carry it, 2,000 men, all sailors, were employed for three entire years. The length, he tells us, was twenty-one cubits, the width fourteen, and the height eight. It would have been carried further, but that the architect is said to have sighed deeply through fatigue, and the king thought this a bad omen. Further, one man who used a lever,

was crushed to death, and the king, Amasis, abandoned the enterprise. At Butos, near one of the mouths of the Nile, there is a shrine of a goddess-Latona-composed of a single block of stone, brought from Elephantina. Savary declares this rock to have been 240 feet in circumference. This mass of stone, said to be the heaviest weight ever moved by human power, was floated down the Nile on rafts, several thousand men being employed in the conveyance.* By what strange means were these things accomplished? Were not the accounts confirmed by the monuments, which are still to be seen, no one could credit them: the secret of this wonderful power has doubtless been lost. Savary says that Archimedes got his first idea of the screw from Egypt. The walls of edifices are often found to be twentyfour feet in thickness, the very rubble-work inside being frequently composed of stones which modern builders would regard as large enough for any building purposes.

The Obelisks seem peculiar to Egyptian architecture, nor can their effect be rightly appreciated in the absence of the ordinary accessories. The one in Paris, brought from Egypt some years ago, appears but of small moment comparatively, because striped of its proper surroundings. It is, however, of rare syenite stone, contains 1,600 hieroglyphics, is seventy-two feet high, seven feet nine inches at the base, and commemorates the good deeds and victories of Sesostris. This year it is about to be removed from its place near the Place de la Concorde to decorate the coming Great Exhibition. This monolith was presented to France by Mehemet Ali, and another of eighty feet high was given to England at the same time; but to the present, the last has kept its old quarters, for England has not yet decided that it is worth the cost of carriage. For ourselves, we should like to see this interesting piece of Egyptian art decorating one of the squares of London. The simple, solid character of the Egyptian architecture is often much relieved by the rich decorations of the columns, the capitals, the cornices, the entablatures, the ceilings, and the massive porticoes. In the tombs are myriads of finely executed statuettes, made of bronze and baked earth, and the Egyptian enamelling cannot be surpassed by the best of our modern artists. In the statues we see too little of the chisel, the magic of which displays the varied prominences of the flesh and the play of the muscles; but we find the finish of the polish which aids the stone to resist atmospheric influences, and helps to give it durability. It appears to have been the custom of the Egyptians to crown each Pyramid with a colossal figure-perhaps, of the king who built it-proportioned in size to the vast pedestal on which it rested; but none of these remain, though, as we have seen, Herodotus saw the two which in his day ornamented the Pyramids which stood in the waters of Lake Moris.

Strange to say, a number of statues of another style of architec

* See "Herodotus," book ii., clv.

ture were discovered by the Frenchman, M. Mariette, in the Serapium of Memphis. One of these-the Hicrogrammaticus-is now at the Louvre. It was discovered eighty feet beneath the sand in one of the most ancient tombs, through which passed an avenue of sphinxes. This statue is not in the plain, stiff-figure style, but a real sculpture, life-like, a study from nature, and evidently a portrait; a real man in a sitting posture, with crossed legs, and a scroll of papyrus lying on his knee. Whence came this figure, with the rest of them? Some have suggested that it belongs to a period when Egyptian art was in its glory, and that the style with which we are familiar is only a specimen of Egyptian art when it had fallen to decay through the tyranny of its early sovereigns. Doubtless many wonders are yet to come from beneath the sands of this strange country, but would it not be reasonable to attribute these statues to the ingenuity of some old Greek?

The Sphinxes of Egypt are only second in interest to the Pyramids, and the celebrated one near the Great Pyramid of Cheops is of almost astounding magnitude. In 1815, M. Caviglia, an Italian of untiring energy, who has done much service in Egyptian explorations, with Mr. Salt, an Englishman, found this huge Sphinx nearly buried in sand. For several months, with from sixty to one hundred men, Caviglia laboured on till he had exposed the base of the figure, and cleared away the soil or sand for 100 feet in front. The body is in a cumbent posture, and the legs stretch out to an amazing length. Other sculptured figures were found in front of the great one, amongst them lions couchant and smaller sphinxes. On an altar burnt offerings had evidently been offered. About the great Sphinx numerous Greek and Latin inscriptions were found, many of them having reference to the early Emperors. The paws of the statue are thrown out fifty feet in front. The breast, shoulders, and neck are those of a man, and the back is that of a lion. The head looks large and heavy, but the face is placid, though the ears stand out considerably, and the features are ancient Egyptian. Once it was, doubtless, worshipped as an idol. The head and neck alone are twenty-seven feet high. Across the breast it measures thirty-three feet, while the whole figure is about 130 feet long. A head-dress, which has the appearance of an old wig, projecting about the ears, adorns the cranium. Some Vandal Mussulman has broken the nose, who would have been suitably rewarded by a return of the compliment on his own nasal prominence. Though couchant, its height is not less than sixty feet. The greater part of the stone is of the kind commonly found in Egypt, but the upper ones have been brought from a distance. Since Caviglia and Salt cleared it to the base, it has been half re-buried by the drifting sand, but M. Mariette, the enterprising Frenchman, has bared it again, and discovered, amongst other antiquities, a colossal statue of Osiris, composed of twenty-eight blocks of stone. Hieroglyphic inscriptions make it certain that the great Sphinx is as old as Thothmosis IV., who lived 1,450 years before Christ, and it is not improbable that it was erected at or about the time of the erection of the Great Pyramid. Beneath the statue, was discovered by Caviglia, a small temple, with many of the usual accompaniments. This chapel is entered by descending a flight of

steps, between the huge fore-legs of the image. But the vast number of remains found in the neighbourhoods of Djizeh, Abousir, Sakhara, and Dashour, would fill a volume merely to catalogue, and the bare hieroglyphic inscriptions on them would fill thousands of volumes. In the words of Champollion, the great decipherer of Egyptian hieroglyphics, we may say, "that no people, either ancient or modern, ever

conceived the art of architecture on so sublime a scale as the ancient Egyptians. Their conceptions were those of men a hundred feet high, and the imagination which in Europe rises far above our porticoes, sinks abashed at the foot of the 140 columns of the hypostile hall at Karnac."

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Before concluding this article on the mechanical skill of this ancient people, we shall record only a few facts in relation to the great Canal, which started from Bubastis, and ran across the country through the Bitter Lakes, a few miles north of modern Suez, into the Red Sea, a distance of over ninety miles. This Canal was projected and commenced, but not completed, by Pharaoh Necho, B.C. 630. The country was conquered by the Persians, and Darius, son of Hystaspes, fully carried the project into execution. Herodotus, fifty years after the death of Darius, saw the Canal in full working order and Strabo, just before the Christian era, saw it covered with vessels. The width was from 100 to 200 feet-much wider in the lakes-and the depth about thirty feet. Two good-sized ships, of those times, could sail abreast in its waters, and the largest ships-the myriophoroi, found depth enough to float. "In four days," says Herodotus, แ a vessel could pass through it." We have accounts of this canal from Aristotle, Pliny, Strabo, Herodotus, and Diodorus. By the Ptolemies it was well kept, and even improved; the Roman Emperors made additions to it; the Khalifs for a time kept it open, but at length left it to decay, and about the beginning of the seventeenth century navigation was no longer practicable. For about a thousand years it has been closed, and now only some unmistakable traces of this magnificent work of art remain.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF CONSCIENCE.

BY THE REV. JOSEPH BATE.

PHILOSOPHERS differ in their analyses and definitions of conscience. Seneca, in his epistle, remarks, "There is a holy spirit residing in us, who watches and observes both our good and evil actions, and will treat us after the same manner that we treat him." Origen thought conscience a spirit or genius associated to our souls, to guide and tutor them." "Conscience," said Philo, "is the little consistory of the soul. Conscience is a mille testes, a thousand witnesses, for or against a man. Conscience is a sort of record, and whatsoever it sees it writes down; and conscience is always as quick in writing as the sinner can be in sinning. The very heathen could say that conscience was a god to every man." Dr. Francis Hutcheson, for some time Professor of Moral Philosophy in Glasgow, termed conscience "a moral sense," or "moral taste." Writers, generally, speak of conscience as one faculty

-intellectual or emotional, or both. Mackintosh, however, regards it as a class of emotions, rather derivative than original. Payne looks upon conscience "as purely impulsive; not a moral guide which is supplied by our judgment, but a moral spring, impelling men to do what judgment tells them ought to be done." Conscience," says Whewell, "refers etymologically to the reflex attention which the mind gives to its own condition or acts. Primarily, it is identical with self-knowledge or self-consciousness, and such is still the general meaning of the corresponding Greek, Latin, and French words (suneidesis, conscientia, conscience). By early Christian moralists, however, and even by heathen writers, the terms were used to indicate not only consciousness of our own acts, but the faculty which recognizes the law that is to try them, and the judge which inflicts the penalty due to disobedience." "We all know," says Archbishop Trench," that this word conscience comes from con and scio, but what does that 'con' intend? Conscience is not merely that which I know, but that which I know with some other; for this prefix cannot, as I think, be esteemed superfluous, or taken to imply merely that which I know with or to myself. That other knower whom the word implies is God; his law making itself known and felt in the heart; and the work of conscience is the bringing of the evil of our acts and thoughts as a lesser, to be tried and measured by this as a greater,— the word growing out of and declaring that awful duplicity of our moral being which arises from the presence of God in the soul; our thoughts-by the standard which that presence implies, and as the result of a comparison with it—'accusing or excusing one another."" However men differ concerning the nature of conscience, and the precise place it occupies in the mental constitution, they all agree as to the fact of its existence, the sphere of its action, and the supremacy of its dominion. Some assert conscience to be an original power, while others maintain that it is not an independent faculty, but a well-instructed understanding and a rightly-biased heart. As Butler observes, "Anyhow, if it is a faculty, it is a monarch faculty placed within us, to regulate all under principles, passions, and motives of action."

Conscience is a universal faculty in man. When the mental faculties have arrived at some degree of maturity, then conscience develops itself. Its strength varies according to the circumstances in which men are placed. Among nations favoured with the light of Revelation, it exists in a much greater perfection than among the dark, untutored tribes of savage and uncivilized men. In the bosom of the true Christian it is the vicegerent of Deity, and exerts wonderful energy. If a Christian departs from the moral law, it speaks as in awful thunders, "the soul that sinneth it shall die." "If conscience," says Bishop Butler, "had strength as it has right-had it power as it has manifest authority-it would absolutely govern the world." Conscience has a place in every sane mind, and a voice in every human bosom.

Conscience has moral functions. It discriminates the moral character of human actions. Men universally recognize a distinction between the good and the evil in actions. "Cast your eyes over all nations of the world," says Rousseau, "and all the histories of

nations. Amid so many inhuman and absurd superstitions, amid that prodigious diversity of manners and characters, you will find everywhere the same principles and distinctions of moral good and evil. The paganism of the ancient world produced indeed abominable gods, who, on earth, would have been shunned or punished as monsters, and who offered, as a picture of supreme happiness, only crimes to commit or passions to satiate. But Vice, armed even with this authority, descended in vain from the eternal abode. She found in the heart of man a moral instinct to repel her. The continence of Zenocrates was admired by those who celebrated the debaucheries of Jupiter. The chaste Lucretia adored the unchaste Venus. The most intrepid Roman sacrificed to fear. He invoked the god who dethroned his father, and died without a murmur by the hand of his 0wn. The most contemptible divinities were served by the greatest men. The holy voice of Nature, stronger than that of the gods, made itself heard, and respected, and obeyed on earth, and seemed to banish to the confines of heaven guilt and the guilty." Similar passages abound in the works of ancient ethical writers, to wit, Plato Aristotle, and Cicero. The Apostle Paul, in writing to the Romans, gives similar evidence. "For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these are a law unto themselves; which show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another." (Rom. ii. 14, 15.)

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But what is the criterion by which conscience determines the character of a moral act? What enables us to regard certain actions as good and others as evil? Right reason," says Cudworth, "shows us the difference between right and wrong." But Adam Smith very properly remarks, "It is altogether absurd and unintelligible to suppose that the first perceptions of right and wrong can be derived from reason. These first perceptions cannot be the object of reason, but of immediate sense and feeling." Dr. Samuel Clarke conceived that there was an eternal and intrinsic fitness in the things considered as right, and an unfitness in the wrong, with a regard to which the will of God always chooses, and which ought, likewise, to determine the will of all subordinate rational beings." Some have entertained the notion that a regard to self-interest is the only ultimate rule of right, which varies in meaning according as we look at self, exclusive or inclusive of the well-being of other men. The principle of utility as the basis of morals has been propounded by others. The theory of intuitive morality has also had its adherents. They have held that human nature is endowed with an instinct which at once approves the right and disapproves the wrong, and that our conscience is sufficient to decide the matter. But what one conscience may deem right another may regard as wrong. To escape this difficulty, Dr. Whewell sets up a supreme or standard conscience by which the individual conscience may be squared and corrected; but he has not informed us who the men are whose conscience is to form the standard. Unquestionably, the Bible, and the Bible alone, is the proper standard of morals. Conscience in the mental constitution sits like a chief justice on the bench, pronouncing judicial decisions. "Conscience," says Dr. Angus, "is supreme among the powers of the soul." It must be re

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