honourably distinguished. Your travellers pervade every portion of the globe; wherever light can penetrate, or air can circulate, there are they to be found. They even invade the regions of winter, where Nature seems to have forbidden the existence of man; and the voyager has only to relate the resistance that he has made to her unalterable decrees. Africa too, like the Pole,-I speak not of the two Americas, of Europe, or of India, equally sees your adventurous travellers, who return to report her hitherto inaccessible wonders, or perish in the attempt.

You realize the description of the poet :

What seasons can controul,

What fancied zone can circumscribe the soul,

Who, conscious of the source from whence she springs,

By reason's light, on resolution's wings,

Spite of her frail companion, dauntless goes

O'er Libya's deserts, and through Zembla's snows?

Great as your nation may be, and distinguished among the nations of the earth, this rational curiosity is one of its highest attributes; and I cannot suppose for a moment that this ennobling quality will desert you, when any subject, like that of hieroglyphics, is presented to your consideration; a subject so connected with a country where once were to be found, as among you may be found now, so much of the knowledge and the science, the power and the civilization, the fame and the glory, of the world.

APPENDIX TO LECTURE I.

THE following account, which is extracted from one of the Letters of M. Champollion, published in the Literary Gazette, may serve as a further illustration of the high degree of civilization of the ancient Egyptians.

Amongst the tombs at Beni-Hassan, M. Champollion has found drawings highly interesting, which give such full particulars of the progress that the Egyptians had made in the different professions, arts, and manufactures, as to make us acquainted with the smallest detail of the mode they pursued in agriculture, in the several arts and trades, in their military education; in singing, music, and dancing; in the rearing of their cattle; in ichnography, that is, portrait painting; in games, exercises, and diversions; in domestic justice, and household economy; in historical and religious monuments; navigation, and zoology.

The drawings belonging to Agriculture, exhibit the tilling the ground either with oxen or by hand, sowing, treading the ground by rams, and not by hogs, as Herodotus says; five sorts of ploughs, the use of the pick-axe, the reaping of wheat, the gathering of flax, the putting these two kinds. of plants into sheaves, the carrying to the mill, the threshing, measuring, storing in the granaries, which, as it appears from the drawings, were made on two different plans; the flax carried by asses, the gathering of the lotus, the

culture of the vine, the vintage, carrying the grapes, two different sorts of presses, one worked by the hand, the other by mechanism; putting the wine into bottles or jars, the gathering of figs, the cultivation of onions, irrigation of the land, and other such exhibitions, containing explanatory hieroglyphic inscriptions.

In Arts and Trades, M. Champollion has already formed a collection of pictures for the most part coloured, in order to determine the nature of the objects, and representing the sculptor in stone, the carver in wood, the painter of statues, the painter of architecture, furniture, and cabinetwork of all kinds; a painter with his easel painting a picture; scribes and clerks of all descriptions; waggons conveying blocks of stone; the art of pottery, with all the operations; the cutting of wood, makers of oars, cabinetmakers, carpenters, sawyers, curriers; the staining of common leather and morocco; shoe-making, spinning, weaving, glass-worker, and all his operations; goldsmith, jeweller, smith, and the like.

In Military education and tactics, the collection is equally splendid. It consists of several drawings, exhibiting all their gymnastic exercises, represented in above 200 pictures shewing all the positions and attitudes of two wrestlers, attacking, defending, retreating, advancing, standing, and thrown down; and by them, says Champollion, "you will see whether the Egyptian artists were contented with figures in profile, the legs joined, and the arms pinioned against the side." Besides copying the whole of these soldiers wrestling together, that indefatigable Frenchman has also copied sixty figures, representing soldiers of all arms, a siege, a field of battle, the tortoise, the ram, the military punishments, the preparations for a military repast, and the manufacture of lances, bows, arrows, clubs, battleaxes, &c.

The collection belonging to Singing, Music, and Dancing,

consists of pictures representing a concert of vocal and instrumental music; a singer, accompanied by a musician on the harp, is supported by two chorusses, one of four men, the other of five women, the latter beating time with their hands. It is a complete opera; players on the harp of both sexes, players on the German flute, flageolet, on a sort of shell; dancers, forming various figures, with the names of the steps which they dance; and the female dancers of ancient Egypt, dancing, singing, playing at tennis, and performing various feats of strength and address.

The drawings representing the rearing of cattle, exhibit herdsmen, all kinds of oxen, cows, calves, milking, making cheese and butter, goatherds, ass-drivers, shepherds with their sheep, scenes relative to the veterinary art; poultryyard, containing numerous species of geese and ducks, and a kind of swan, which was domestic in ancient Egypt.

The drawings relative to games, exercises, and diversions, are particularly curious. Among them there is the exhibition of the Morra, the game which is so popular in Italy, particularly in Naples: the drawing straws, a kind of hotcockles; the mall, the game of piquets planted in the ground, the hunting of the fallow-deer, a picture, representing a grand chase in the desert, in which are depicted between fifteen and twenty species of quadrupeds; pictures of the return from the sport, game carried, dead or alive; several pictures of catching birds with nets, or with snares; drawings relative to fishing, with angling-rod, with the trident, or bident, nets, and the like.

The pictures exhibiting the exercise of domestic justice, consist of fifteen drawings of basso relievos, representing offences committed by servants, the arrest of the offender, his accusation and defence, his trial by the intendants of the household, his sentence, and the execution, which is confined to the bastinado, the account of which is deli

vered, with the documents of the proceedings, into the hands of the master, by the intendants of the household.

Domestic economy, is divided into ten different heads; and the drawings which represent them are very curious. The first division consists of pictures of several houses, more or less sumptuous; the second of vases of different forms, utensils, and moveables, all coloured, because the colours invariably indicate the materials of which they are composed. The third division contains the drawing of a superb palanquin. The fourth a kind of room, with folding doors, carried on a sledge, which served the great men of Egypt, in former days, for carriages. The fifth consists of pictures of monkeys, cats, and dogs, as well as the dwarfs and other deformed individuals, who, more than 1500 years before the Christian era, served to dispel the spleen of the Egyptian noblemen, as well as they did that of the old barons of Europe 1500 years after the Christian era. The sixth division exhibits the officers of a great household, intendants, secretaries, &c. The seventh, servants both male and female, carrying provisions of all sorts. The eighth, the manner of killing oxen, and of cutting them up for the use of the family. The ninth, a series of designs representing cooks preparing various kinds of provisions and the tenth, the servants carrying the dressed meat to the master's table.

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The collection of drawings exhibiting historical and religious monuments, consists of inscriptions, basso relievos, and monuments of every kind, bearing royal legends, with a date expressed, as well as the images of various deities.

The department belonging to Navigation represents the building of vessels and boats of various kind and size, and the games of the mariners, which, M. Champollion observes, exactly resemble those that take place on the Seine on great holydays.

The last division belongs to Zoology, and exhibits a series