sloping sides of the hills, in the hope that they might remain undisturbed and unplundered, and might keep safe the embalmed bodies of the kings, till they should rise again at the end of the world; and seventeen of these had already been found out and broken open. Hecatæus was told that the other tombs had been before destroyed, and we owe it perhaps to this mistake that they have remained unopened for more than two thousand years longer, to reward the researches of modern travellers, and to unfold the history of their builders."

All the world knows how wonderfully the Greeks improved upon the Egyptians in many of the arts. That of coining and inscribing coins with appropriate devices and legends seem to have been one of the instances; a method of recording historical facts which may be placed in the same rank with inscriptions upon granite, with this advantage that coins are transmissible in regard to locality, but also with this disadvantage that they are much more apt to be lost. On the subject of these tokens of pride as well as chroniclers of truth, we read in the pages before us, that

"One of the most valuable gifts which Egypt owed to Ptolemy was its coinage. Even Thebes where treasures were largest in the houses,' never was able to pass gold and silver from hand to hand without the trouble of weighing, and the doubt as to the fineness of the metal. The Greek merchants who crowded the markets of Canopus and Alexandria must have filled Lower Egypt with the coins of the cities from whence they came, all unlike one another in stamp and weight; but while every little city or even colony of Greece had its own coinage, Egypt had none. In the first years of his reign Ptolemy might well dislike coining; he would have been called upon to declare by the stamp upon the coin whether he was king of Egypt, and he seems not to have coined till after he had taken that title.

"His coins are of gold, silver, and copper, and are in a fine style of Greek workmanship."

The art of engraving coins in Ptolemy Soter's reign seems from specimens themselves to have been practised in Abydus and Pelu

No doubt they were also struck at Alexandria, though the coins of that city that have been preserved are not so marked.

But the art of engraving coins was not the only refined invention that found encouragement from Ptolemy Soter; indeed the whole of the race, even some of the most degenerate of the dynasty, may be said to have been munificient patrons of learning. But for a moment to abide by the founder of the monarchy, let us cite some notices and anecdotes :

"Apelles, indeed, whose paintings were thought by those who had seen them to surpass any that had been before painted, or were likely to be painted, had quarrelled with Ptolemy, who had known him well when he was the friend and painter of Alexander. Once when he was at Alexan

tria,som ebody wickedly told him that he was invited to dine at the royal able, and when Ptolemy angrily asked who it was that had sent his unwelcome guest, Apelles drew the face of the mischief-maker on the wall, and he was known to all the court by the likeness.

"It was perhaps at one of these dinners, at which Ptolemy enjoyed the society of the men of letters, that he asked Euclid if he could not show him a shorter and easier way to the higher truths of mathematics than that by which he led the pupils in the Museum; and Euclid, as if to remind him of the royal roads of Persia, which ran by the side of the high-roads, but were kept clear and free for the king's own use, made him the well-known answer, that there was no royal road to geometry.

"At another of these literary dinners, Diodorus Cronus the rhetorician, who is thought to have been the inventor of the Dilemma, was puzzled by a question put to him by Stilpo, and was so teazed by Ptolemy for not being able to answer it, that it was said to have embittered the rest of his life. This was the person against whom Callimachus some years later wrote a bitter epigram, beginning Cronus is a wise man.'

Antiphilus, who was born in Egypt and had studied painting under Ctesidemus, rose to high rank as a painter in Alexandria. Among his bestknown pictures were the bearded Bacchus, the young Alexander, and Hippolitus afraid of a bull. His boy, blowing up a fire with his mouth, was much praised for the mouth of the boy, and for the light and shade of the room. His Ptolemy hunting was also highly thought of. He showed a mean jealousy of Apelles, and accused him of joining in a plot against the king, for which Apelles narrowly escaped punishment; but when Ptolemy found that the charge was untrue he sent him a gift of one hundred talents to make amends.

"The angry feelings of Apelles were by no means cooled by this gift, but they boiled over in his great picture of Calumny. On the right of the picture sat Ptolemy, holding out his hand to Calumny who was coming up to him. On each side of the king stood a woman who seemed meant for Ignorance and Suspicion. Calumny was a beautiful maiden, but with anger and deep-rooted malice in her face; in her left hand was a lighted torch, and with her right she was dragging along by the hair a young man, who was stretching forth his hands to heaven and calling upon the gods to bear witness that he was guiltless. Before her walked Envy, a pale, hollow-eyed, diseased man, perhaps a portrait of the accuser; and behind were two women, Craft and Deceit, who were encouraging and supporting her. At a distance stood Repentance, in the ragged black garb of mourning, who was turning away her face for shame as Truth came up to her."

As a further proof of the deep interest which this race of sovereings took in the advancement of learning, of the arts, and of science, listen to an account of some of the means adopted by Ptolemy Philadelphus, the son of the former :

"At a time when books were few, and far too dear to be within reach of the many, and indeed when the number of those who could read must have been small, other means were of course taken to meet the thirst after knowledge; and the chief of these were the public readings in the

Theatre. This was not overlooked by Philadelphus, who employed Hegesiac to read Herodotus, and Hermophantus to read Homer, the earliest historian and the earliest poet, the two authors who had taken deepest root in the minds of the Greeks.

"Philadelphus was not less fond of paintings and statues than of books; and he seems to have joined the Achaian league as much for the sake of the pictures which Aratus, its general, was in the habit of sending him, as for political reasons. Aratus, the chief of Sicyon, was an acknowledged judge of painting, and Sicyon was then the first school of Greece. The pieces which he sent to Philadelphus were mostly those of Pamphilus the master, and of Melanthius the fellow pupil, of Apelles."

The fees paid by pupils to master artists at this time will astound those who think of similar professions at the present day. Pamphilus is said to have received from every pupil seventeen hundred pounds a year. It is also recorded that it was through him that drawing was first taught to boys in Greece as part of a liberal profession.

It was in the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus that the celebrated Greek translation of either the whole or a great part of the Old Testament was undertaken and completed; a proof of the value he set upon letters as well as of a liberal spirit in regard to creeds. It also appears that during his reign the Museum of Alexandria held the highest rank among the Greek schools, whether for poetry, mathematics, astronomy, or medicine, the four branches into which it was divided. Its library held two hundred thousand rolls of Papyrus; which our author not without good grounds reckons to be about equal to ten thousand printed volumes; for we must remember that hand-writing is different from modern printing in regard to the space it occupies, and also that it would take several rolls to fill one printed volume. Philadelphus not only patronized Greek authors, but Egyptians, such as Manetho, who wrote a history of Egypt, copied from the hieroglyphical writing in the temples. What he wrote, however, is only known in the quotations of other writers, which amounts to little more than a list of kings' names.

We have said that the liberality of the Ptolemies in the promotion of what in modern times are regarded as the most beautiful and precious of man's works; viz., the fruits of study, learning, and refined pursuits, was most munificent. Perhaps it was an ostentatious as much as an enlightened principle that frequently prompted them; for the rewards they bestowed, appear to have been sometimes ridiculously extravagant. For example, we read that Philadelphus rewarded an Alexandrian physician for having cured a brother potentate, by presenting him with a fee of seventeen thousand pounds. We also agree with our author in regard to instances of royal hotbed patronage, when he says,—

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While we are dazzled by the brilliancy of the clusters of men of letters

and science who graced the court of Alexandria, we must not shut our eyes to those faults which must always be found in works called forth rather by the fostering warmth of royal pensions than by a love of knowledge in the people. The well-fed and well-paid philosophers of the Museum were not likely to overtake the mighty men of Athens, who had studied and taught without any pension from the government, without taking any fee from their pupils; who were urged forward only by the love of knowledge and of honour; who had no other aim than that of being useful to their hearers, and looked for no reward beyond their love and esteem.

"Books may, if we please, be divided into works of industry and works of taste. Among the first we may place mathematics, criticism, and compilations; among the second we ought to find poetry and oratory. Works of industry and care may be found in many ages and in many countries, but those which have gained the praises of all mankind, for their pure taste and fire of genius, seem to have ripened only on those spots and in those times at which the mind of man, from causes perhaps too deep for our search, has been able to burst forth with more than usual strength.

"When we review the writings of the authors of Alexandria, we are forced to acknowledge that they are most of them of the former class; we may say of them all, what Ovid said of Callimachus, that they are more to be admired for their industry and art than for their taste and genius."

To be sure, the exorbitant case we singled out belongs to a department of industry and ingenuity; but we quoted the sum of seventeen thousand pounds merely as a proof of an ostentation which neither indicated the highest taste for appreciating merit, nor that fostering care which was likely to be most wisely or advantageously distributed.

A few of the concluding remarks offered by our author is all that we can find room for further inserting. They are as follows :

"Thus fell the family of the Ptolemies, a family that had perhaps done more for arts and letters than any that can be pointed out in history. Like other kings who have bought the praises of poets, orators, and historians, they may have smothered the fire which they seemed to foster, and have misled the talents which they wished to guide; but in rewarding the industry of the mathematicians and anatomists, of the critics, commentators, and compilers, they seem to have been highly successful.

It is true that Alexandria never sent forth works with the high tone of philosophy, the lofty moral aim, and the pure taste which mark the writings of Greece in its best ages, and which ennoble the mind and mend the heart; but it was the school to which the world long looked for knowledge in all those sciences which help the body and improve the arts of life, and which are sometimes called useful knowledge. It was almost the birth-place of anatomy, geometry, conic sections, geography, astronomy, and hydrostatics.

Taking the history of Egypt as a whole, under the Ptolemies, it tells a most impressive story. We might dwell upon the punishment and ruin that followed the vices and crimes of the rulers,

which, indeed, were characteristic of the age. But we rather choose to direct the attention of the reader of Mr. Sharpe's work to the fact that the Egyptians as a nation were verging to decay and dissolution. There was a want of public virtue even to the extent of showing an obliteration of those sympathies that regard royal crimes with a sustained abhorrence, or the most irregular checks of those crimes, assassination. Even the schools of Alexandria, those sanctuaries of study and learning, gradually fell off and lost their respectability; and at length the legions of the Roman republic strode over the land, giving law at the point of the sword, and ruling with a rod of iron.

ART. X.-The Life and Times of Archbishop Sharp, (of St. Andrews). By THOMAS STEPHEN, Med. Lib. King's Coll. Author of "The Book of the Constitution," "Guide to the Liturgy," &c. London: Rickerby. 1839.

Ir has never been our lot to peruse a more lame and one-sided narrative than the one before us. The extravagance of the author's partisanship is quite ludicrous. We must in fact set it down along with some other most indiscreet and suspicious efforts recently made, as an uncalled for attempt to support the authority and assert the immaculate character of an establishment which is more seriously threatened, and felt to be more vulnerable than such combatants as the present are willing to confess. But the occasion is not of that nature to require formal or anxious refutation by any one. The book itself is its own best impugner; and feeling this to be the case a very simple method will enable us to criticise it satisfactorily, viz., that which merely puts us to the trouble of tying some of its paragraphs together, and letting them be seen in their distorted nakedness. Before doing so, however, we have to inform the author that he is altogether mistaken in thinking that he has added anything of any importance to what has times without number been advanced and fully explained or refuted. Nothing can be more lean or trivial than the manuscripts deposited in the "Episcopal Chest" at Aberdeen, and which he is so proud of having been allowed to examine. Had there been anything in that chest to bolster a desperate argument, it would have long ago been made the most of by some person of sound judgment and adequate ability. We have also to state that a man of an ordinary share of discretion and modesty would not have rested his case upon the authority of the "True and Impartial Account of the Most Reverend Father in God, (a form of expression which Mr. Stephen is manifestly enamoured of,) Dr. James Sharp," which is not only a lying, and studiously unfair story, but -will those of our readers who may not have troubled their heads with eccesiastical controversies believe it ?-which is an anonymous