without a trace of flippant profanity, and with all appearance of religious earnestness: "The name that was written upon the foreheads of the saints -what was it? B for Baptist, do you imagine, my friend Bigot yonder? W for Wesleyan? C for Calvinist? E, perhaps, for the establishment? It does not say so here. If you asked of the angel who keeps the gates of paradise whether there are any Baptists withinside, he'd shake his head. Any Calvinists?-he would not so much as look at you. Any of the establishment?-he'd answer: "Nothing of the sort." They would all be there indeed, perhaps, my friends, but not in miserable sects and parties: they would be all Christians-saints.' There were many such-I was almost going to write 'hits-striking illustrations during this sermon, the whole of which was upon that 'very disagreeable but true doctrine, my friends

|—although indeed I am none of your strait-gate and narrow-way people-election.'

Finally, if I had to answer that before-mentioned tract called Why is Boanerges Popular?' I should answer, that he is so mainly because he combines real eloquence with what Luthier possessed, and Latimer Boanerges, perhaps does possess earnest religious possessed, and which no modern preacher, except humour.

PICTURE-WRITING OF EGYPT.

To commemorate events by tracing a representation of them on wood or stone is a natural expedient among rude people, such as the North-American Indians, who still practise it. This seems to have been the origin of the famous hieroglyphics of Egypt, which, in their first form, were simply a kind of picture-writing, and of general application, notwithstanding that the name literally, sacred sculpture-implies an exclusively religious character. We can readily imagine, however, that to carve out the whole particulars of an event would be found troublesome, and that a short-hand process would be early called for. Apparently the first step would be to come to conventional signs. For example, instead of representing a battle by a combination of the pictures of men, horses, and warlike instruments, men found that they might depict it by two swords crossed; or they might indicate a victory by the head of the conquered laid at the feet of the conqueror. And besides these visible objects, men would soon desire to represent invisible things: they might, for example, in reckoning time, use the figure of the moon to designate a month. By and by, also, they would proceed to express abstract ideas; in which department they might, for instance, represent strength or power by the head and neck of a bull. This mode of conveying ideas, either by direct pictures, or by obvious conventional signs, is plainly suited for a people in the first stages of civilisation; but, as they advance, it becomes necessary to extend still further their writing, or communication of ideas by signs. The qualities of objects, and the passions and sentiments of living creatures, having no visible archetypes in nature, would, in the progress of time, be expressed by arbitrary marks or characters, which, being applied to the spoken language, would become the representatives of words, or portions of words, as among the Chinese; and, finally, some of these known characters would be appropriated to represent the elementary sounds of the spoken language-that is, an alphabet would be invented and introduced. The Egyptians, who were the most ancient of civilised nations, early arrived at this point-so early as the days of Moses, indeed, they seem to have attained that maximum of learning at which nations generally remain stationary for a longer or shorter period.

The true meaning of hieroglyphic writing was first unfolded by the ingenious labours of our own countryman, Dr Thomas Young, and the distinguished French archæologist, Champollion, near the beginning of the present century. But before proceeding to give a sketch of the art, as elucidated by them in modern times, it will be interesting to inquire what light was thrown on the subject by ancient writers. On this point, we might have expected to find in the Father of History some valuable information; yet, while the writings of Herodotus furnish us with ample details of the laws, manners, and customs, topography and buildings of ancient Egypt, it is to be regretted that he has given only a few scanty notices of the literature and language, and, as included in this, the method of writing among the Egyptians. He says nothing of their picture-writing, but merely mentions that they had two kinds of characters-sacred and popular-without leading us to suppose that these had any near connection.

Diodorus Siculus is the first in whose writings we find anything of the kind of any consequence. He lived in the first century before the Christian era; and informs us that the hieroglyphic art was confined to the priests, and that they communicated it only to their own children; but he makes no allusion to that phonetic character which recent investigation has shewn to be one of its essential principles. He tells us that all kinds of animals, and of instruments, especially those of the carpenter, were used to express ideas; but modern discovery has shewn that he is wrong in many of the examples he has given. An ancient father of the church, Clemens of Alexandria, who lived at the end of the second century, has given us, in his Stromata, or book of miscellanies, a description of the system in the following words: 'Those who are educated among the Egyptians, learn first of all the method of Egyptian writing called epistolographic; secondly, the hieratic, which the sacred scribes employ; and, lastly, the most complete kind, the hieroglyphic. Of these, one sort is the common way of writing, and another is symbolic.' Of the symbolic he describes three kinds: One,' says he, 'represents objects by imitation; another expresses them tropically; the third suggests them by certain allegorical enigmas.' This account of the Alexandrian presbyter has been shewn by modern discovery to be wonderfully accurate. Apuleius, a contemporary author, has also written on this subject; but his descriptions are confused and unsatisfactory. Porphyry, a writer of the third century, has been more successful, and has given an account of hieroglyphics somewhat similar to that of Clemens; but the fullest notice on the subject by any ancient author is that of Horapollo, a Greek grammarian of the fifth century, born in Egypt. His work, originally composed in the Egyptian language, has come down to us in a Greek translation. It is written specially on hieroglyphics, but is full of errors, and therefore, like the statements of Diodorus, calculated to mislead the student. Egyptian hieroglyphics seem to have attracted little or no notice from writers of the middle and later ages; and the first attempt to decipher them in modern times was by De Guignes, who, in the Memoirs of the Academy, 1759, declared that he 'thought he had perceived alphabetic characters among thema guess, however, which led to nothing. The discovery of the Rosetta stone at the beginning of the present century, was, as will be afterwards explained, the means of unravelling that mysterious kind of writing, the signification of which had lain concealed from mankind for thousands of years.

M. Champollion, who devoted upwards of twenty years to the study of Egyptian hieroglyphics, to prosecute which he went with an expedition of learned men to Egypt in 1828, at the expense of the French king, has shewn that, when reduced to a system, they consist of three kinds of characters or signs: 1. Figurative signs, or direct images of the things indicated; 2. Symbolic signs; and 3. Phonetic, or those expressive of sound. As all visible objects naturally come within the scope of hieroglyphic characters, it might be supposed there would be almost no end of them; but they appear to have been limited, for the whole number observed by Champollion, after the most diligent and minute investigation, was about 800 real figures of natural objects, and about sixty more of geometric figures and fantastic forms.

I. Figurative. This class is also sometimes called pure hieroglyphics, and is subdivided by Champollion into 1. Figurative proper; 2. Figurative conventional; and 3. Figurative abridged. All direct images of things signified, as sun, moon, star, are examples of the first kind. As an instance of the second kind, may be mentioned a section of a ceiling, to represent the sky or firmament a very obvious symbol, though not a direct one. An example of the third kind is when only a part

of the object intended to be represented was given, as the plan of a house for the house itself.

II. Symbolical.-Abstract ideas, having no visible objects by which they can be directly represented, were expressed by images used symbolically. Thus, two arms stretched up towards heaven, expressed the word offering; the wind is signified by a hawk on the wing; writing, by a reed and an inkstand, &c. It is to these symbolical figures that ancient writers, when speaking of hieroglyphics, have generally alluded. They are naturally more difficult of interpretation than direct images; and as a mistaken notion prevailed that all the | figures in Egyptian monuments were symbolical, this error occasioned for ages among the learned the most extravagant and contradictory interpretations, which were not got rid of till the researches of Young and Champollion cleared away the difficulty. It may be noticed, in passing, that hieroglyphics of the symbolical kind are also used among Christians: for instance, a triangle in a circle is employed to represent the Trinity in unity; and sometimes an eye is introduced in the centre, in allusion to the divine omniscience. Again, an anchor is used as emblematical of a Christian's hope and constancy; and the figure of a cock for Christian vigilance.

III. Phonetic.-The two kinds of hieroglyphic signs already described were not sufficient to express the various ideas of so highly civilised a people as the Egyptians, and this no doubt led to the invention of the third class, called phonetic, or those expressive of sounds, the principle of whose construction is as follows: The figures of certain objects were used to represent the initial sounds or letters of the words standing for those objects in the Egyptian or Coptic. For instance, in that language ahom is an eagle, and the figure of an eagle is therefore made to stand for the initial letter a; berbe is a censer, and so the figure of a censer stands for b; jal is a swallow, and the figure of that bird stands for j; and so on of other words, till an alphabet is formed. But as the figure of every object which began with a in the Coptic might stand for that letter, it might be supposed that this principle would lead to endless confusion and difficulty; and so it would, had the signs not been limited. But they are really restricted, eighteen or nineteen being the largest number of images assigned to any one letter, while few have more than five or six, and some only one or two.

The merit of the discovery of the phonetic alphabet has been by some ascribed to Champollion; but it has been proved by good authority, as will afterwards appear, that Dr Young was, beyond all dispute, the original discoverer, so long ago as the year 1818. Young, unfortunately, did not follow out his inquiries in that direction, his attention being chiefly confined to another department of the art, the enchorial method; but his discovery may be regarded as the foundation of Champollion's future success in this province. There is no doubt that the enterprising Frenchman had long before this occupied himself with the study of hieroglyphics; and he afterwards declared in his great work, Précis du Système Hieroglyphique, that this phonetic alphabet is the true key of the whole hieroglyphical system;' and that 'all hieroglyphical legends and inscriptions are composed principally of signs purely alphabetical.' This may be so; yet it is a fact, that all the sorts of characters, figurative, symbolical, and phonetic, are used together. It might have been supposed that such a complication would have been a most perplexing obstacle to the deciphering of hieroglyphic monuments; yet Champollion and others acquired great skill in interpreting what had been so mysterious for thousands of years, and could read most of them with comparative ease.

There is another important distinction to be attended to in this subject. The ordinary style of hieroglyphics found represented in bass-reliefs and paintings on the

walls of public buildings, and descriptive of historical scenes and civil and religious ceremonies, were no doubt intelligible to all well-educated Egyptians; but there was another kind discoverable in the interior of their temples and sepulchres, which was of a more enigmatical character, spoke a language more strictly ideographical and mysterious, and formed an allegorical representation of the religious and philosophical doctrines of the Egyptians. Like the esoteric doctrines of the ancient philosophers, none but the initiated were suffered to inquire into them-the key to them was kept exclusively in the hands of the priests. For this reason, this department of hieroglyphics was termed hieratic, indicating that it belonged more peculiarly, if not exclusively, to the priesthood. It is a sort of hieroglyphical stenography, or short-hand writing, in which the form of the signs is considerably abridged. Various existing manuscripts exhibit this species of hieroglyphic writing, belonging to the Pharaonic, Greek, and Roman epochs of Egyptian history; and it seems to have been confined to the transcription of texts and inscriptions connected with religious matters. It is distinguished from that other mode of writing already alluded to, the enchorial, so called by Dr Young from its being of peculiar use in that country, but termed by Champollion demotic, because it comprehended the characters or style of writing used by the common people. It has also been denominated epistolographic, from its fitness for letterwriting. It is almost entirely alphabetical, containing few symbolic signs, and scarcely any direct figures, and these so much simplified as to lose nearly all resemblance to the objects expressed. It formed a sort of running-hand; and from its being written in the direction from right to left, it resembles the writing of the Hebrew and other oriental tongues.

But we come now to a most interesting part of this subject that remarkable discovery of the Rosetta stone, by which the interpretation of hieroglyphics was first placed on a true and solid foundation. It has been said, that if the invention of fluxions by Newton, and of the differential calculus by Leibnitz, is considered as the most brilliant proof of the calculating and abstractive power of the human intellect, the deciphering of hieroglyphics, which for thousands of years lay before us a sealed book, may well be called the master-piece of criticism. When the French took possession of Lower Egypt in 1798, it was part of the policy of that remarkable man who then ruled their destinies, and who had, a short time before, made that memorable declaration to the Institute of France"The true conquests, the only ones which do not cause a tear, are those which are gained over ignorance' it was part of Napoleon's policy to associate with his army a company of literati, for the purpose of investigating the geography, natural history, and antiquities of that once famous land, the nurse of learning and civilisation-an inquiry in which no one seemed to take a greater interest than their distinguished commander himself. It was not, however, in the course of these learned investigations that the discovery alluded to was made; it originated purely in an accident; it was one of those coincidences, undesigned by man, by which often good is brought out of evil; for, in this case, what was designed for deadly war, tended to the enlargement of man's knowledge in the arts of peace.

While the French troops were excavating for the foundations of a fort to be erected at Rosetta, a town near the mouth of the Nile, they dug up a large block of basalt, containing an inscription in three compartments, and each bearing a distinct character. When the valour of Abercromby wrested Egypt from the republican yoke, by the battle of Alexandria in March 1801, it is curious to remark what was the fate of this stone. The opposite parties, without being aware of

its value, raised a contention about it that seemed prophetic of its future importance, and some account of which deserves a short notice. An end being put to the war by the surrender of Alexandria in the end of August, it was proposed that the collections of antiquities which had been made by the French savans should be considered as public property, and be given up to the British; but in the discussion that ensued, Menou, the French commander, asserted that they were private property; and he had selected the Rosetta stone for himself, and had caused it to be carefully packed up. After much dispute, however, the monuments and manuscripts were surrendered to Lord Hutchinson, the British commander, and the insects and other animals were ceded to the French, who, in anger, tore the covering from the Rosetta stone, and threw it down upon its face. It was at length safely embarked on board a captured frigate, along with many other valuable relics, carried to England in February 1802, and, by order of George III., deposited in the British Museum, where it may be seen in the Egyptian Saloon, No. 24.

This stone was found, on examination, to record a decree in honour of Ptolemy Epiphanes; and the lowermost division, which is inscribed in Greek, concludes with these words: "This decree shall be engraven on a hard stone, in sacred, enchorial, and Greek characters.' So that it exhibits a specimen of hieroglyphics with a double translation, first in enchorial or common letters of the country, and second in Greek. The Society of Antiquaries caused a fac-simile of the inscription to be distributed among the learned in Europe and America. Porson in England, and Heyne in Germany, the two greatest Greek scholars of the age, furnished a version of the Greek; but this, however arduous a task it may have been, owing to the mutilated condition of the stone, was not the greatest difficulty. Of the first and second inscriptions, the hieroglyphic and enchorial, not a single character was then known, and therefore no comparison could, at first, be instituted between them and the Greek. The distinguished oriental scholar, M. Silvestre de Sacy of Paris, applied himself to decipher the enchorial, and found there two groups of characters in situations corresponding with the words Alexander and Alexandria in the Greek compartment, and which were therefore supposed by him to represent these names; but he could not get beyond this, and abandoned the attempt as hopeless. Mr Akerblad, an attaché of the Swedish embassy at Paris, entered on the investigation at the point where De Sacy had left off, and demonstrated what the other had only conjectured-namely, that the enchorial text contained Greek proper names, written in Egyptian or Coptic characters. He made some approaches towards the construction of an alphabet; but he failed in completing one from two causes: first, from supposing that the whole of the inscription was alphabetical; and, secondly, from the error of expecting to find all the vowels in the Egyptian words, in place of assimilating these with the Hebrew, Arabic, and other oriental languages, in which the vowels are mostly left out.

In 1814, Dr Thomas Young, a native of Somersetshire, and foreign secretary of the Royal Society, entered on the work which had baffled his predecessors. He began with the enchorial inscription; and, with the assistance of Akerblad's 'conjectural' alphabet, and by a careful comparison of the different parts with the Greek text, he was, after the labour of some months, enabled to form a translation, which he gave to the public in the Archæologia in 1815; and four years afterwards, he produced, in the article' Egypt,' in the supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica, an enlarged digest of his researches, which has been pronounced to be the greatest effort of scholarship and

ingenuity of which modern literature can boast.' The result of Dr Young's labours was to demonstrate that, both in the hieroglyphic and in the enchorial texts of the Rosetta stone, certain characters were employed phonetically, or to represent sounds. He thus exhibited a phonetic alphabet, comparatively so extensive, that few additions of any value have since been made to it; and, by laying the foundation of a hieroglyphical one, he led the way to the true knowledge of that hitherto mysterious mode of writing.

Champollion laboured in the same field; and the priority of discovery between him and Dr Young has been much disputed. For a full and fair statement of the case, the reader is referred to the Edinburgh Review for December 1826, in which the writer comes to the conclusion, that 'Dr Young has the exclusive merit of having solved an enigma, which had for centuries baffled all the resources of the learned.' This, however, does not detract from the great merit of Champollion, in rearing up, by his unwearied labours and perseverance, an enlarged superstructure on the foundation laid by Dr Young.

The Rosetta stone contains only the last fourteen lines of the hieroglyphic text, and that, too, in a mutilated state; and the part of the Greek text which corresponds to these lines is, unfortunately, all defaced with the exception of one word; so that any extensive comparison between these two inscriptions is precluded. But it was the good-fortune of Champollion to discover another monument calculated to throw light on the subject in Philæ, an island of the Nile, once famous for its religious importance under the Pharaohs, and still remarkable for the number of its ruins. This monument is an obelisk with a hieroglyphic inscription upon it, which rested on a base bearing a Greek inscription. By means of these, he was enabled to form a hieroglyphic alphabet, with which he proceeded to decipher the proper names inscribed on the temples and other buildings of Egypt; and at length, in 1824, he published his great work, already alluded to, Précis, &c.; a most valuable production, which not only gives a clear view of the results previously obtained by himself and others, but contains a great variety of new matter. By a series of readings indicating profound scholarship, he has shewn that there is a phonetic alphabet applicable to the hieroglyphical legends of every epoch of Egyptian history; that this phonetic alphabet, as has been already mentioned, is the true key of the whole hieroglyphic system; and that all inscriptions in hieroglyphics are composed principally of signs purely alphabetical. He has traced these phonetic signs from the death of the Roman emperor Antoninus Pius, 161 A. D., up to the conquest of Alexander the Great, in 332 B.C.; again, from Alexander's time to the Persian conquest by Cambyses, 525 B.C.; and thence through the different Egyptian dynasties as far back as to the beginning of the eighteenth, about the year 1874 before the Christian era. He has thus been enabled to verify the chronology of Manetho as preserved by Josephus, which had been previously treated with neglect, and has thereby shed a strong light on a portion of ancient history which, before his time, was enveloped in obscurity and doubt.

An attempt has since been made by two French writers-M. Klaproth and M. Dujardin-to invalidate the discoveries and the system of Young and Champollion; but on the whole, they have not succeeded in establishing any serious objection. More recently, the Rev. C. Forster has appeared to dispute their system. He has endeavoured to shew that hieroglyphic writing is entirely phonetic, and that the pictorial figures are to be taken merely as illustrations; but others, who have well considered the subject, think that this doctrine is refuted by certain inscriptions published by the learned Egyptian scholar, Mr Birch, so lately as 1853. It is

possible that the results of the great discoveries of Young and Champollion, in deciphering the Egyptian hieroglyphics, are not perfectly satisfactory, and not yet complete; but though the speculations of Forster are highly ingenious, and in some respects valuable, they have failed to undermine the general principles of the system of those two learned hierogrammatists.

CATHERINE OF WÜRTEMBERG:

ROYAL LIFE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

AN act of graceful homage has recently been paid to the memory of Catherine of Würtemberg, the second wife of Prince Jerome Bonaparte, and the mother of Prince Napoleon, who has of late attracted so much attention in the European world. The heart of the ex-queen of Westphalia, enclosed in an urn, has been deposited in the tomb of the Emperor Napoleon at the Invalides. It is, as has been well observed in the Times, the heart of a noble woman, of one whom no entreaties of her father, the king of Würtemberg, could induce to abandon her husband in his days of adversity, and who clung to him in evil report and good report to the hour of her death.' The circumstances of her life are so full of deep and touching interest, that we trust our readers will not unwillingly follow us in some passages of her changeful and eventful career.

At the commencement of the present century, the ancient palace at Stuttgart was the peaceful and happy abode of the ducal family of Würtemberg, whose position, although high enough to secure for them the homage and respect which is due to the princely houses of Europe, yet seemed not lofty enough to expose them to the political dangers so often entailed on the more elevated and ambitious potentates of Christendom. The great social revolution, however, which had shaken continental Europe to its very foundations, came to disturb the tranquil happiness of the Würtemberg family. Napoleon the Great, now seated firmly upon the imperial throne of France, resolved that a crown should also encircle each of his brothers' brows. The throne of Holland had been bestowed upon Lucien Bonaparte; Joseph was the king of Spain; and a new kingdom-that of Westphalia-was about to be formed for Jerome. There was, however, one serious obstacle in the way of this latter arrangement: Jerome had, in defiance of his brother's wishes, wedded himself to an American lady, who had recently presented him with a son. Napoleon was seriously displeased at this union, and refused to acknowledge its validity. Jerome, warmly attached to his wife, came over to Europe, and throwing himself at the emperor's feet, besought his pardon, and earnestly entreated him to receive his spouse as a member of the imperial family. This request was made at an untoward moment; for Jerome's interview with the emperor took place at Milan, in 1805, just after he had grasped the iron crown of the ancient kings of Lombardy, bearing this proud yet beautiful device: Dio me la diede; Quai che la tocca.

It was at this proud moment of his life that Jerome asked him to receive a plebeian sister from republican America! The request was indignantly refused. Jerome shed tears of passionate affection as he embraced his wife's portrait, and swore never to give her up for any paltry consideration of earthly grandeur. He, however, lacked the firmness and resolution by which the Bonaparte family were so eminently characterised; and when the temptation of a kingdom, with its power and its pomps, was held out to his dazzled vision, he gradually became less vehement in his denials, and finally yielded to the will of his imperious brother. His wife was abandoned, his