ledged; men have uniformly perceived the superior facilities which a writer possesses, for obtaining alike the suffrage of the wise, and approbation of the multitude, when recommended by an easy, graceful, and elegant phraseology, over him, who comes disguised under a harsh, turgid, or obscure diction, through the medium of which his matter, perhaps intrinsically ex cellent and important, can never radiate with that lustre, which from its nature it is fully entitled to do.

They have found that though manner is subordinate to matter, no attentions of this sort are beneath the greatest of minds; and that the most enlightened and thoughtful men of antiquity, have expended adequate labour on their style; that the greatest philosophers even have laboured to make the structure of their sentences peculiarly agreeable to the reader of

taste.

The fine genius and penetrating intellect of Tully (if we may revert for examples to ancient times), would never have shone out with that splendour and powerful effect, had it not been harmonized with all the charms and dignity of style: nor would the sublime and high-soaring speculations of Plato, probably have obtained for him the rank which he has since held, were it not for the attractive dress in which he has clothed them. Although, therefore, we see some writers who have gained immortality, and whose fame rather increases than diminishes with the progress of society, whose performances labour under the greatest defects and even obscurities of style, this circumstance affects not the general question. We make all allowance in their favour, as well from the transcendant excellence of their ideas, as from the imperfect state of the medium through which they disclosed them; knowing, that had they lived in a more advanced age, their composition would have worn a more ameliorated aspect.

In a language like our own, in which, during the lapse of five centuries, poverty of expression has been ripening into copiousness, and mediocrity into excellence, the two first of these presented few vestiges of philological improvement. Scarcely could the utmost literary efforts of our Chroniclers be said to emancipate from a now almost unintelligible phraseology,

or materially improve the multiform dialect of Saxon times. The third, however, introduced more active and enlightened views; since which epoch, the labours of our critics, and the practical good sense and good taste of our best writers, have introduced a standard of composition, at once elaborate and easy-and have placed, it may be said, the dignity and strength of the British period upon a basis, beyond the power of slight innovating causes to destroy or deface.

The greatest authors which England has seen in these latter days, have taught by their precept, no less than by their example, that a diligent care in polishing what is designed to be the vehicle of their thoughts, and the medium for perpetuating their opinions, is no subordinate duty in an

author.

These liberal sentiments, however, with regard to composition, are of more recent growth than the first improvements of style. Their rise, among the most discerning, cannot be said to have taken place long ere the close of the 17th century, until the period when a correct mode of think ing had formed the tastes of literary men, and an improving knowledge of the quantity and cadence, and scope of our language had, alike, made them sensible of its complete adequacy for every classical purpose.

It is to be regretted (and it must in a certain degree ever be regretted by all who cultivate their native literature), that ere philology was so extensively studied as a science, many authors should have written, whose intrinsic excellency of matter has drawn the admiration and esteem of posterity. Works, consequently, that from the celebrity and rank of their authors, should rather have shone in all the beauties of an Augustan age, will ever carry with them marks of the impotency and crampness of the style then in use. It may be thought also, that in a certain degree this may have confirmed the distates which foreigners have sometimes professed to feel for our literature. Finding in our earlier Writers, who are, with us, ranked very high in our annals notwithstanding their minor blemishes, a phraseology not conformed to classical purity, their higher beauties have often been overlooked, and themselves, at once, styled barbarous and obscure.

Among

Among the Writers likewise of the first part of the 17th century (and also prior to that period), a diversity of style, it may be said, prevailed not so much often in correctness or grammatical precision, as in a certain energy and weight of writing which was conspicuous under all other obstacles. The superiority which distinguished some over others, was not so much owing solely to their degrees of talent; it was rather attributable to a judicious arrangement of words, and to their force of expression-advantages which do not always attend strength of genius.

If we revert to the 16th century, and read with any attention the performances of Raphael Hollinshed, and Roger Ascham-writers contem porary with each other-we shall find that a different style of phraseology characterizes them. The first, grave and measured in his pace, plods his dull round of monotonous phrases with inanimate industry. The second, although he equally abounds in obso lete orthography, has more life in his sentences, with a certain terseness and brevity of expression, which carries the reader forward with a far greater degree of interest. The specimens which follow may serve, perhaps, to exemplify the difference of their re spective styles.

"But when I consider," says Holinshed, at the close of his Dedication, "the singular affectione that your ho

nour doth bear to those that anie wise will trauell to set forth such profitable things as lie hidden, and thereunto dop weigh on mine owne behalfe, my bounden dutie and gratefull minde to such a one as bath so manie and sundrie waies benefited me, that otherwise can make no recompense, I cannot but cut off all such occasion of doubt, and thereupon exhibit it, such as it is, and so penned as it is, onto whome, if it may seeme in any wise acceptable, I have my whole desire. As for the curious, and such as as can rather euill favouredlie espie, than skillfullie correct an error, and sooner carpe at annother man's dooings, than publish any thing of their owne, keep. ing themselves close, with an obscure admiration of learning and knowledge among the common, sort, I force not what they saie hereof, or whether it doo please or displease them; all is one to me; sith I referre my whole trauelle in gratification of your honour, and such as are of experience to consider of my trauelle, and of the large scope of things

proposed in this Treatise, of whome my service in this behalfe may be taken in good parte, that I will for my full recompense and large guerdon of my labours."..

In this quotation, though the sense be intelligible, the words hang so heavily and sluggishly together, that no impressions of interest is left on the mind of the reader. Ascham,, who follows, discourses with more ease; his phraseology (though not much more correct) flows with more life, and (if the term be allowed) dispatch; exhibits greater method and conciseness, and is more calculated to ? excite the attention of the casual student.

"Not long after our sitting down," says this critic, in his introductory chapter, "I have strange news brought me, sayth M. Secretary, this morning, that diuers schollars of Eaton be runne away from the schole, for feare of beating. Whereupon, M. Secretary tooke occasion to wishe, that some more discretion were in many scholemasters in using correction, than commonly there is," who many tymes punishe rather the weakenes of nature, then the fault of might yet prove well, bee driven to hate the scholer; whereby many scholers that learning before they knowe what learn= ing meaneth; and so are made willing to forsake their booke, and be glad to be put to any other kinde of living."

In turning over the pages of Ra leigh and Hooker, likewise, a considerable diversity of style may be discovered; equal solemnity of tone, perhaps, here marks the measured flow of their periods, but the eloquence of the former appears in the main, more manly and forcible than that of the latter.

The deep and comprehensive genius of the Historian of the world, occasionally shines forth amidst the comparatively barbarous diction in which he was compelled to clothe his thoughts. The following commencement of his Preface cannot be read without interest:

"How unfit and how unworthy a choice I have made of myself, to undertake a worke of this mixture; mine^ owne reason, though exceeding weake, hath sufficiently resolved mee; for, had it beene forgotten then, with my first dawne of day, when the light of com mon knowledge began to open itselfe to my younger yeares, and before any wound received either from fortune or time, I

might yet well have doubted that the darkness of age and death would have covered both it and mee long before. For the performance, I confesse it would have better sorted with my disabilitie, to have set together (as I could) the unjointed and scattered frame of our Eng lish affaires, than of the universall; in

whome bad there beene no other defect

(who am all defect) than the time of the day, it were enough-the day of a tempestuous life drawn on to the very evening ere I began. But those inmost and soul-piercing wounds which are ever aching while uncured, with the desire to satisfie those few friends which I have tryed by the fire of adversitie; the former enforcing, the latter pursweeding, hath caused me to make my thoughts legible, and myselfe the subject of every opinione, wise or weake."

This, on a comparison with a passage from the "Ecclesiastical Policy," will be found, perhaps, to present a more emphatic and dignified phraseology; although each may possess an equal share of grammatical fluency, perhaps even of felicity of arrangement. The following is from the 5th Book of that well-known and highly

celebrated work :

Touching our conformity with the Church of Rome, as also of the difference between some of the Reformed Churches and ours, that which generally hath been already answered, may serve for answer to that exception which in these two respects they take particularly against the form of our Common Prayer. To say, that in nothing they may be followed which are of the Church of Rome, were violent and extream. Some things they do, in that they are men, in that they are wise men and Christian men ; some things in that they are men misled and blinded with error. As far as they follow reason and truth, we fear not to follow the self-same paths wherein they have come, and to be their followers. When Rome keepeth that which is ancienter and better, others whome we

much more affect leaving it for better aud changing it for worse, we had rather follow the perfections of them whome we like not, than in defect resemble them whome we love." E. P.

(To be continued.)

unlearned; and unmasked the artful superstition of past and modern ages. His visit to the Pyramid or Tomb of Cephrenes, first opened by Belzoni, has renewed the diligence of the Antithe Chronologer. quary, and awakened the surprise of Much has been

conjectured as to the origin and object of the three Pyramids near Memphis, although there are others in Hindostan and other places-tradition from the Egyptians to the Greeks, and from them to modern travellers, has stated them to have been erected in order to perpetuale the memory of their most ancient and celebrated Kings, Cheops, Cephrenes, and Mycerinus; but it was left until the present century, for a Major in the British army to develope the mystery, and to show that if those Kings had their own vanity in view, that was, as it should doubtless have been, but a mere adjunct to the more important design-and that Herodotus has now met with another testimony to contradict

his idle tale. He told the world what he had been informed, and no doubt, as the story had attracted his own astonishment, he was unwilling that posterity should not partake with him the pleasure he had experienced.He tells us (lib. 2. c. 124. 8.) and Diodorus (1.57.) corroborates—and these grave historiaus, it is no wonder, had power to deceive the searching and patient mind of Rollin himself (vol. I. 86), and those altogether carried away the active and zealous penetration of Denon, who visited the spot with Buonaparte's army in 1798, and all seem to have remained satisfied with the old story-that Cheops and his brother Cephrenes successively reigned over Egypt, and both of them, striving which should distinguish himself most, by a barefaced impiety towards the gods, and a barbarous inhumanity to men, resolved by some means to perpetuate their ill fame to all succecuing ages, and for this purpose adopted the means of a most durable monument which should defy the waste of time. As Cheops reigned: 50 years, and his brother 56 years, they had a long opportunity of me-thodizing their plan, and in some respects of judging of its effect. During 20 years they employed 100,000 workmen in the first building, and it was pursued, notwithstanding the immense

labour

upon the waters, and was bewailed as dead, until his liberation was celebrated as a restoration to life; these lamentations and rejoicings became the rites of funereal obsequies, and the days of thanksgiving were cele brated in high places, and afterwards on the summit of these Pyramids."Osiris," or as his name is properly written Isiris, stands connected, in the theology of Egypt, with his consort Isis and his ship Argo; just as Iswara in the theology of Hindostan, stands connected with his consort Isi and his ship Argha. Hence originated those Legends of the Arkite family being preserved in a great seagirt cavern during the prevalence of the Deluge; and hence natural caverns (in natural high places) came to be deemed peculiarly sacred.-But the Patriarch, under the name of Osiris, was the reputed first King of Egypt, just as under some other naine, he was the reputed first King of every other country. Hence the pagan priesthood, truly enough, according to their enigmatical mode of expressing themselves, told the inquisitive Greeks that each Pyramid was the tomb of a very ancient King. By this ancient King they meant the hero god Osiris; and his tomb was such another tomb as the Cretans shewed. for the sepulture of their chief hero god Zan or Jupiter: but the Greeks took them literally; and thence handed down to posterity that the Pyra mids were literal tombs of certain literal Egyptian Kings."

J. Smith, in Galic Antiquities, p. 3, furnishes the continuation of this conformity of pagan mythology :-"The religion of the Druids is allowed to have been of the same antiquity with the Magi of Persia, Brachmans of India, and Chaldees of Babylon and Assyria. (Orig. Cont. Cels. 1. 5. Laert. in proæm. Clem. Alex. &c.) Between the tenets of all these sects, in their earliest and most genuine state, there seems to have been such conformity as plainly evinces that they all spring from the same common root, the religion of Noah and of the Antedilu-, vians. Wherever the Celtic tribes, or posterity of Japhet, emigrated, they carried this religion along with them; so that it was of the same extent with their dominions; according to the lowest calculations, those reach ed from the Danube to the Atlantic,

and from the Mediterranean to the Baltic Sea." Anc. Un. Hist. 2. 12. And if hymns were sung over a hero's tomb, they would infer it was in honour of some god, whose name they would gather from some other circumstance. Ibid. 15.

We now arrive at the anecdote which discovers the fact.

On March 2, 1818, the long-closed Pyramid of Cephrenes was opened by the skill and perseverance of Mr. Bel zoni. Like the large Pyramid, it was found to contain a dark chamber and a stone sarcophagus; but the sarcophagus, instead of being empty, was occupied by a few bones. These bones, according to the vulgar notion that each Pyramid is a literal tomb of a literal Egyptian Sovereigo, were naturally enough supposed by Mr. B. to be human; and the question was now thought to be determined in fas vour of the old opinion handed down to us by the Greek writers., Soon after the opening of the Pyramid, however, it was entered by Major Fitz-Clarence; who sacrilegiously brought away with him a portion of the supposed venerable remains of the primeval Cephrenes. So royal a fragment of the mighty dead would befit none save a royal cabinet. The august bone w was reverently presented to the Prince Regent ; and the Prince committed the relick of his defunct brother-sovereign, big with the fate; of jarring systems, to the inspection of Sir Everard Home. Not more fatal to the antique shield of the renowned Dr. Cornelius, was the im pious scouring of the cleanly housemaid, a scouring which converted the Erugo-stripped buckler iuto a sconce, than the inspection of an accomplished English surgeon proved to the thigh-bone of Cephrenes. The relick turned out to be, not the bone of a man, but the bone of a cow!".

Mr. Faber then proceeds to account for the application of the Tomb to a god Osiris, and to a man or King, at the same time, and shows that incarnations of this kind were general."Every avatar of Buddha is a man's every avatar of Osiris was a bull; if then, Osiris was even supposed to become incarnate in the figure of a man, the identical superstition which placed the dead body of the bull Mnenis in the sepulchral chamber of the Cephrenic Pyramid, would cer