species was in it from eternity, since there could never have been a man who was not preceded by parents. This, as we have already stated, is inconsistent with the observations of geologists. There was, then, a first man, not born, but created. The laws that now prevail, like certain mathematical formulæ in extreme cases, are in default when applied to the Origines. We are persuaded that M. Bunsen will admit this; and we have no doubt that he will also admit that language was not the invention of man-that articulate speech was not a development of such noises as might be made by beasts. But he holds, as we have seen, that the germ of language having been originally given to man by a superior Being, that superior Being allowed its possessors to develop it without interference. Surely, how. ever, the power which taught man speech, may have taught it in a form which was not the mere germ, but already considerably developed. Had it not been so taught, religion could not have been taught at the same time; and yet we can scarcely doubt that the same benevolent Being who created man, and endowed him with speech, would teach him also to worship himself the noblest use of speech. We do not, then, consider it "obvious", that God gave man only the germ of speech; nor, again, can we deny the possibility that God may have, at a subsequent period, interfered with the development of human speech, so as to turn it out of the ordinary course. He who gave man the power of speech, and established the laws of its development, had surely power to suspend or alter those laws, if it seemed good to him at any time to do so. What we have been in the habit of considering a divine revelation, tells us that God has done this very thing. M. Bunsen denies that any revelation has been given with respect to this, or other "external things." We think, however, that independently of revelation, it is highly probable, and that to assume the contrary is most unphilosophical, as well as very presumptuous. The fact is, that supposing M. Bunsen's laws of development to be ever so well established by induction from the recent history of languages; and supposing the observations respecting the Egyptian language of the Old Empire, from

which he starts, to be ever so correct; the process of reasoning by which he would infer the past from what was the present, can only be correct when it stops short of "the beginnings"the time when the supreme Being either first produced the language, or when he subsequently interfered with it, in case he has done so. Philosophical reasoning, such as M. Bunsen uses, may be available for the period since the beginnings. If the facts were correctly observed, we believe his proposed method is in the main unobjectionable. But it cannot go back to the period of the beginnings. Information concerning that can only be had from divine revelation; and, if there be really no divine revelation bearing on the question, we must rest contented to remain in ignorance.

To conclude, then, our remarks on this intended fifth book. We believe that to a certain extent knowledge is attainable respecting the early history of the Egyptian people. Their common origin with the great Indo-Germanic family of nations, and with those people usually styled Semitic, we hold to be demonstrated from such facts as our author here deals with; but a great deal of what he professes to be able to prove in connexion with this, we regard as impossible to be known, and as scarcely to be the subject of probable conjecture. To this fifth book the latter part of the present volume is introductory. It treats of the language, mythology, and writing of the Egyp tians, endeavouring to show how much of each of these was in use under the old empire. This will be found a useful introduction to the study of "Egyptology," and we trust that it will be the means of tempting many young persons, who have leisure, to engage in it. A valuable appendix follows, containing a vocabulary of the Egyptian language, and a list of the hieroglyphical characters, arranged in the four classes to which M. Bunsen reduces them, with their explanations or values, so far as they are known. The list contains 620 ideographics, 164 determinative signs, 130 phonetics in use before the Ptolemaic period, and 100 introduced in later times, and 56 mixed signs. There are some characters which occur in more than one list; and, on the other hand, we have sought in vain through them all for

some common characters which have been omitted. Variations in the form of characters, such as have been called calligraphic, are oftener regarded as distinct, than we think would have been advisable. From uncertainty as to whether these characters should be classed together or separated, the exact number of distinct characters can never be determined. It will, however, we think, never be considered less than 1000, nor greater than 1200. This list is very creditable to Mr. Birch, of the British Museum, by whom it has been compiled, and also to Mr. Bonomi, who drew the characters. They have been neatly cut by Mr. Martin, and accompany their explanations in the printed text. This is a great improvement upon the German edition, where they were given in plates to which it was difficult to refer. By the way, speaking of Mr. Bonomi, we should not omit to notice the map of Egypt under Antoninus Pius, which Mr. Sharpe, the author of the history, and he have published. It gives a better idea of the country, a narrow stripe between the Libyan and the Arabian desert, than any that we have seen. The roads from the itinerary are marked with the towns, distinguishing those of which the ruins remain, from those of which the positions are fixed by the ancient measurement. In the desert are represented its sole inhabitants, the wild animals, in the latitudes where they begin to be found, and groups of "the ships of the desert," in full sail, lying to, and seeking shel

ter from the simoom.*

We have seen that the language and the mythology of Egypt are the two great facts, on which our author means to found his system respecting the primeval history of Egypt, and of the human race. It is important, therefore, to ascertain how far his statements respecting these points are to be depended on. With regard to the language, he candidly owns that "no man (i. e., neither he nor any of his friends) is competent to read and explain the whole of any one section of the Book of the Dead, far less one of the historical papyri." Yet he seems to feel quite confident that he is tho

roughly acquainted with the pronouns and verbal forms, and able to pronounce what the character of the ancient language was in respect to its inflexions. Did it never occur to him that his inability to give a complete translation of a hieroglyphical text, was a proof that he had not that knowledge which he supposes? This is not the place to argue the point; but we do not hesitate to express our conviction that M. Bunsen has shown himself ignorant of some of the most common of the personal pronouns, confounding the cases of some, and omitting those of others altogether; that he is ignorant, also, of some of the most characteristic forms of verbs in the old language; and that for these reasons he cannot translate passages, which a knowledge of these pronouns and verbal forms would render quite clear. If this shall turn out to be the case, of how very little value must be his deductions from facts, that are so rashly assumed as these that we have mentioned!

His mythological facts are even more questionable. He seems to alter them to suit his preconceived theories, with as little scruple as Africanus and Eusebius altered the numbers in Manetho's dynasties. Take the case of the Osiris Myth. M. Bunsen admits (p. 614) that, according to Plutarch, there were three brothers, Osiris, Typhon, and Harueris, and two sisters, Isis and Nephthys, the children of Rhea, the wife of Chronos, as Mr. Cottrell writes the name, i. e., Kronos, or Saturn. These have been heretofore identified with Pluto, Neptune, and Jupiter; and both of these sets of three brothers have been supposed to be the Ham, Shem, and Japhet, the sons of Noah, of the Hebrew Scriptures. M. Bunsen, however, will not admit the possibility of the Egyp tian deities representing deified men. Accordingly, he is pleased to say that the genealogy of the monuments was different from that of Plutarch; for these represent Harueris as the son of Isis and Osiris. There were then only four children of Seb and Nutpe, the Egyptian names of Kronos and Rhea. Anubis is always represented as son of Osiris, except in one single

instance, where he is called the son of Isis."-p. 417. Nevertheless, as it will better suit his hypothesis, M. Bunsen will assume him to have been the son of Typhon and Nephthys! He has thus contrived to obtain two triads, Osiris, Isis, and their son Harueris, and Typhon, Nephthys, and Anubis; one of which triads is a repetition of the other. In the

end, then, the children of Nutpe are reduced to two-"the great goddess" and "the great god." Now, we will only remark that the assertion here made by our author, that the monuments represent Harueris as the son of Osiris, is unsupported by a single proof. The fact is the very reverse. The monuments agree with Plutarch in making him his brother. In the "Book of the Dead," (ch. lxix. col. 2) we find this sentence-" He is Osiris, the eldest of the five deities begotten by his father Seb." In "Wilkinson's Manners and Customs," plate 38, there is a representation of the five children of Seb in a cartouche-viz., Osiris, Harueris, Typhon, Isis, and Nephthys, so arranged. In the "Book of the Dead," ch. cxxxiv. col. 2, we read of the destruction of the Apopi, or gigantic serpent, by the male children of Seb; whence it follows that there were two of these, besides Typhon or Suth, who is here named as identical with, or at least allied to, the Apopi; and a little after we have this series of deities, "Seb, Nutpe, Osiris, Horus, Isis, and Nephthys." The only Horus that could be named in this place in the series, was Harueris, i. e., as the name signifies, "the elder Horus," who is a distinct mythological person from Harsiasis, the son of Isis and Osiris. The distinction between these deities has been generally recognised by those who have written on the subject; and it is very little to our author's credit that he should have confounded them, and then built so much on their assumed identity.

We must now pass to a question which, to many of our readers, will be far more interesting than any which we have yet treated of. How far do the chronological views of the three authors, whose works are before us, accord with the statements of the Bible? Assuming that the dates which

are inserted in the margin of many editions of the Bible, are fairly deduced from the statements in the text (and it is beyond dispute that they are so, within a few years more or less, the Hebrew, from which the translation is made, being of course regarded as authentic,) it is easy to answer the proposed question. M. Bunsen rejects altogether the chronology deduced from the Bible, as far as relates to its earlier periods. At the very second page of his preface, after affirming that "there is in the Old Testament no connected chronology prior to Solomon," he is pleased to say-" All that now passes for a system of ancient chronology, beyond that fixed point, is the melancholy legacy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries”—of the labours of Ussher and Blayney"a compound of intentional deceit and utter misconception of the principles of historical research." He considers the difference between the Hebrew and the Septuagint as not worth discussion, placing the origin of mankind many thousands-perhaps myriadsof years before even the Septuagint date of the Deluge. Mr. Sharpe and Mr. Osburn only treat of Egyptian history, and accordingly they do not come into collision with scriptural dates prior to the call of Abraham, or rather the migration of Jacob and his family to Egypt; but as to the interval between that event and the Exodus, neither of them adopts the computation of the margin of our Bibles.

Our readers have probably observed that there are three statements in the Bible respecting this interval. It is said that the sojourning of the children of Israel, who dwelt in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years." It is said that Moses, who conducted the Israelites out of Egypt, was the grandson of Kohath, who migrated to it ; and again it is said that the seventy souls of the house of Jacob, which came into Egypt, had multiplied, when they left it, to six hundred thousand on foot that were men, beside children.§ Now, of the three writers before us, each seizes upon a different one of these statements, and confines himself to it alone; while the maligned framers of the received chronology looked to them all, and, more

over, to the comment upon the first (which is worded in rather an ambiguous manner) given by St. Paul in his Epistle to the Galatians (iii. 17), in accordance with the translation of the Septuagint. They made the whole sojourning of Abraham and his descendants, in Egypt and Canaan, four hundred and thirty years; and, as the sojourning in Canaan is easily computed to have been two hundred and fifteen years, they estimated that in Egypt at the same number. M. Bunsen considers the equality of these two intervals to be a positive proof that one at least is fictitions; but the framers of the received chronology believed that he who could foresee distant events, and predict their times, might arrange those times according to a plan of his own; and that the equality of intervals might indicate previous design, as well as subsequent forgery. They considered, too, that the increase of population in a critical period might not be regulated by the same laws as in ordinary periods. The children of Israel, settling in a district, where, it is evident from the narrative, they were, from whatever cause, the sole, or almost the sole, inhabitants; favoured by the govern ment, as they were till shortly before the Exodus and considering it a religious duty to multiply their race, would do so with much greater rapidity than in any cases which have come within the observation of modern statists. The males would begin to have children in early youth, and continue to have them up to old age; so that, while the grandson of one of the immigrants was the leader of those who went out from Egypt, he might, with out any difficulty, have under his command the descendants of the same immigrant, or of his companions, of the twelfth generation. It is not to be supposed, again, that the men of Jacob's family con ined themselves to single wives, or to women of their own race. They had no doubt, like Jacob himself, children by their female slaves, who were probably numerous ; nor is it improbable, that, as in an instance recorded in the after history,* the male slave was occasionally allowed to marry the daughter. Taking all this into account, and that they were

under the influence of a special blessing from heaven, we cannot think that thirteen or fourteen years is too short an interval for them to double their numbers in; and this would afford them ample time to attain the number which has been recorded, even before the persecution began.

Now, what are the three views of the length of this period, which our three authors take? Mr. Osburn looks only to the statement in Exodus xii. 40. He assumes that the Israelites sojourned full four hundred and thirty years in Egypt; which, of course, is quite irreconcilable with the statement that Moses, who went out, was the grandson of Kohath, who came in. Mr. Osburn was, however, constrained to adopt this hypothesis; for, having followed the Egyptian chronology of Champollion Figeac, and so placed the Exodus at the end of the eighteenth dynasty, he would have brought his earliest kings of Egypt to the time of the Deluge, had he not interpolated these two hundred and fifteen years. They seem, indeed, too few for his purpose. We must remark, by the way, that Mr. Osburn's statement in p. 11, that those dates given by Champollion Figeac "are entirely founded upon astronomical and historical data given by ancient authors, and are, therefore, well entitled to the reader's confidence," is incorrect. M. Bunsen has pointed out very clearly the blunder which this French writer committed, and which led his brother astray, as it has since done Mr. Osburn.

Mr. Sharpe confines his attention to the statement, that the interval between the immigration of Jacob's family and the Exodus was three generations; and accordingly, he estimates this interval at about a hundred years. Of course, he considers the number of the children of Israel who went out as enormously exaggerated.

M. Bunsen, on the contrary, regards this number as perfectly correct, and fancies that the only true mode of deducing the period of the Israelites sojourning in Egypt is to compute how long it would be, according to the present rate of the increase of population, before seventy persons could multiply to about two millions. We can

not tell the number of centuries that he fixes upon, which will not be stated before the fourth book; but it is evident that he considers the two hundred and fifteen years of the received chronology to be but a small fraction of the true interval. With respect to Abraham, he intimates his opinion pretty clearly that he visited Egypt in the period, when chronology had no existence, which preceded 3,643 B.C. This, however, by no means implies that Jacob lived at such a remote period; as he seems to hold that—not two, but many generations separated these two patriarchs. As for the persons mentioned in Genesis before Abraham, “it is obvious," he says (in p. 181), "to every one," that they are all mystic" eponyme patriarchs," of cities and tribes, among whom the ancestors of Abraham had by turns sojourned!

And is this our readers will have been tempted to ask long before thisis this the Chevalier Bunsen, "whose praise is in all the churches;" who took such a prominent part at the great meeting of the Evangelical Alliance in London; and who is regarded as the main support of "orthodox" Christianity in Prussia? It is even so. For his appearance on the platform of the Alliance, we confess ourselves unable to account. Those admitted there were, it was said, only such as held "what are usually understood to be evangelical views in regard to . the divine inspiration, authority, and sufficiency, of the Holy Scriptures;" and poor Czerski was excluded for what appears to us a far less deviation from the Exeter Hall standard of Orthodoxy than that of the Prussian Ambassador. In such matters, however, disclaim it as they may, Englishmen are apt to be a little influenced by considerations of worldly rank and respectability. Ignorance of M. Bunsen's views could not be pleaded. When the Alliance met, his book had been a year published in German; the nature of its contents was pretty generally known, from the various reviews of it that had appeared in England; and it was also a subject of common conversation, that the highly-respectable publishers, who had in the first instance undertaken to bring out the present translation, had, on becoming acquainted with the author's views in respect to Biblical chronology, re

fused, at a considerable pecuniary sacrifice, to have any connexion with it. There is a mystery here which we cannot unravel. Of course, the trifling circumstance that it was the Hebrew Professor at Oxford, who first denounced the ambassador's errors, could have had no possible weight with the leaders of the Alliance. M. Bunsen, however, though far from being what the Evangelical Protestants of the British Isles would consider orthodox, is by no means to be classed with the 66 Friends of Light," or the "Ger.. man Catholics," or the great majority of the so-styled Protestants of Germany, who are infidels with scarcely any disguise. He professes to hold the kernel of revelation, and we have no right to pronounce that he does not; though we may be a little shocked at the hard blows which he gives to the shell, in order to come at this kernel.

M. Bunsen draws a broad line of distinction between externals and internals. As to the latter he admits revelation, but not, it would appear, as to the former. He speaks of Moses having "the law of God in his heart;" but, as far as he is an historian, he considers him to be merely a credible witness as to what fell under his own observation, and an investigator (Forscher) into the past, whose statements, the result of investigation, are to be valued by the critical judgments of those who came after him, just as those of any other investigator. Thus, according to him, the Bible contains a real "revelation respecting divine matters" (Offenbarung über die göttlichen Dinge-not "divine revelation," as Mr. Cottrell translates the words), mixed up with a historical and chronological element, which may or may not be true. The writers of the several books did as well as they could in respect to history; but it did not enter into the divine plan to endue them with "magical powers" for the discovery of historical truth.

We by no means adopt this low view of the historical element in the

Bible; but we are not prepared to denounce the man who does so as an infidel; and to plead a sort of præscriptio contra infideles, as a reason for not examining into the truth of his statements-nay, we will go farther. We are not prepared to say that it may not be possible to strike out a sound