days and familiarly known. We could not conceal our astonishment. He replied, that as he lay in bed, all visible objects shut out, the pictures of what he had beheld in the East continually floated before his mind's eye, so that it was no wonder he could speak of them as if he had seen them yesterday. With like vividness was the deep intense sky of Asia, with its brilliant and twinkling host of stars which he had so often gazed at by night, or its lofty vault of blue by day, reflected, in the hours of stillness and darkness, on his inmost soul; and this was his greatest enjoyment.”

Towards evening, on the 26th of April, 1815, some one read to him as usual, while he asked questions which showed perfect apprehension and intelligence. He then sunk into a slumber and departed without a struggle. A concourse of people from all parts of the country attended his body to the grave. The funeral was solemnized with all the honours which respect and affection can pay. He had attained the age of eightytwo. He was extremely frugal. Economy had become a habit with him in early life. As a peasant lad he drank nothing but water and milk; and at a later period he deviated from this simple diet, only in compliance with the custom of others, with which he every where made it a rule to conform, and he then drank He had no an extremely small quantity of wine.

favourite dishes but the peasant fare of his native land. "At the highest point of elevation," says his biographer, "to which he attained, favoured by his prince, respected and admired by the learned and eminent of all countries, it was his pride that he was born a peasant of Free Friesland. His manners never lost the sim

plicity, nor his morals the purity of that singular and estimable class of men. If ever there lived a man who might safely and reasonably be held up to the people as an object of imitation, it was Carsten Niebuhr. Not only was he a poor man,—an orphan,— born in a remote part of a remote province, far from all those facilities for acquiring knowledge, which in this age and country are poured out before the feet of the people; he was not even gifted in any extraordinary way by nature. He was in no sense of the word a genius. He had no imagination. His power of acquiring does not seem to have been extraordinarily rapid, nor his memory singularly retentive. In all cases where the force of that will, at once steady and ardent, which enabled him to master his favourite studies, was not brought to bear, his progress was slow and inconsiderable. It is not therefore in any supposed intellectual advantages that we must look for the causes of his rise to eminence. They are to be found rather in the moral qualities which distinguished him, qualities attainable in a greater or less degree by men of the humblest rank, of the most lowly intellect, the least favoured by situation or connection. He possessed, in an eminent degree, the distinguishing virtues of his country, sincerity, unadulterated and faithful love of truth, and honesty. The zeal with which he gave himself to a pursuit which might enable him to be useful to his native district; the total absence of vanity which characterized the whole course of his studies and of his journeyings ;—the sim plicity of his narrative, in which no more of himself and his individual feelings appears than is just neces

sary to keep up the thread of the story;-the rigorous accuracy and anxiety after truth for which his travels have ever been and still remain pre-eminently distinguished among all who preceded, and all who have followed him on the same ground, afford ample evidence of the singleness and the steadiness of the motives which actuated him. The most punctilious honour marked his disbursement of the funds intrusted to his care by the Danish government, and he ever abstained with the utmost exactness from applying a farthing of this money to any object which could be considered by others, or which his own more fastidious delicacy could regard, as a personal gratification.

"His self-command was perfect. He could abstain from what was agreeable, and do what was disagreeable to him. He was conscientious, sober, temperate even to abstemiousness, laborious and persevering; neither discouraged nor elated by the incidents which he must have known were inseparable from the career which he had chosen."

GIOVANNI BATTISTA BELZONI.

THIS enterprising traveller was born at Padua, Italy, in 1778, where his father was a barber. The family, however, had belonged originally to Rome; and it is related that Belzoni, when only thirteen years of age, betrayed his disposition for travelling, by setting out one day along with his younger brother to make his way to that city, which he had long been haunted with

a passionate desire to see, from hearing his parents so otten speak of it. The failing strength and courage of his brother, however, forced him to relinquish this expedition, after they had proceeded as far as the Apennines; and he returned to assist his father once more in his shop, as he had already, for some time, been doing. But when he was three years older, nothing could detain him any longer in his native place; and he again took the road to Rome, which he now actually reached. It is said that on his first arrival in this capital, he applied himself to the acquirement of a knowledge of the art of constructing machines for the conveyance and raising of water, with the view probably of obtaining a livelihood by the exhibition of curious or amusing experiments in that department of physics. It is certain, however, that he eventually adopted the profession of a monk. The arrival of Buonaparte in Italy, in 1800, brought him the opportunity, which he embraced, of throwing off his monastic habit; being, by this time, heartily tired of the idleness and obscurity to which it consigned him. He then pursued, for some time, a wandering life, having, in the first instance, returned to his native town, and then proceeded in quest of employment to Holland from whence, in about a year afterwards, he came back to Italy. By this time he had attained so uncommon a height, with strength proportioned to it, that he was an object of wonder wherever he was seen. It was probably with the expectation of being able to turn these personal advantages to account, that he determined, in 1803, to go over to England. On arriving there, accordingly, he first attempted to gain a

maintenance by walking over the country exhibiting hydraulic experiments, and feats of muscular strength; and accompanied by his wife, an English woman whom he had married soon after his arrival, he visited with this object all the principal towns both of Great Britain and Ireland. He continued for about nine years in England. In 1812, he sailed with his wife for Lisbon. After spending some time in that city, he proceeded to Madrid, where he attracted considerable attention by his performances. From Spain he went to Malta; and here, it is supposed, the idea first suggested itself to him of passing over to Egypt, as others of his countrymen had already done, and offering his services to the Pacha, the active and enterprising Mohammed Ali. Accordingly, carrying with him a recommendation from a Maltese agent of the Pacha's, he proceeded, still accompanied by his wife, to Cairo. On presenting himself to Ali, he was immediately engaged, on the strength of his professed skill in hydraulics, to construct a machine for watering some pleasure gardens at Soubra, on the Nile. This undertaking, it is said, he accomplished to the Pacha's satisfaction; but an accident having occurred to one of the persons looking on, at the first trial of the machine, the Turkish superstition, under the notion that what had happened was a bad omen, would not suffer the use of it to be continued. Belzoni was once more thrown on his own resources, probably as much at a loss as ever, what course to adopt.

At this time, the late Mr. Salt, the learned orientalist, was English Consul in Egypt, and embracing the ortunity which his situation afforded him, was ac