the summit of the Pyramids, all, in their accounts of these monuments, must stoop to the same matters of fact. The measurements given by Herodotus correspond pretty accurately with those taken in our own days. And recent researches have confirmed the correctness of the tradition which he states, attributing the Great Pyramid to Cheops, or Suphis, a king of the fourth dynasty, from Menes, the first sovereign of Egypt. Amid the various and uncertain opinions as to the age of this monument, we are fully justified in placing its date at about 4,000 years ago. This is not far from the period fixed by Wilkinson, whose opinion is worth as much, probably, as that of every one else, on such a question. The height of the Pyramid of Cheops, perpendicularly, is about 480 feet. Each of its four sloping and nearly equilateral sides measures about 760 feet in length of face, or oblique height. The width of its base is 747 feet.* After gazing for an hour from the summit, on the wide prospect which it commands of twelve leagues around, the most pleasing part of which, to my eye, is where the valley of the Nile broadens into the Delta, below Cairo, I descended to explore the inner Some critics have instanced as an inaccuracy in Herodotus, that he gives the height of the pyramid equal to its width of base,-kal vos loov:-if, however, this may be understood of the oblique height, he is pretty correct.-See Herod. ii. 124 recesses of the structure. The entrance is on the north side, about forty feet from the ground. A mound, formed by accumulations of sand and of rubbish fallen from the upper part of the pyramid, has risen nearly to an equal height. The aperture is less than four feet square, and the long narrow passage or gallery to which it introduces diminishes gradually in height, as the explorer advances, till it brings him from a stooping to an almost creeping posture. The sensation experienced in the close atmosphere, thickened by the smoke of our candles, resembles that which one feels in following the course of a copper-lode in a Cornish mine. Descending at first at an angle of some twenty-five degrees, for about seventy-five feet, and then ascending an opposite slope at an equal angle, for above one hundred feet, I arrived at a point where a horizontal passage, or "cross-cut," leads off to a chamber, called the "Queen's," situated in the centre of the pyramid. This chamber is about nineteen feet long, by seventeen wide, and fourteen high. I retraced my steps from it along the horizontal passage back to the point of its divergence from the ascending one; which, about six feet higher, passes into another and much larger gallery, six feet broad, and fully twenty-five feet high, leading also upwards for about one hundred and fifty feet. Having mounted thus far, we came to G a second horizontal passage, conducting to a larger chamber, called the "King's." It is cased with red granite, and near one of its walls is a sarcophagus of the same material, without a lid. On our return down, near the part where the larger and the smaller galleries run into each other, I turned aside a few steps to look into a murky pit, like a well, that yawned deeply below me. There is a sense of undefined vastness and mystery in the interior of the pyramid, far more impressive to the imagination than even the full view of its outer bulk. The thick darkness of the place, its long galleries, seeming to stretch away without end, chambers adapted to no mortal tenant, and "passages that lead to nothing," produce a feeling of oppression on the spirits, greater than that of the close and heavy atmosphere on the lungs. On emerging to the light and air of day, I turned my steps towards a monstrous object, which, at first, absorbed as I was in contemplating the mountain-masses of the Pyramids, I had scarcely heeded, -the Sphinx. It is about 700 paces distant from the Pyramid of Cheops, to the east, and facing eastwards. As I now approached, with a fixed gaze, it presented to me an image more hideous than my imagination had ever conceived. The form of a lion, buried in the sands up to the chest, yet pro trudes sufficiently to give to view its total length of one hundred and forty feet and upwards. It is surmounted by a human head, measuring more than a hundred feet in circumference; its cheeks twenty feet across; the height from the brow to the chin, twentyfive feet. The throat is much worn away, so as to form steps, by which I climbed up to the crown of the head. It is only at some distance, however, that the countenance produces its full effect. The colossal features, originally regular and symmetrical in character, retain, even in their present battered condition, mutilated by time and other enemies, a certain indescribable mild look, a kind of treacherous calm, more sinister and repulsive than the fiercest and grimmest aspect "Which fables yet have feign'd or fear conceived, Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimæras dire." It may seem puerile to ascribe such a character to that which is, after all, but a rock carved by art and man's device; but the impression produced by it can hardly be conceived by any who have not seen a monster of such enormous proportions, alone on the sands of the wilderness, and the shades of night falling. It seemed to me to represent the very demon of the desert, looking out over the scene of its power. I longed to shake off the chilly feeling caused by contact with works which appear vestiges of a race different in passions and nature from mortals of our days; and I felt great pleasure in cantering back, with Ibrahim, towards Cairo, to scenes which speak of human life and sympathies. Thursday, March 15th.-Egypt, the land of tombs, is ill-suited to a solitary traveller. Chateaubriand, after wandering lonely for years in the forests of America, seems never to have laboured under the weight of solitude so much as when he sadly records "les sept mortelles journées" of his passage up the Nile to Cairo. He felt, I suspect, little disposition to ascend the stream any higher, and was easily reconciled to the inundation, on plea of which he contented himself with a distant view even of the Pyramids. Some lines recur to me here which I little thought, when I penned them as the commencement of a college exercise, that I should ever recite in the region to which they refer:— Stranger, whose solitary footsteps tread Ask'st thou the chiefs who gave these marvels birth, Lord Prudhoe, who has lately returned to |