The Pyramids.

Although there are seventy pyramids in Egypt, and others in different quarters of the Old World, and even of the New, yet the term "The Pyramids" is generally applied to those on the banks of the Nile, near where the ancient city of Memphis stood.

They are immense stone structures standing on a square base, with triangular sides running to a point, and were counted among the Seven Wonders of the World. They are supposed to be about four thousand years old, but are in an excellent state of preservation. Formerly the sides were incased by huge slabs, making them perfectly smooth; but this outer casing was removed in the twelfth century by Saladin, who used the slabs in building the citadel of Cairo.

The Pyramids stand at the edge of the desert, on the western side of the Nile. After crossing the ferry at Cairo, the stranger imagines them close at hand, though he has still a good mile to traverse. A near view is generally disappointing; and it is not until the visitor begins to make comparisons that the fact of their exceeding vastness comes home to the mind. The base of the Great Pyramid of Cheops is nearly eight hundred feet square, covering a surface of eleven acres; and its height is four

hundred and sixty-one feet. It is a common feat of travelers to ascend to the summit with the aid of a couple of Arab guides.

The view from the top has the same vivid contrast of life and death which makes all wide views in Egypt striking the desert and the green plain; only the view over the desert, the African desert, being much more. extensive here than elsewhere, one gathers in better the notion of the wide, heaving ocean of sandy billows which hovers on the edge of the valley of the Nile. The white line of the minarets of Cairo is also a peculiar feature — peculiar, because it is strange to see a modern Egyptian city which is an ornament instead of a deformity to the view.

It is said that six million tons of stone were used in the construction of the Great Pyramid of Cheops, and that its erection occupied one hundred thousand men for twenty years! The mass is not solid, but contains a series of chambers, the entrance to which is on the north side. A long, close, and devious passage leads to the Queen's Chamber, seventeen feet by eighteen, and twenty feet high. Thence another long passage leads to the King's Chamber, thirty-seven feet by seventeen, and twenty feet high. At one end of this apartment stands a sarcophagus of red granite, in which the monarch is supposed to have been laid.

The second pyramid, that of Cephrenes, is not much

inferior in size to this one, its base being six hundred and eighty-four feet, and its height four hundred and fifty-six feet; but it is not in such good preservation. It contains a chamber hewn out of solid rock, and in the sarcophagus were found the bones of an animal, probably the sacred bull of the Egyptians. The third large pyramid contained a mummy, the remains of which, and of its cedar coffin, are now in the British Museum.

There can be no doubt that they were all designed as receptacles for the dead. Around them lie, scattered about as far as the eye can reach, both up and down the banks of the river and along the edge of the desert for miles beyond the ruined city of Memphis, numberless edifices and tumuli of a monumental character, some of which were once profusely embellished with sculptures, and in which mummies have been found.

In front of the Pyramid of Cephrenes stands the great Sphinx- the hugest marvel of sculpture which the world has ever seen. For centuries this colossal wonder lay almost submerged beneath the sand-drift of the desert. In the beginning of the nineteenth century the laborious task of uncovering it was undertaken, in the course of which discoveries were made tending to show that there was at some former time a temple on the area beneath the stony gaze of the colossal countenance, and an altar upon which sacrifices were offered.

So continuous is the drift of sand from the desert, that nearly all those portions of the figure which modern investigators have at different times laid bare have been again covered.

traverse: cross.-devious: winding.-tumuli: sepulchral mounds. colossal: of enormous size.

The Sphinx.

Near the Pyramids, more wondrous and more awful than all else in the land of Egypt, there sits the lonely Sphinx. Comely the creature is, but the comeliness is not of this world; the once-worshiped beast is a deformity and a monster to this generation, and yet you can see that those lips, so thick and heavy, were fashioned according to some ancient mold of beauty-some mold of beauty now forgotten-forgotten because that Greece drew forth Cytherea from the flashing foam of the Egean Sea, and in her image created new forms of beauty, and made it a law among men that the short and proudly wreathed lip should stand for the sign and the main condition of loveliness, through all generations to come.

Yet still there lives on the race of those who were beautiful in the fashion of the elder world, and Christian

girls of Coptic blood will look on you with the sad, serious gaze, and kiss your charitable hand with the big, pouting lips of the Sphinx.

Laugh and mock if you will at the worship of stone idols, but mark ye this, ye breakers of images, that in one regard the stone idol bears awful semblance of the Deity — unchangefulness in the midst of change the same seeming will and intent, forever and ever inexorable!

Upon ancient dynasties of Ethiopian and Egyptian kings-upon Greek and Roman, upon Arab and Ottoman conquerors - upon Napoleon dreaming of an Eastern empire- upon battle and pestilence upon the ceaseless misery of the Egyptian race- upon keen-eyed travelers -Herodotus yesterday, and Warburton to-day upon all and more this unworldly Sphinx has watched, and watched like a Providence with the same earnest eyes, and the same sad, tranquil mien.

And we, we shall die, and Islam will wither away, and the Englishman, straining far over to hold his loved India, will plant a firm foot on the banks of the Nile, and sit in the seats of the Faithful, and still that sleepless rock will lie watching and watching the works of the new busy race, with those same sad, earnest eyes, and the same tranquil mien.

A. W. KINGLAKE.