Chapter I: Part 1

CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL

OF

POPULAR

LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART

Fifth Series

ESTABLISHED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, 1832

CONDUCTED BY R. CHAMBERS (SECUNDUS)

NO. 140.—VOL. III. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 1886. PRICE 1½_d._]

PARK PEARLS.

By the cottage, a stranger is hailed with sharp palpable hostility, followed by a guttural sentence inwardly spoken. The watchdog pours out his durable qualities on the intruder’s ear. To prevent any misunderstanding, he tells, most forcibly, of the consequences of a nearer approach. As the inmates of the hamlet are thus warned, an unknown face gazes on him, waiting at the wicket. I love the creature’s voice. It sounds of a home, although not mine. It hints of a domestic circle with chubby bairns, little dumpy arms, tiny prattling feet, dirty faces—as all children have if left to their own sweet will—children of the woods and parks, little rural arabs—the human world in miniature uncontrolled. The barking is incessant. A mellow voice spreads over the grassy lawns; on the pensive air, a hollow metallic ringing is carried out, eddying as tiny wavelets to the shore of a tiny pool—the music of an echo, touching the high towers of the mansion-house, rebounding to the forest edge—clear, fine, and pleasing. The winter sunny rays moisten the crust by the gateway, and the earth seems saturated by a shower which fell days ago—a shower of snow. Around the open glade, a stately circle of beech and fir trees marks the park’s outline. The day is cold and damp; the seasons hang in the balance.

In summer here, I know a tree whereon the cushat builds, a tree of fir. On the green soft cushion around its base the children gather needles and pins for youthful household purposes—age reflected in infancy. These trees are honestly Scotch, riveted to the soil; the nettle and the thistle lower in the scale. Around the wood-pigeons’ abode, mighty beeches extend their branches, and sycamores shelter the approach—trees born of ancestral days, veterans of the forest; and at eventide, when the sun is warm, carrying its fire-flame westwards, the low Coo, coo! familiarly resounds over the park—a plaintive moaning from the tree-top. The lark from the mossy meadow tells his tale of love and devotion, going high above the forest shadows, revelling in the ether, shouting vocally in the sky, making the aërial hall ring with its joyous out-pourings—a musical day-star, a pearl from earth and the clod paying homage at the footstool of light.

Over the emerald ground-work, a rook is seen; when the wind is high, he courts the lee-side of the forest, and hugs the bushes on the border, passing like a mighty rushing blast, causing the dead leaf to swirl on the grass. Atop the fence circling the copse, the magpie sits with piratical flashes in his eye, brooding over the stratagem required for further business. Down to the field he goes, and over the meadow-land on strong wing, tail floating gaily in the breeze; a gem, a pearl, a bird of surpassing beauty, up to the fir-trees, chattering harshly, loudly, defiantly. A continuous warble, an entertaining exhibition of voice-power on the part of the hedge-sparrow, enlivens the bushes under the shadow of the beeches; its capabilities of a very high order—a low, sweet, liquid song. In a meditating mood it sits; with an inquisitive air it looks for food under the stems. Its little nest is cosy; its contents four blue turquoises set in a brown environment.

Cuck-oo, cuck-oo! What a mystic sound! a half-human, a legendary echo, a resemblance half-bird, half-mammal expression; a source of infinite conjecture, a perfume from an unseen flower. There it sits, a brown, dark, spotted-like creature, with long arrow-like body, lengthy ocean-steamer-formed bird, a true migrant, a sailor on the winds, a voyager across the oceans; an outlaw, a bohemian, living by the way, dropping its egg in the nest of some absent one, leaving the care of its offspring to another; an ichneumon in feathers. Cuck-oo, cuck-oo! The sound comes from the bushes out there. No! There he sits still, not knowing he is observed. Strange bird, dweller in eternal summer climes, hater of northern blasts; and as you reflect, he is gone down the grove to seek his mate.

Following each other, wailing, calling, the lapwings dive, rise, and scream again, flapping their rounded paddles—brilliant pearls of colour touched by the sunlight. What hilarity; what gestures they cut over the park, down the slope, and across the fields. Joyful birds, birds of the earth and the fullness thereof. The cheerful merry notes come on the breeze, and contain a wildness, a free, piquant taste of nature’s highways. In spring, the notes bring with them the milkboy’s song and the ploughman’s whistle. You feel the air refreshed; a balminess fills the glade, seeks between the tree arms, clusters round the hedge, reassuring the crocus and the primrose. Your heart goes out to meet the bird, even be it unseen, as if photographed on the mind; the rural scene within a certain range springs before the imagination, called up afresh. All nature claps its hands in pride and ecstasy.

With a hurried Cha, cha, cha, cha! the blackbird leaves the stone wall—a cock-bird, black as jet—to attend his lady on the park’s surface. A rollicking sprightliness characterises his movements; his tone is sharp, full of intricacies, hard to interpret. In autumn, when the nests are empty, how delightful to walk through the copse—a clump of dwarfed trees, everything in repose. The nests, the homes, the beds of the departed little ones, rest there between the forks and amongst the benty undergrowth, remnants of blithe mirth-making and droll expressions. A few feathers—vivid remembrance of garments—the broken twigs and sere leaves are toys. Singing now is in silvery strains; before, it was golden; now restricted in its compass and its range.

The pheasant from the cover skulks hastily away, and in the sun shines as a pearl of great price. His ruby head he cannot hide—it is too lovely. It sets off as a coronet his kingly robes. ‘Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.’ An irresistible habit attends the luckless bird; he peers from the herbage, and the sun catches the treacherous colours, denouncing the retreat of this majestic park glory. There is an unspeakable mellowness. Insect and bird, both are loth to frolic; they are not now so fond of being seen, eluding the watchful eye; contented trills are all that is now heard. Yellow, full-eared cornfields, charged with the honey of a season, like soldiers, laden with booty, now ‘pile their arms’ in squares and companies over the harvest battle-field.

With the stillness of a mid-day in the park, at that moment when even the birds are gone, the insect world vanished, there is a sudden seeming pause. The daisy and the clover say it is the meridian, the exact moment when the dial casts no side shadow. It resembles the dinner-hour, the din and rattle hushed for a time. When the cuckoos meet here in the gushing summer day, when the down-pouring of the golden rays from the clear sky parches the pebbly brook, and curls up the grass of the park, then the combination of pride, blitheness, and mid-day fervour of breezes modified, refined by the park trees, disperse in the quiet inclosure, and mingling in space with the warm air, vanish, as it were, in an unanswerable manner.

Kittiwakes from the rocky heights wander, by the aid of their beautiful wings, over the park round the copse, circling, screaming with angry voice, with a majesty, an aristocratic air, no flurried haste. These wings are seasoned by the salt of the ocean. They move over the reefs, the shoals, the surface-swells of the landscape; but their gaze pierces not the crest of the earth, but is thrown back tauntingly, while their eyes search pleadingly. These water-washed pearls rest in twos and threes, white dots on the carpet of green. The daisy, dandelion, clover, and the tints of many grasses, cut out lovely patterns before your eyes; the primrose makes a golden margin, the bushes raise the edge. In the language of flowers, the surface holds communion. Above the long rank growth on the ditch-side, the sorrel loves to dwell, and thistles keep watch over their lowly neighbours.

A transient glimpse of a pretty bird in the depths of the bushes rivets the attention—a redstart!—jerky, flirting beauty. This tangled undergrowth seems a fit habitation only for the badger, or a likely cover for the fox. That admixture of ruby and turquoise might well adorn the scrupulously trimmed lawn before the mansion-house. Why stay in such a sequestered nook? You are an uncommon friend. Right glad am I to make the acquaintance of such as you, even here. How restless you wander along the bough, your shrill note doubtless being apprehensive of danger, away under the bushes without a parting word. A robin fills the place—that hero of many a tale, that picture-painted creature evolved from the reddish-tinted egg shells. His family meet him on the broom that overhangs the bank. The earthwork has fallen, disclosing the boughs that were once underground, appearing now like strong cables from ship to anchor. Its home is there, behind the rootlet, and between that and the earthen wall. At evening, puffed up, ball-formed, it sits challenging a robin not far off in vocal speech, a ruby spot, a blood-stained front without a scar. The notes remind you of olden days. Something is gone, is awanting; a vagueness immeasurable borders the song. There is a want, although he sings in language liquid and clear. It is in harmony with the half-sleeping water babbling through the grasses. He is a wild Red Indian, sighing, jerking, laughing, smiling at the weather of the seasons.

Two, three! Keep still; there go the rabbits. Move your foot amongst those dead leaves—magic, they are gone! Thud, thud! be it anger, fear, or defiance. Thud! the very earth vibrates in harmony with the animals’ spirit. Over the entrance, on the tree-roots grow long variegated lines of stainless white vegetation—whiter under there, against the earth—a soft quartz in a soft rock. That sapling is dead, nipped in its youth. Its leaves are golden, its virgin beauty was green. All other trees are in their native garb. In its fall, its dying agony, its roots wrenched from the soil, the earth still adhering; it had groaning, fallen, clenched its comrade; and now petrified, its arms are rigid, death-like. The bunnies burrow under the shelter of the upturned sapling; but otherwise its history is wrapped in unconcern. Only the bee, that in its flight catches the reddish glow, and halts to know the cause. The common blue butterfly, in its diurnal flight over the park in search of sweets, at times erects its wings, there exhibiting the rows of matchless pearls imprinted on the border of its garment. The wren leaves not the tree in its misfortune, but twits its plaintive miniature trill from under the withered leaves and débris swept against its surface, accumulating with every fresh breeze.

Again the participating musical stumble of the blackbird comes from the tree-branch on the copse margin—a male voice, a bass, with variations of chattering fluency. Late insects linger at the outskirts, and roam the extent of the park. The insect hum rises from the herbage here and there; a bee, trapped by the spider’s snare, hums, buzzing vengeance on the fisher casting his silken net there. In the bushes, a slight fluttering—a leaf floats unheard to the ground, to increase the mouldy earth. The repose is broken again and again—droning beetles, and the tingling flight of the moths fluttering around the willows at the burn. The tawny owls hoot, throwing a weird enchantment on things adjacent, their muffled, softened wings carrying them from view along the forest edge. A solitary starry pearl, a snowdrop of the heavens, bursts the crust of the empyrean—then it is night.

IN ALL SHADES.

BY GRANT ALLEN,

AUTHOR OF ‘BABYLON,’ ‘STRANGE STORIES,’ ETC. ETC.

CHAPTER XLIII.

When Nora and the doctor reached the door of Orange Grove, they found Edward Hawthorn waiting to receive them, and the servants already busy trying to remove as far as possible the signs of the wreck so lately effected by the wild rioters. Several neighbouring planters, who had come down from the hills above, stood in armed groups around the gate; and a few mounted black constables, hastily summoned to the spot by the fire, were helping to extinguish the smouldering ashes. Only Delgado’s dead body lay untouched upon the sofa, stiff and motionless, for not one of the negroes dare venture to set hands upon it; and in the room within, Marian sat still, looking anxiously at Harry Noel’s pallid face and livid eyelids, and his bloodstained shirt, that yet heaved faintly and almost imperceptibly upon his broad bosom at each long slow-drawn inspiration.

‘He is living?’ Nora asked, in a hushed voice of painful inquiry; and Marian answered under her breath, looking up at the bluff doctor: ‘Yes; he’s living still. He’s breathing quite regularly, though very feebly.’

As for Macfarlane, he went to work at once with the cool business-like precision and rapidity of his practised profession, opening the bloodstained shirt in front, and putting his hand in through the silk vest to feel the heart that still beat faintly and evenly. ‘He’s lost a great deal of blood, no doubt, Mrs Hawthorn,’ he said cheerily; ‘but he’s a strong man, and he’ll pull through yet; ye needn’t be too anxious—thanks to whoever put this handkerchief around his arm. It’s a good enough tourniquet to use on an emergency.—Was it you, Miss Dupuy, or Mrs Hawthorn?’

A round spot of vivid colour flashed for a moment into Nora’s white cheek as she answered quietly: ‘It was me, Dr Macfarlane!’ and then died out again as fast as it had come, when Macfarlane’s eyes were once more removed from her burning face.

‘Ye’re a brave lass, and no mistake,’ the doctor went on, removing the tourniquet, and stanching the fresh flow rapidly with a proper bandage, produced with mechanical routine from his coat pocket. ‘Well, well, don’t be afraid about him any longer. It’s a big cut, and a deep cut, and it’s just gone and severed a good big artery—an ugly business; but ye’ve taken it in time; and your bandage has been most judiciously applied; so ye may rest assured that, with a little nursing, the young man will soon be all right again, and sound as ever. A cutlass is a nasty weapon to get a wound from, because those nigger fellows don’t sharpen them up to a clean edge, as they ought to do rightly, but just hack and mutilate a man in the most outrageous and unbusiness-like manner, instead of killing him outright like good Christians, with a neat, sharp, workman-like incision. But we’ll pull him through—we’ll pull him through yet, I don’t doubt it. And if he lives, ye may have the pleasure of knowing, young lady, that it was the tourniquet ye made so cleverly that just saved him at the right moment.’

As Macfarlane finished dressing and tending Harry’s wound, and Harry’s eyes began to open again, slowly and glassily, for he was very faint with loss of blood, Nora, now that the excitement of that awful evening was fairly over, seemed at last to realise within herself her great loss with a sudden revulsion. Turning away passionately from Harry’s bedside, she rushed into the next room, where the women-servants were already gathered around their master’s body, keening and wailing as is their wont, with strange hymns and incoherent songs, wherein stray scraps of Hebrew psalms and Christian anthems were mingled incongruously with weird surviving reminiscences of African fetichism, and mystic symbols of aboriginal obeah. Fully awake now to the blow that had fallen so suddenly upon her, Nora flung herself in fierce despair by her father’s side, and kissed the speechless lips two or three times over with wild remorse in her fresh agony of distress and isolation. ‘Father, father!’ she cried aloud, in the self-same long-drawn wail as the negresses around her, ‘they’ve killed you, they’ve killed you! my darling—my darling!’

‘Dem kill you—dem kill you!’ echoed Rose and Nita and the other women in their wailing sing-song. ‘But de Lard ob hebben himself avenge you. De grabe yawnin’ wide this ebenin’ for Louis Delgado. De Lard smite him—de Lard smite him!’

‘Get away, all you auld crones!’ the doctor said, coming in upon them suddenly with his hearty Scotch voice, that seemed to break in too harshly on the weird solemnity of the ghastly scene. ‘Let me see how it was they killed your master. He’s dead, you say—stone-dead, is he? Let me see—let me see, then.—Here you, there—lift up his head, will you, and put it down decently on the pillow!’

Nita did as she was told, mechanically, with a reproachful glance from her big white-fringed eyes at the too matter-of-fact and common-sense Scotchman, and then sat down again, squatting upon the floor, moaning and crooning piteously to herself, as decorum demanded of her under such circumstances.

The doctor looked closely at the clotted blood that hung in ugly tangles on the poor old man’s gray locks, and whistled a little in a dubious undertone to himself, when he saw the great gash that ran right across Mr Dupuy’s left shoulder. ‘An awkward cut,’ he said slowly—‘a very severe and awkward cut, I don’t deny it. But I don’t precisely see, myself, why it need have positively killed him. The loss of blood needn’t have been so very excessive. He’s hacked about terribly, poor old gentleman, with their ugly cutlasses, though hardly enough to have done for a Dupuy, in my opinion. They’re very tough subjects indeed to kill, all the Dupuys are.’

As he spoke, he leant down cautiously over the body, and listened for a minute or two attentively with his ear at the heart and lips. Then he held his finger lightly with close scrutiny before the motionless nostrils, and shook his head once or twice in a very solemn and ominous fashion. ‘It’s a most singular fact,’ he said with slow deliberation, looking over at Edward, ‘and one full of important psychological implications, that the members of every nationality I have ever had to deal with in the whole course of my professional experience—except only the Scottish people—have a most illogical and ridiculous habit of jumping at conclusions without sufficient data to go upon. The man’s not dead at all, I tell you—not a bit of it. He’s breathing still, breathing visibly.’

Nora leapt up at the word with another sudden access of wild energy. ‘Breathing!’ she cried—‘breathing, doctor! Then he’ll live still. He’ll get better again, will he, my darling?’

‘Now ye’re jumping at conclusions a second time most unwarrantably,’ Macfarlane answered, with true Scotch caution. ‘I will not say positively he’ll get better again, for that’s a question that rests entirely in the hands of the Almighty. But I do say the man’s breathing—not a doubt of it.’

The discovery inspired them all at once with fresh hope for Mr Dupuy’s safety. In a few minutes they had taken off his outer clothing and dressed his wounds; while Nora sat rocking herself to and fro excitedly in the American chair, her hands folded tight with interlacing fingers upon her lap, and her lips trembling with convulsive jerks, as she moaned in a low monotone to herself, between suspense and hope, after all the successive manifold terrors of that endless evening.

By-and-by the doctor turned to her kindly and gently. ‘He’ll do,’ he said, in his most fatherly manner. ‘Go to bed, lass, go to bed, I tell ye. Why, ye’re bruised and beaten yourself too, pretty awkwardly! Ye’ll need rest. Go to bed; an’ he’ll be better, we’ll hope and trust, to-morrow morning.’

‘I won’t go to bed,’ Nora said firmly, ‘as long as I don’t know whether he will live or not, Dr Macfarlane.’

‘Why, my lass, that’ll be a very long watch for ye, then, indeed, I promise you, for he’ll not be well again for many a long day yet, I’m thinking. But he’ll do, I don’t doubt, with care and nursing. Go to bed, now, for there’ll be plenty to guard you. Mr Hawthorn and I will stop here to-night; and there’s neighbours enough coming up every minute to hold the place against all the niggers in the whole of Trinidad. The country’s roused now; the constabulary’s alive; and the governor’ll be sending up the military shortly to take care of us while you’re sleeping. Go to bed at once, there’s a guid lassie.’

Marian took her quietly by the arm and led her away, once more half fainting. ‘You’ll stop with me, dear?’ Nora whispered; and Marian answered with a kiss: ‘Yes, my darling; I’ll stop with you as long as you want me.’

‘Wait a minute,’ the good doctor called out after them. ‘Ye’ll need something to make you sleep after all this excitement, I take it, ladies. There’s nothing in the world so much recommended by the faculty under these conditions as a good stiff glass of old Highland whisky with some lime-juice and a lump of sugar in it.—Ye’ll have some whisky in the house, no doubt, won’t you, Uncle Ezekiel?’

In a minute or two, Uncle ’Zekiel had brought the whisky and the glasses and the fruit for the lime-juice, and Macfarlane had duly concocted what he considered as a proper dose for the young ladies. Edward noticed, too, that besides the whisky, the juice, and the sugar, he poured furtively into each glass a few drops from a small phial that he took out unperceived by all the others from his waistcoat pocket. And as soon as the two girls had gone off together, the doctor whispered to him confidentially, with all the air of a most profound conspirator: ‘The poor creatures wanted a little sedative to still their nerves, I consider, after all this unusual and upsetting excitement, so I’ve just taken the liberty to give them each a drop or two of morphia in their whisky, that’ll make them both sleep as sound as a child till to-morrow morning.’

But all that night, the negroes watched and prayed loudly in their own huts with strange devotions, and the white men and the constables watched—with more oaths than prayers, after the white man’s fashion—armed to the teeth around the open gate of Mr Dupuy’s front garden.

RECENT NOTES FROM THE LAND OF EGYPT.

To those who are interested in ancient Egypt, and to the student of Biblical archæology, the last few weeks have given treasures of discovery. First, there was the unbinding and exposing to view of the mummies of Ramses II. and III., and the identification of that of Queen Nofre-tari; then the discovery, by Mr Flinders Petrie, of ‘El Kasr el Bint el Yahudî’ (the Castle of the Jew’s Daughter), which throws a flood of light upon the few verses in Jeremiah xliii. where we read that Johanan, the son of Kareah, followed by the captains of the forces, the remnant of Judah, and the Hebrew princesses, daughters of the blinded and dethroned Zedekiah, fled to Tahpanhes, the court of Pharaoh Hophra, king of Egypt. Lastly, there was the interesting meeting of the Egyptian Exploration Fund (see _Chambers’s Journal_, No. 70), when an account of the finding of the Greek settlement of Naukratis was given, and specimens of the treasures found there were exhibited. To Professor Maspéro we are indebted for the sight of the celebrated Pharaohs; and any one travelling in Egypt should not fail to visit the ‘Hall of the Mummies,’ in the Boulak Museum, near Cairo, where, in glass cases, they will see the faces of these kings exposed to view. First of all, before describing the appearance of the dead monarchs as they emerged from the endless folds of the mummy-cloths, it may be worth while to glance cursorily at their history.

Ramses II.—the Sesostris of the Greeks—was the third king of the nineteenth dynasty. He bears the name of A-naktu, the Conqueror; and in the rolls of the papyri he is also called Ses, Sestura, ‘Sethosis—who is called Ramses’—and Setesu. He was a great builder, and a warrior as well. The land is filled with his buildings and with gigantic statues of himself and his family; and the walls of the temples are covered all over with vivid pictures of his battles and victories. Not only in Egypt are these to be found, but also engraven upon the rock tablets at Berytus, in Syria, are records of his victories in Asia. He does not, however, appear to have allowed his architectural plans and his warlike expeditions wholly to engross his attention, for we find him dividing the land into _nomes_ or provinces, and setting governors over them. He seems to have employed the prisoners of war in making canals for the use of those who lived at a distance from the river. He also rearranged the scale of rents for land, and made the canal from the Nile to the Red Sea. In the fifth year of his reign we find him at Kadesh-on-Orontes, a fortified Syrian town: war had broken out with the Khita, a Semitic tribe, who had one of their strongholds there. After a desperate struggle, Ramses appears to have been victorious, and ratified his treaty with the conquered people by marrying their king’s daughter. We find him afterwards waging war in Palestine; and it is certain that he conquered Askelon. He transferred his court to Sân or Zoan, on the Tanitic arm of the Nile, and from thenceforth Pi-Ramses became the seat of government. By many, Ramses II. is thought to be the Pharaoh of the oppression, for whom the children of Israel built the treasure-cities of Pithom and Ramses. Certain it is that during this reign the literature and language of Egypt became impregnated with words borrowed from Semitic sources.

The chief buildings of Ramses II. are the Ramesseum or Memnonium; a Temple of Victory at Old Qurnah, dedicated to the god Amon; the rock-temple of Ipsamboul, dedicated to the chief gods of Egypt; the completion of the Temple of Amon at Luxor, which was left unfinished by Amenhotep III.; and the great hall in the Temple of Karnak. He erected two giant statues of himself and two beautiful obelisks, one of which is in Paris.

The king enjoyed a reign of sixty-seven years; part of which time he was associated with his father. He must have been nearly one hundred years old when he died; and from the temple walls at Abydos we learn that he had sixty sons and fifty-nine daughters. This is the merest outline of Ramses II., one of the greatest of the Egyptian kings; an essentially successful man, bold, enterprising, ambitious, and vain.

Now for his personal appearance, in so far as we can judge of it after its long repose in spices and linen bandages. For the sake of those whose faith may not be very strong, let us add that the mummy was opened by Maspéro and Brügsch—two of our greatest Egyptologists—in presence of a large number of people, English as well as Egyptian, who verified the official statement made by the high-priest Pinotem on the coffin lid, and on the outer winding-sheet of the mummy, that this was in truth the body of Ramses II. The head is long, and small in proportion to the size of the body; the top of it is bald, but otherwise the hair is thick. At the time of death it was probably white; but the spices used in the embalmment have turned it a yellowish colour. The eyebrows, too, are white and thick; the eyes small and close together; the temples are sunken; and the nose, long, thin, and hooked, is also depressed at the tip. The tightness of the bandaging probably accounts for this. The chin is prominent, and the jawbone massive, giving a look of determination to the face, which is covered with a thin beard and moustache. The skin is of a brown hue, with black marks on it, possibly owing to the bituminous matter used in embalming. The hands, which are crossed over the breast, are small, and dyed with henna; the legs and thighs fleshless; the feet long, slender, and although somewhat flat-soled, are well shaped. They also are stained with henna. The body is in a good state of preservation; and the corpse, which is that of a very old man, is also that of a strongly built and vigorous old man. The examination over, Professor Maspéro returned the mummy to its glass case, where, with face uncovered, it may be seen, with the mummies of Pinotem and the priest Nebsouni.

Ramses III.—surnamed Haq-On—Prince of Heliopolis, was not the immediate successor of Ramses II., although he appears to have taken him for his model. When he came to the throne, Egypt had degenerated to a miserable condition, and he first turned his attention to the internal affairs of the kingdom, rearranging the different castes and fixing their lines very firmly. He also started a navy, to trade with the countries near to Egypt. Many of the trees and shrubs in the valley of the Nile were planted by him, to encourage moisture in the atmosphere and give shade to the people. His buildings were not nearly so grand or so numerous as those of Ramses II. He erected several Ramessea and a new temple at Thebes. He also converted the treasure-house at Medinet-Abou into a Temple of Victory, bringing all that was most precious into it. From some of the papyri, we find that he was to have been the victim of a plot hatched in the harem; but it was discovered, and the conspirators punished. Ramses III. reigned more than twenty-seven years, and had eighteen sons and fourteen daughters, to the former of whom he gave the names of the sons of Ramses II. In his reign, the art of inlaying glass in alabaster was at its height.

Ramses III. was altogether an inferior man to his predecessor of the same name, although probably more intelligent; and from the shape of the forehead, we might judge him to have had the intellectual capacities largely developed. But he was eaten up with vanity, and a desire to imitate in everything Ramses II. His buildings are less numerous than that monarch’s; in style they are far inferior, and the construction is poor. His wars were chiefly fought close at home, either with the neighbouring Philistines or the tribes in the frontier of his country. This, condensed into a few sentences, is the outline of his life. In appearance, as seen at Boulak, when the mummy was uncased, he was a small man, much inferior in size and build to Ramses II, although his forehead is of better proportions. No hair is visible on either face or head; the cheek-bones are not so high, the nose not so hooked, the chin and jaw less massive. Professor Maspéro thinks that the eyes were larger than those of Ramses II., which were small; but it is difficult to be certain about this, as they have been extracted, and the lids even removed. The mouth is horribly large, and out of proportion to the rest of the face; the lips are thin; and many of the teeth are in a perfect state of preservation. The displaying of the features of Ramses III. was indeed a proof of great skill and patience on the part of the operators, for when the last coverings were removed, the face was found to be completely hidden by a coating of bitumen, which had to be taken away piecemeal with the utmost care. The mummy, face uncovered, stands now in a glass case by the side of Ramses II.; and the lid of the sarcophagus in which he was buried is in the Museum at Cambridge.

The mummy of Queen Nofre-tari was found with those of Ramses II. and III. in the hiding-place at Dayr-el-Bahari; but it became in such a bad condition, and smelt so horribly, that it was necessary to get rid of it. Accordingly, Professor Maspéro decided to open it; and by doing so, settled a knotty historical question. Was Nofre-tari, the popular and deeply revered queen of king Aahmes I. of the eighteenth dynasty, a negress? On some of the monuments, she is represented with fine hair and yellow skin; on others, with a distinctly negro type of face. Truly, she was worshipped at Thebes under the form of Hathor, the black goddess of Death and the nether world. Did, then, the story of her belonging to one of the black races of mankind originate in this, or was there real ground for depicting her with a black complexion? The investigation of the mummy answered the question; for although, on being opened, it began to crumble away and dissolve into black matter, it was quite possible to ascertain that she was a woman of full age and middle height, and that she belonged to the _white_ races of mankind.

The opening of these mummies was the last official work of Professor Maspéro, and the description of them is gathered from his Report. Unfortunately for all Egyptologists, he has been obliged to resign his post of Director of the Excavations and Antiquities in Egypt.

We must now pass on from the interesting Hall of Mummies, and convey ourselves in thought to a dismal, dreary corner of the north-eastern Delta, where, in the neighbourhood of the mounds of Tell-el-Defenneh, Mr Flinders Petrie has discovered the remains of the ancient palace in which Apries Hophra gave shelter to the fugitive daughters of Zedekiah. This ‘Castle of the Jew’s Daughter,’ as it is called by the Arabs to-day—the ‘Pharaoh’s house in Tahpanhes’ of the Bible, was built by Psammetichus I. Under the corners of the building, Mr Petrie has dug out the foundation deposits, consisting of seals, small tablets, engraved with the king’s name and royal titles, bricks, &c. It was probably the stronghold of those Carian and Ionian mercenaries to whom Psammetichus granted a permanent settlement at Daphnæ of Pelusium. The building itself was square, lofty, and of massive structure. It stands in the remains of a quadrangular courtyard, the whole covering an area of two thousand feet in length by one thousand feet in breadth. Originally, it must have been walled in, the great boundary wall being fifty feet in thickness. A gate on the north side opened towards the canal; another on the south, to the military road between Egypt, through Palestine, into Syria. The ‘Kasr’ also possessed a tower which has probably served at different times as an outlook, general’s headquarters, and a royal palace. Nor can we assign one date only to it; it has been added to at various times, and to meet the requirements of the different owners. It is hopeless to conjecture in how many stories it was originally built; but the main part of the building contained sixteen square rooms on each floor, with walls, both outside and partition, of immense strength. Now, the basements, which are all that is left, were the offices of the royal palace, and very interesting are the discoveries which Mr Petrie has made there. First of all, there is the kitchen, a big room with deep recesses in the sides, and containing a dozen or more large jars, which somehow have managed to escape the general destruction; also two flat dishes, three small flat iron pokers, two corn-rubbers, some weights, and a large knife made of iron. Then there is a room which we may suppose to have answered to the butler’s pantry, for it was evidently the room where the wine-jars were brought to be opened; but although there was not one amphora to be found, there were scores of lids lying scattered about, many of them stamped with the cartouches of Psammetichus I., and Necho, his successor. On a rubbish-heap outside were found the broken amphoræ, some of them having the lute-shaped ‘nefer’ written on them in ink, a mark signifying ‘good.’ There is a tiny chamber containing a sink; and from the contents of that sink, it can only have served one purpose, and that the scullery. Mr Petrie describes it as being ‘formed of a large jar with the bottom knocked out, and filled with broken potsherds placed on edge. The water ran through this, and thence into more broken pots below, placed one in another, all bottomless, going down to the clean sand four or five feet below.’ These sherds were literally clogged with fish-bones and animal matter.

Some small tablets engraved with the name of Aahmes II., and a bronze seal of Apries, were also found; and in some of the other rooms were seen lying about several Greek vases, many of them well painted with representations of sphinxes, dancers, chariot-races, harpies, &c. Amongst the débris, have been picked up amulets, two rings, a sword handle with wide curved guard, some scale-armour, beads, seals, &c.; and several large amphoræ, quite perfect, and a great many broken ones, although not so badly broken but that they can be mended. The once stately building is now a heap of blackened, flame-scorched ruins, while the ground all round it is thickly strewn with the débris of its past treasures. It must have fallen into very revengeful hands before even it was set on fire, for it has evidently been ruthlessly knocked to pieces and dismantled, besides being burnt. Did the king of Babylon, as is indicated in the book of Jeremiah, indeed spread his tent on the hard mud pavement in the square courtyard, and after giving over ‘such as were for death to death, and such as were for captivity to captivity, and such as were for the sword to the sword,’ commence the work of destruction? We cannot tell: we know that he did come, and that, according to Babylonian accounts, he conquered. The Egyptians admit that he came, but say he was defeated. Anyway, there are three _steles_ in the Boulak Museum inscribed with his names, titles, and parentage, which there is every reason to believe were picked up by the Arabs near this place. Whether Nebuchadnezzar conquered or not, ‘Pharaoh’s house at Tahpanhes’ is now but the wreck of a departed glory.

The recent meeting of the Egyptian Exploration Fund was particularly interesting. At it, Mr Ernest Gardner gave a vivid account of Naukratis, for the excavation of which we are indebted to Mr Petrie and himself. Naukratis was an ancient Greek settlement in Lower Egypt, whose site, until lately, was lost in obscurity. We know that it contained five celebrated temples—the Pan-Hellenion, and the temples of Zeus, Hera, Apollo, and Aphrodite; of these, four are now discovered. During this present year, Mr Gardner has found the cemetery of Naukratis. It is a little distance from the town itself, and, unfortunately, cannot be wholly excavated, as there is a modern Arab cemetery exactly over it. The part already dug out is evidently the more modern of the two, as it only contains graves subsequent to the sixth century B.C. From a strictly antiquarian point of view, it is therefore the less interesting, although that date gives the most flourishing period of the history of Naukratis. There was not one single mummified body found; the funerals were evidently conducted strictly after the manner of the Greeks. Coffins of tile and wood, the latter adorned with terra-cotta ornaments, were found in the graves; articles both of use and beauty were found buried with the dead. In one case, alongside of the deceased lady’s jewellery, was found her rouge-pot, still half full of rouge, and beautifully painted on the outside. Among the many things found in the town itself is a portrait head of the time of Berenike II., made in blue porcelain; a fine archaic statue of Apollo as a hunter, laden with spoils; and two very fine vases of large size. The ruins of the Temple of Aphrodite, built upon the foundations of two earlier ones, consist of little else than mud walls. In front of it is the altar, made of the ashes of the victims, bound together with a mud casing. Thus, after centuries of burial, has the excavator’s spade brought us face to face with Naukratis, once the most flourishing Greek settlement and trading-port in Lower Egypt.

A TALE OF TWO KNAVERIES.

IN FOUR CHAPTERS.—CHAP. I.

It was a melancholy and foggy November morning, and in its yellow gloom that legal byway known as Southampton Buildings, Holborn, looked even more frowzy and less respectable than usual. That, at least, was the opinion of Mr Blackford, solicitor, who had no love for the scene of his daily labours, as he turned into his office at the usual hour, nodded to the clerk and the office-boy who made up his modest staff, hung up his hat and coat on their particular peg, and passing into his private room, proceeded to open and read the half-dozen letters which lay on his desk. With one exception, these were not of a pleasing or cheerful nature. There was, in the first place, a rather peremptory reminder that the office rent was overdue, and must be paid forthwith. Then came a refusal to ‘settle,’ by the payment of a sum of money, a doubtful compensation-for-injuries action against a Railway Company, which Mr Blackford had undertaken upon the very sporting principle of charging nothing unless he should succeed; in which happy event he would retain half the spoils. Beneath this lay a letter declining to make an advance on certain dilapidated house-property belonging to a client, and commenting sharply on certain alleged misrepresentations; and then followed two or three more such epistolary missives.

Mr Blackford’s face wore a very excusable expression of disgust as he took up the last of the pile; but he brightened a little as he read it through. This at anyrate meant ‘business’—above all, business for which the payment, though not large or ungrudgingly rendered, would be certain and prompt. It was signed ‘William Franklin,’ and it contained a request that Mr Blackford would call on the writer that day, in order to take instructions for his will. Now, William Franklin was the lawyer’s best client; a retired tradesman of some wealth, and of a litigious disposition which had for several years brought as much profit to the business as all the rest of the connection put together. The solicitor hastily replied to such of his correspondents as required that attention, glanced at his diary, which showed him plenty of leisure time for the day—a far too usual circumstance with him; and was preparing to keep Mr Franklin’s appointment, when his office-boy knocked and entered.

‘A gentleman to see you, sir.’

‘Who is it?’ asked his master, rather suspiciously. Unexpected male visitors are not always welcome to a man whose finances are shaky.

‘Won’t give his name, sir—says he wants to see you on particular business. I think it’s a new client, sir,’ added the boy confidentially, understanding tolerably well the reasons of his employer’s hesitation.

‘Oh! Well—show him in; and don’t forget to hand a chair.’

The visitor entered—a tall, dark, powerful man, with remarkably bright eyes—well dressed, as Mr Blackford, drawing comfortable auguries therefrom, at once observed.

‘Take a seat,’ said the solicitor. ‘What can I do for you?’

The stranger sat down, glanced uneasily round the room, went back to the door, opened and closed it, and returned to his chair. ‘First of all,’ said he, speaking with the voice and manner of a gentleman—a voice and manner not too common among Mr Blackford’s clients—‘I must apologise for presenting myself in this mysterious way. I didn’t give my name to your clerk, for reasons which you will appreciate presently. It is Willoughby—Charles Willoughby—and here is my card. I have also a letter of introduction from my landlord, a client of yours.’

‘I wonder what he’s done?’ was Mr Blackford’s silent comment as he took the proffered letter. ‘Forgery, perhaps, or embezzlement. The last, most likely—if either. I daresay it’s only a trumpery County Court matter, after all.’

The letter simply stated that Mr Willoughby had for the last month occupied rooms in the writer’s house; that he was a very quiet lodger, and quite the gentleman; that he seemed to have plenty of money; that he had asked the writer to recommend a solicitor to him, and that the writer had at once named Mr Blackford; from whom, it was added in conclusion, a fair commission on any profits arising from the introduction would be expected by his zealous client.

‘And what can I do for you, sir?’ once more asked the solicitor, with the increased respect due to a man who was ‘quite the gentleman’ and ‘seemed to have plenty of money.’

The visitor fixed an anxious look on the lawyer, and replied: ‘Well, the fact is, Mr Blackford, that I have of late been greatly worried and annoyed.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that. Not very pleasant in this depressing weather, is it?’

‘It is not, indeed,’ assented the other, with a spasmodic and mirthless laugh, which began and ended in a peculiarly sudden manner.

‘What is the nature of the annoyance?’

The visitor was looking round the room in a bewildered way, and did not seem to hear the question. On its being repeated, he came to himself with a start.

‘The annoyance? Oh, it is just this—that I am being followed about by people who accuse and threaten me in a most unfounded and unjustifiable manner.’

‘And of what do they accuse you?’

‘Well, I hardly know, the accusations are so extremely vague. But they all point to horrible crimes committed in the past, without particularly specifying them. The threats are distinct enough: I am to be utterly ruined by exposure and denunciation.’

‘Have you ever done anything which would be likely to give these people a hold on you? You can be perfectly frank with me, you know; we lawyers hear a great many curious things, but we never talk about them. Few men can say that their lives will bear very close inspection.’

‘I declare to you solemnly that I can reproach myself with nothing which, if known, would produce the consequences with which I am threatened. But you know persistent slander is sure to make its mark sooner or later; it is impossible to say what harm may have been done already.’

‘Who are the people?’

‘I don’t know.’ Before giving this unexpected answer, Willoughby looked down on the floor and round the room with the same lost and puzzled air as before.

‘You don’t know who they are!’ said Mr Blackford with incredulity. ‘That’s rather strange, isn’t it?—Come, Mr Willoughby; we are quite alone. Who are they?’

‘I can’t tell you,’ repeated the client; ‘I wish I could.’ He looked at the lawyer with a pitiably anxious expression, and beads of perspiration began to appear on his forehead.

‘When and where do they attack you?’

‘Incessantly and everywhere. I am never safe from them. Principally at my lodgings, and after I am in bed at night. They keep me awake with their outcry.’

Mr Blackford began to be puzzled. His new acquaintance continued to regard him with the same eager and helpless look, and wiped his forehead with a tremulous hand.

‘But—but—bless me,’ said the lawyer, ‘if they come and annoy you in your lodgings, why don’t you give them in charge?—How many are there of them?’

Willoughby shook his head gloomily. ‘They are too cunning for that,’ he answered. ‘They are careful to keep out of my sight. I never set eyes on them; I only hear their voices. And they are in hundreds—in thousands, for all I can tell.’

Mr Blackford of course at once understood the true state of the case, and the discovery was not a pleasant one. He was by no means a nervous man, yet he experienced an electrical sensation in the scalp of his head at the idea that he was sitting within a yard of an athletic madman. Clearly, it would not do to contradict so opinionated a person as this was likely to be; he must be humoured, and induced, if possible, to go away quietly.

‘That’s awkward—very awkward,’ said the solicitor in a reflective tone. ‘If we can’t see them, you know, how can we get at them so as to set the law in motion?’

‘I can’t tell what to do,’ said the other despondently; ‘that is why I have come to consult you. All I know is that they continue to denounce and threaten me night and day, and that it cannot go on without being noticed. In that case, my character will be materially injured, and they will have attained their object. Besides, they are killing me, Mr Blackford. A man can’t exist without sleep, and I have had but little for weeks past. And now I learn that they are contriving a plan to relieve one another at night, so as to keep me awake.’

There was something inexpressibly grim in the earnest yet matter-of-fact way in which these impossibilities were related; with agitation, indeed, but with nothing in the nature of abnormal excitement or maniacal frenzy. He spoke as a man who found great matter for trouble, but none for astonishment, in the nightly irruption into his lodgings of hundreds or thousands of abusive persons, whose numbers were no hindrance to their remaining effectually concealed in the space of two small rooms. But he surveyed the walls and floor at more frequent intervals in his dazed manner, as though he suddenly found himself in a strange place, while his moist and shaking hands nervously and convulsively worked his handkerchief into a compact ball.

Actuated at first by the best motives, Mr Blackford began to question him cautiously as to his connections and private affairs. It seemed that, with the exception of some distant relatives at the Cape, he was alone in the world; nor did he appear to have any friends in England upon whom he could rely. Having elicited the further fact that he had an income of five hundred pounds a year, derived from funded property, the solicitor ceased his questions and delivered himself up to reflection, while his client anxiously awaited the voice of the oracle.

There are many members of the junior branch of the legal profession who are of unbending uprightness and fastidious honour; there are a few downright knaves; and there are others who stand neither on the upper nor on the lower rungs of the moral ladder, but occupy a position somewhere about the middle. These last are equally prepared to be honest should honesty be made easy for them, or rogues in the face of difficulty or temptation; and among their number was Mr Blackford. He was not altogether favourably known to his brother practitioners; but neither could any definite charge be brought against him. He had done things which were certainly worthy of condemnation; but he had hitherto kept clear of any offence which would endanger his position on the rolls. He dressed neatly, he had a good manner and a correct accent, and he did not drink. His business was small, and not of a high class, lying mostly among the smaller sort of tradesmen; yet he had a certain connection, and even a few clients of means and fair position; and he was said to understand his work. He was quite without capital, and lived a hand-to-mouth life; and he had certain extravagant tastes of the lower kind. Money was always scarce with him, and he was prepared to acquire it in any way which offered, so that it was unattended with risk; for he was quite unburdened with scruples, considering all profit fair which could be safely gained. And he thought that in this case he saw a chance of such profit. Willoughby had answered all his questions, some of them bordering on impertinence, in the most open and unreserved fashion; he was evidently disposed to place the fullest confidence in his legal adviser, looking to him for sympathy and deliverance. Mr Blackford felt more at his ease in thus parleying with a probably dangerous lunatic, than a few minutes before he would have thought possible.

The upshot of his meditations was that he concluded to abandon, at all events for the present, his first very proper and humane purpose of communicating with the police, and trying to induce them to deal with the case as that of a lunatic at large, so that the poor fellow might be properly cared for until his friends could be communicated with. For this he substituted a different plan of action with admirable readiness, and with an entire absence of pity or compunction. It was clear that there was money to be made out of the man by judicious handling; and Mr Blackford was of opinion that no one could be better qualified to make it, or more deserving of it when made, than himself.