Powell, Flagg, Osgood, Page, Hicks, and a host of others well known to the modern public are not wanting. The collection may be examined closely for days in succession without exhausting its resources. It is distinguished for embracing the largest and most important gallery of American historical portraits in the world.

In the department of antiquities attention is divided between the celebrated Egyptian museum of treasures, the Nineveh sculptures, presented to the society in 1857 by James Lenox, and relics of the North and South American Indians. To trace the features of the Egyptian collection it is necessary to tra

verse nearly the whole building, although the middle gallery is its special abidingplace. It will startle the bustling public to be told that by turning aside any bright morning from the mad rush in Broadway at Tenth Street, and traveling eastward two blocks, a modest edifice may be entered where one can be made contemporary, as it

One

were, with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, with the Pharaohs, the Israelites in Egypt, with Shishak, and with Zerah! But it is nevertheless true. of the vases shown in our illustration is inscribed with the cartouche (corresponding to our modern armorial bearings) of Papi, second dynasty, 2001 years B.C. Another is dated the year before Abraham's arrival in Egypt. A blue porcelain, hawk-headed vase, found in the plain of Zoan, is inscribed with the name Osorkon, the Ethiopian king Zerah of the Scriptures, who went out against Asa, king of Jerusalem, " with a host of a thousand thousand, and three hundred chariots" [II. Chronicles, xiv. 9], and was overthrown by an army of five hundred and fourscore thousand with targets

VOL XVI.-No. 3-17.

and spears, which battle took place 941 B.C. Many of these rare curiosities furnish palpable evidence of the authenticity of the Bible. The iron helmet and breastplate of scale armor of Shishak, for instance, the great Egyptian war potentate, who went against Rehoboam of Jerusalem, 971 B.C., " with twelve hundred chariots and threescore thousand horsemen," and plundered the city of all the golden shields which Solomon had made, as related in the twelfth chapter of II. Chonicles. A magnificently carved slab of limestone from the temple of Erment, represents the triumphal return of a king of the thirteenth dynasty, or possibly a more ancient Pharaoh, from a distant war, some 1850 B.C., and several fragments of linen and woolen cloth reveal the skill of the ladies in embroidery at nearly the same date. The wheel of Pharaoh's chariot corresponds in construction with those

SACRED IBIS. GODS. ALLIGATORS.

CROCODILES. TABLETS.

represented by the ancient sculptors, having six spokes. Most interesting are the clay stamps of the government of Egypt used by Terak in the twenty-fifth dynasty, 714 B.C., for securing the locks of public buildings or granaries. The fresh Nile mud was plastered over

the lock, and impressed while wet with this stamp, after which it could not, of course, be opened without breaking the seal.

With their relics and their records, as exhibited in this museum, we have a picture of the Egyptians as they were-living, breathing, thinking, moving, laughing, weeping, loving, hating, working people like ourselves. An index to their daily life and habits is found in the household implements, eatables, and articles of utility and of the toilet. The hand-mirror in the illustration is of polished bronze, mirror-glass not having yet been discovered. The lady's work-basket is a veritable curiosity, and contains a complete variety of toilet and useful articles, not least of which is a piece of linen in process of being darned or mended. The spoon carved in hard wood represents a Nubian woman swimming, her extended arms supporting a goose which is hollowed out to form the bowl of the spoon, the head

of the figure being notably well executed, with hair dressed in the style of the old Abyssinians. There are fruit-baskets made of the papyrus leaf; baskets and cords from the fiber of the date-tree; head-rests or pillows in wood; worsted knitting work, and thread in skeins; toilet-boxes, one bearing the arms of a queen; scissors, pins, and needles in bronze; small boxes with powder for the face, and black powder (called kohl) in use to blacken eyelids in the time of Jezebel; castanets used by dancers; tablets upon which the children learned to write the Greek language when it was first introduced by

the Ptolemies; curious games, and quaint wooden dolls for the amusement of children; the stylus, or Greek pen; reeds or Egyptian pens; inkstands; the papyrus to write upon; combs in wood and bronze, and dress-combs in

ivory. The jewels
worn by this an-
cient people over-
whelm us with a
sense of our own
insignificance.
Modern invention,
what is it, alas, but
reproduction! The
most unique de-
signs wrought in
gold and the various metals appear in necklaces, ear-rings, pins, bracelets,
rings, anklets, and other ornaments. In the picture may be seen the neck-
lace of the first Pharaoh of Egypt, 2750 B.C., constructed with eight oval
plates of gold-leaf, connected by a chain of thin strips of flattened gold,
each oval plate stamped with the name " Menes." Bracelets seem to have
been much worn, and the specimens are numerous; one is of twisted gold
wire, the ends terminating in a lotus-flower. Diadems of quaint device,

EGYPTIAN MIRROR OF BRONZE. LADY'S WORK-BASKET, B.C. CARVED WOODEN
SPOON. PHARAOH'S NECKLACE.

figures of divinities stamped in gold, head-dresess, clasps and amulets, are very numerous. The mosaics of that long-ago period are gems of beauty, and they seem to reveal what many men and women believed, desired, regretted, remembered, hoped, and felt. It was the sentiment of religion that first kindled mechanical agents into life. The relation of art to a country, an era, and a community is no fanciful, but an absolute element of its history.

The humor of the Egyptians is handed along through their caricatures, of which may be instanced a painting upon a fragment of limestone of a lion seated on a throne as king, and a fox as high priest offering him a picked goose and a feather fan. It is a fact worthy of notice that glassblowers are represented at their work in the hieroglyphics which were written in the time of Moses. One of the efforts at portraiture is of an Ethiopian king on glass. A funeral papyrus twenty-two feet long is intensely interesting. It is handsomely written, and illuminated with various significant illustrations. It is a specimen of what was deposited in every Egyptian tomb-a history of the deceased, with pictures of remarkable events in his life. The mummied specimens are of great variety. Crocodiles were held sacred by the ancients, since having no tongues and seeing in the water without being seen, they were esteemed emblematical of the Deity as the Divine Reason governs all in silence. Cats were consecrated to the moon. Birds, scorpions, fishes, snakes, etc., all had their charms. The Sacred Bull, Apis, however, was honored above all other animals, as an image of the soul of Osiris. The soul was supposed to migrate from one Apis to another in succession, and the death of the animal was a season of general mourning, its interment being accompanied with the most costly ceremonials. Dr. Abbott found three of these mummied treasures in the tombs at Dashour, and what renders them the more valuable is the fact that not another museum in the world possesses a perfect specimen.

In tracing the beginnings of such an institution, we find no endings. The present varied collection of literary, historic, art, scientific, and antiquarian treasures-of which vastly more can be read between than in the lines of this chapter-are but the beginnings of the great museum of the future. The monumental structure to be its proud home is beginning even now to take shape in the public mind.

Martha & Lamb

THE DEFECTS OF OUR CONSTITUTION

ITS HISTORICAL AMENDMENTS AND THEIR INADEQUACY

The Constitution of the United States, as originally framed and adopted, contained seven articles. It went into effect on the 4th March, 1789, and in less than seven months thereafter Congress found it necessary to propose twelve more articles-ten of which were promptly ratified by the requisite number of States and two rejected. On the 5th March, 1794, the eleventh amendment was submitted to the States by Congress, and the twelfth on 12th December, 1803, and both accepted. Eleven of these amendments related to new matters, not touched on in the Constitution, but the twelfth was simply a change in a part of the first section of the second article.

The Constitution is, then, the joint production of the Philadelphia Convention and Congress, and it is interesting to note the difference between the work of the two. Conscious of the difficulty of getting thirteen States to agree on such a subject, the convention was content to provide a good and safe outline of government and construct the machinery for its practical administration, and then rested. Their report to Congress shows how they regarded it, in which they say: "In all our deliberations on this subject, we kept steadily in our view, that which appears to us the greatest interest of every true American, the consolidation of our Union, in which is involved our prosperity, felicity, safety, perhaps our national existence, and thus the constitution which we now present is the result of a spirit of amity and of that mutual deference and concession which the peculiarity of our political situation rendered indispensable."

But Congress, thinking the instrument rather barren, meagre, and incomplete, set to work to embody in it great principles of civil liberty and fundamental safeguards. The amendments, from one to ten inclusive, are in some sort an American Magna Charta, and embrace declarations of human rights and restraints on the power of the new government. them are found asserted:

1. Freedom of religious belief.

2. Freedom of speech.

3. Freedom of the press.

4. Right of petition.

5. Right of the people to keep and carry arms.

In