"But you are unjust, Billy; the ungenerous tone ye speak of is fast disappearing. Gentlemen now-a-days use no disparaging epithets to men poorer or less happily circumstanced than themselves."

"Faix," said Billy, "it isn't sitting here, at the same table with yourself, that I ought to gainsay that remark.'

And Harcourt was so struck by the air of good breeding in which he spoke, that he grasped his hand, and shook it warmly.

"And what is more," continued Billy, "from this day out I'll never think so."

He drank off his glass as he spoke, giving to the libation all the ceremony of a solemn vow.

"D'ye hear that?-them's oars; there's a boat coming in."

"You have sharp hearing, master," said Harcourt, laughing.

"I got the gift when I was a smuggler," replied he. "I could put my ear to the ground of a still night, and tell you the tramp of a revenue boot as well as if I seen it. And now I'll lay sixpence it's Pat Morissy is at the bow-oar there; he rows with a short jerking stroke there's no timing. That's himself, and it must be something urgent from the post-office that brings him over the Lough to-night."

The words were scarcely spoken when Craggs entered with a letter in his hand.

"This is for you, Colonel," said he; "it was marked immediate,' and the post-mistress despatched it by an express."

The letter was a very brief one; but, in honour to the writer, we shall give it a chapter to itself.

"MY DEAR HARCOURT,-I arrived here yesterday, and by good fortune caught your letter at the F. O., where it was awaiting the departure of the messenger for Germany.

"Your account of poor Glencore is most distressing. At the same time, my knowledge of the man and his tem

per

in a measure prepared me for it. You say that he wished to see me, and intends to write. Now there is a small business-matter between us, which his lawyer seems much disposed to push on to a difficulty, if not to worse. To prevent this, if possible, at all events to see whether a visit from me might not be serviceable, I shall cross over to Ireland on Tuesday, and be with you by Friday, or at furthest Saturday. Tell him that I am coming, but only for a day. My engagements are such that I must be here again early in the following week. On Thursday I go down to Windsor.

"There is wonderfully little stirring here, but I keep that little for our meeting. You are aware, my dear friend, what a poor, shattered, broken

down fellow I am; so that I need not ask you to give me a comfortable quarter for my one night, and some shell-fish, if easily procurable, for my one dinner.

"Yours, ever and faithfully,
"H. U."

Sir

We have already told our reader that the note was a brief one, and yet was it not altogether uncharacteristic. Horace Upton-it will spare us both some repetition if we present him at once—was one of a very composite order of human architecture; a kind of being, in fact, of which many would deny the existence till they met and knew them, so full of contradictions, real and apparent, was his nature. Chivalrous in sentiment and cunning in action, noble in aspiration, and utterly sceptical as to such a thing as principle, one-half of his temperament was the antidote to the other. Fastidious to a painful extent in matters of taste, he was simplicity itself in all the requirements of his life, and with all a courtier's love of great people, not only

There

tolerating, but actually preferring, the society of men beneath him. In per son he was tall, and with that air of distinction in his manner that belongs only to those who unite natural graces with long habits of high society. His features were finely formed, and would have been actually handsome, were the expression not spoiled by a look of astuteness a something that implied a tendency to over-reach-which marred their repose and injured their uniformity. Not that his manner ever betrayed this weakness; far from ithis was a most polished courtesy. It was impossible to conceive an address more bland or more conciliating. His very gestures, his voice, languid by a slight habit of indisposition, seemed as though exerted above their strength in the desire to please, and making the object of his attentions to feel himself the mark of peculiar honour. ran through all his nature, through everything he did, or said, or thought, a certain haughty humility, which served, while it assigned an humble place to himself, to mark out one still more humble for those about him. There were not many things he could not do; indeed he had actually done most of those which win honour and distinction in life. He had achieved a very gallant but brief military career in India, made a most brilliant opening in Parliament, where his abilities at once marked him out for office, was suspected to be the writer of the cleverest political satire, and more than suspected to be the author of the novel of the day. With all this, he had great social success. He was deep enough for a ministerial dinner, and "fast" enough for a party of young Guardsmen at Greenwich. With women, too, he was especially a favor ite; there was a Machiavellian subtlety which he could throw into small things a mode of making the veriest trifles little Chinese puzzles of ingenuity that flattered and amused them. In a word, he had great adaptiveness, and it was a quality he indulged less for the gratification of others than for the pleasure it afforded himself.

He had mixed largely in society, not only of his own, but of every country of Europe. He knew every chord of that complex instrument which people call the world, like a master; and although a certain jaded and wearied look, a tone of exhaustion and VOL. XLVI.-NO. CCLXXIII.

fatigue, seemed to say that he was tired of it all, that he had found it barren and worthless, the real truth was, he enjoyed life to the full as much as on the first day in which he entered it; and for this simple reason, that he had started with an humble opinion of mankind, their hopes, fears, and ambitions, and so he continued, not disappointed, to the end.

The most governing notion of his whole life was an impression that he had a disease of the chest, some subtle and mysterious affection which had defied the doctors, and would go on to defy them to the last. To suggest to him that his malady had any affinity to any known affection was to outrage him, since the mere supposition would reduce him to a species of equality with some one else a thought infinitely worse than any mere physical suffering; and, indeed, to avoid this shocking possibility, he vacillated as to the locality of his disorder, making it now in the lung, now in the heartat one time in the bronchial tubes, at another in the valves of the aorta. was his pleasure to consult for this complaint every great physician of Europe, and not alone consult, but commit himself to their direction, and this with a credulity which he could scarcely have summoned in any other

cause.

It

It was difficult to say how far he himself believed in this disorder-the pressure of any momentous event, the necessity of action, never finding him unequal to any effort, no matter how onerous. Give him a difficulty, a minister to outwit, a secret scheme to unravel, a false move to profit by, and he rose above all his pulmonary symp toms, and could exert himself with a degree of power and perseverance that very few men could equal, none surpass. Indeed it seemed as though he kept this malady for the pastime of idle hours, as other men do a novel or a newspaper, but would never permit it to interfere with the graver business of life.

We have, perhaps, been prolix in our description, but we have felt it the more requisite to be thus diffuse, since the studious simplicity which marked all his manner might have deceived our reader, and which the impression of his mere words have failed to convey.

"You will be glad to hear Upton is

U

in England, Glencore," said Harcourt, as the sick man was assisted to his seat in the library, "and, what is more, intends to pay you a visit."

66

Upton coming here!" exclaimed Glencore, with an expression of mingled astonishment and confusion"how do you know that?"

"He writes me from Long's to say that he'll be with us by Friday, or, if not, by Saturday."

"What a miserable place to receive him," exclaimed Glencore. "As for you, Harcourt, you know how to rough it, and have bivouacked too often under the stars to care much for satin curtains. But think of Upton here! How is he to eat?-where is he to sleep?"

"By Jove, we'll treat him handsomely. Don't you fret yourself about his comforts; besides, I've seen a great deal of Upton, and, with all his fastidiousness and refinement, he's a thorough good fellow at taking things for the best. Invite him to Chatsworth, and the chances are he'll find twenty things to fault-with the place, the cookery, and the servants; but take him down to the Highlands, lodge him in a shieling, with bannocks for breakfast and a Fyne herring for supper, and I'll wager my life you'll not see a ruffle in his temper, nor hear a word of impatience out of his mouth."

"I know that he is a well-bred gentleman," said Glencore, half pettishly; "but I have no fancy for putting his good manners to a severe test, particularly at the cost of my own feelings."

"I tell you again he shall be admirably treated; he shall have my room; and, as for his dinner, Master

Billy and I are going to make a raid amongst the lobster-pots. And what with turbot, oysters, grouse-pie, and mountain mutton, I'll make the diplomatist sorrow that he is not accredited to some native sovereign in the Arran islands, instead of some 'mere German Hertzog.' He can only stay one day."

"One day!"

"That's all; he is over head-andears in business, and he goes down to Windsor on Thursday, so that there is no help for it."

"I wish I may be strong enough; I hope to heaven that I may rally—” Glencore stopped suddenly as he got thus far, but the agitation the words eost him seemed most painful.

"I say again, don't distress yourself about Upton-leave the care of entertaining him to me. I'll vouch for it that he leaves us well satisfied with his welcome."

"It was not of that I was thinking," said he, impatiently; "I have much to say to him-things of great importance. It may be that I shall be unequal to the effort; I cannot answer for my strength for a day-not for an hour. Could you not write to him, and ask him to defer his coming till such time as he can spare me a week, or at least some days.'

66

My dear Glencore, you know the man well, and that we are lucky if we can have him here on his own terms, not to think of imposing ours; he is sure to have a number of engagements while he is in England."

"Well, be it so," said Glencore, sighing, with the air of a man resigning himself to an inevitable necessity.

THE first volume of the English version of this elaborate work appeared in 1848, and was received by the British public with the respect due to the virtues and learning of the distinguished individual whose name it bore; and now, after the lapse of six years, the second has appeared, to be followed (we are told) in about a year hence, by the third and last volume. The object of the work is indicated by its title, "Egypt's Place in Universal History;" and considering how much has been written on the subject, from Herodotus downwards, it might be thought that this point had been tolerably well established long ago. There has been no disposition manifested in ancient or modern times to undervalue the importance of Egypt as an element in the earlier civilisation of the post-diluvian world, but a tendency rather the other way; for it must not be thought that we knew nothing of Egypt, or that its mysterious history excited no attention, before the secret of hieroglyphical interpretation was discovered, and we were enabled to read the monumental inscriptions of ages far transcending in antiquity the oldest written records of the race. What place will be assigned to her by the Chevalier Bunsen, when he has completed his literary survey of her remains, we cannot know till his third volume appears; but we do not imagine that even his extraordinary erudition can lead to any sensible change in the convictions that have long prevailed among educated men as to the government, laws, arts, sciences, literature, and habits of a people whose claims upon our regard are due more to accidental circumstances than to any marked superiority they possessed over other and contemporary nations. The Chevalier, like most of his countrymen, has a rooted dislike to Moses, and rather a contempt for those who attach any weight to his authority; but we will venture to affirm, that had it not been for the writings of the recreant

priest of Heliopolis, the annals of Egypt would have remained till this day in the same state of darkness and uncertainty as the annals of Babylonia and Assyria. The Greek classical

writers did as little towards the eluci dation of the one as the other, and what we do know with any degree of certainty about the ancient Egyptians, we owe chiefly to the earlier Christian writers, who were attracted to the study of their history by its connexion with the history of the Israelites. We make this statement in the full knowledge of what was done, or attempted to be done, by the scholars and critics of the Alexandrine school before the Christian era; and our deliberate belief is, that the desire manifested in modern times to penetrate the veil that has so long covered the history of the land of the Pharaohs, is due more to its relations with the Abrahamic race, both before and after the exodus, than to any other single cause whatever. Our acquaintance with Egypt begins with the story of Joseph and his brethren, wherever it may end; and though it may shock learned ears to be told so, we can entertain no doubt that an illustration of that simple and touching tale would excite a greater sensation throughout Christendom, than the discovery of a new dynasty, or the settlement of the place in which Moses, the first king, was born or died.

Our readers are probably aware that the first volume of this work was devoted to those preliminary investigations in which the learned German mind delights, and was, in fact, a huge preface extending over some 750 pages; but since this was to be the method adopted, it is impossible that it could have been better executed. The literary resources of the Chevalier Bunsen are nearly inexhaustible, and are prodigally displayed in the discussion of the questions that arise on the very threshold of his work; and hard as the task of perusal often is, all must admire

his wonderful fertility, and the thorough command which he holds over his materials. In this respect he resembles his illustrious master, Niebuhr; and we find, in the second volume especially, illustrations of the force of his discriminative faculty, which show that it is little, if at all, inferior in power to that of his great predecessor in historical renovation. Having cleared the way for his future labours in the first volume, by a copious analysis of what had been done by previous Egyptologers, ancient and modern, he proceeds, in the second, to grapple with those terrible perplexities known as the Lists of the Kings, which, by careful collation, and unwearied diligence, he has restored to chronological order. It is impossible, without consulting the book itself, to form a conception of the sagacity that is exhibited in these emendations; and if anything could compensate for the toil of groping through this critical labyrinth, it would be the pleasure that every ingenuous mind must feel at the contemplation of so much zeal united to so much knowledge. His chief authorities for the dynastic history of the Old Empire are Manetho and Eratosthenes, particularly the latter, and both are appealed to, though with less confidence, for the middle or shepherd period; while the reconstruction of the New Empire rests on the Epitomists, Josephus, the canon of Ptolemy, and the Monuments; and those only who have tried to comprehend these tables, and to extract out of them a consistent narrative, can be expected to appreciate the skill that is shown by M. Bunsen in this portion of his work. He has done for Egyptian chronology all that profound criticism can effect for it; and obscure as such labours may seem to be, we, who reap the benefit of them, should not forget that, whether we can agree to all his conclusions or not, these reformations required, for their successful accomplishment, a combination of the highest talent, learning, and ingenuity that could be found. So bewildered was old Jacob Bryant by these unaccommodating tables, that he declared the one half of them to be spurious, and cut off the first fifteen at a blow (iv. 404); and though a different and a wiser course has been followed by the members of the new school of interpretation, still the state of these lists has been till now a grievous stumbling-block to the most intelli

gent of even modern inquirers. This defect will be no longer felt if M. Bunsen's corrections are accepted by scholars generally; but we are apt, when talking of this subject, to recall the remark of Plutarch, that the traces of truth in these Egyptian records are so slight, that it requires a skilful person to find them out, and "to extract much out of little,” μεγαλα δε μικροις ἕλειν.

With the restoration of the regal

lists there is necessarily associated the construction of what the author considers a true system of Egyptian chronology, which he believes he has established on a lasting foundation; and as it is upon this point that the Chevalier Bunsen anticipated the greatest divergence from the opinions he has promulgated, we shall devote a few words to the consideration of the argument which he has raised upon his archæological inferences.

The system of chronology followed in this country, and in most parts of Western Christendom, places the creation of the world at 4004 years, and the deluge at 2,348 years, before the birth of Christ. It is admitted upon all hands, however, that considerable discrepancies exist in the results of the calculations founded on the Hebrew genealogies, from which alone we can know anything of these matters; and that the Vulgate, the Samaritan text, and the Septuagint, differ largely in their temporal computations. Thus, for example, between our canon, as established by Usher, and the Corestheopolitan æra, or that adopted by the Greek Church, there is a difference of 1,500 years an immense portion of time to be either of doubtful existence, or unappropriated; and the knowledge of this fact necessarily compels us to allow some latitude to those who desire to make this globe older than it is commonly supposed to be. We are perfectly willing, therefore, to give the Chevalier Bunsen the benefit of these differences, though there is very little chance of our being able to extend the antiquity of the earth to such a degree as his Egyptian theory would require, and without which, as it seems to us, all his toil and skill in the restostoration of the regal lists must go for nothing; for either he and his Egyptian monuments must give place to Moses and the Hebrew annals, or Moses and the Hebrew annals must give place to them. The case stands thus.