fortified city. That city is built like an Acropolis, upon an eminence, and one of the masterly effects of the sculptor's hand is the representation of the chariot horses of Sesostris straining up the sides of the acclivity, and exhibiting the natural play of muscle, produced by that action, while in pursuit of the enemy. The Egyptian infantry, in well disciplined and double column, are advancing au pas de charge for the purpose of carrying the heights, bearing their spears at a protruded angle, as modern troops do the bayonet, previous to the deathful close. The archers, and other portions of the army, are in the act of turning the enemy on the other side of the town, so as to cut off their retreat, and take them at once, in front, flank, and rear. Nothing can more clearly prove the allegation of the historian, that Sesostris brought the art of war to high perfection, than these series of manœuvres.

The river, which crosses the plain, surrounds the Acropolis of the fortified city, on all sides; but on one side is low and fordable. Every battlement, rampart, and turret of the city, is thronged with " fierce faces, threatening war," and warriors, with their shields locked together, awaiting the storming assault of the victor. The battle is protracted along the banks of the river, which is choaked with thronging chariots, plunging steeds, the dying, and the dead. Across this river, Sesostris, in person, in advance of the army and the body-guard, is driving the routed enemy. Such is the picture of the battle, as far as Champollion's livraisons go, and we have sketched it for the especial purpose of drawing an inference, with which we shall conclude. We can scarcely doubt, that during the description, the classical reader has been struck with the striking resemblance which it bears to the great final battle of the Iliad. Mr. Hamilton, an eye-witness of these details, on the spot itself, could not avoid drawing the same conclusion.

He says, speaking of the same sculptures which cover the eastern wing of the Propylon, at Louqsor, "it was impossible to "view and reflect on a picture so copious and detailed, without "fancying that I here saw the original of many of Homer's "battles (the single combat of Hector and Achilles, the battle "at the Scamander, and the walls of Troy); the portraiture "of some of the principal narratives of Herodotus, and some

"of the principal ground-works of the description of Dio"dorus." There are many more points of conformity than those which were noticed by Mr. Hamilton; and we doubt not, while passing them in review, that Homer (whose visit to Thebes is rendered quite certain not only by his description of it in the Iliad, to which we have referred, but by two other references which he makes to it in the Odyssey) borrowed his details of some of his most striking scenes on the plains of Troy, from these most extraordinary battle pieces. In the foregoing description, the splendid passage in Homer describing Achilles driving the Trojans, in confusion, into the river Xanthus, will scarcely escape the recollection of our readers, even in the inferior form of Pope's spirited, but inaccurate translation, "So plunged in Xanthus by Achilles' force,

Roars the resounding surge with man and horse," &c.

The other points of conformity are striking and numerous. The final battle between Sesostris and the hero chief of the hostile nation, before the walls of his city, bears close affinity to the last conflict between Achilles and Hector. He is represented in the act of being pierced in the thorax by the javelin of Sesostris, when attempting flight, and his limbs relaxing under him in the agonies of death. We are recording now only the portion of the battle described by Champollion; but there are accessaries to the description on the walls of the great propylon at Louqsor, approaching still nearer to the details of the last battle of the Iliad, and which, we presume, remain to be produced in subsequent livraisons. Achilles dragged the body of Hector, after fastening it with cords to the back of his car, round the walls of Troy. Sesostris treats the chief of. Scheti in the same manner. He is represented bound to the back of the car, which is empty, awaiting the ascent of the victor-his horses being scarcely restrained from rushing forward to execute the outrage, while his two attendants stand at their heads.

The exquisite knowledge of anatomy exhibited by Homer in the various wounds which he imparts, and the various forms of death which he describes, has been dwelt on with enthusiastic repetition by Dacier, Scarron, Pope, and other commentators. But in these Egyptian battle-pieces the same wounds and the same deaths are detailed with equal accuracy, and in as

profuse a variety; a circumstance, indeed, which may be readily inferred from Egypt's attested knowledge of medicine and chemistry, but more especially from its demonstrated knowledge of anatomy. In one case, the driver of a chariot, struck by a javelin, falls headlong from his car, exactly in the manner which prompts the scoffing ridicule of Diomed, in Homer; but we might weary attention with these coincidences: there are two more which are remarkable, and have not yet been. noticed. Minerva is represented by Homer, sometimes in the form of a cormorant, sometimes in that of a vulture, watching the progress of the battle. In one case, she gives Achilles the advantage over Hector, by restoring his discharged javelin to his hand. In these battles, Minerva in the form of a vulture (the origin, probably, of the eagle superstitiously supposed to hover over the Roman conqueror) hovers over the head of Sesostris, sometimes bearing his halberd-formed spear, at others, the royal standard of the palm branch. But another instance of supernatural machinery, as in Homer's battles, is depicted in the battle piece on the walls of the propylon of Louqsor. The phoenix appears to Sesostris in the midst of the thronging rage of the battle. It is not represented on this occasion as a crowned bird, like an eagle, or vulture, having wings of scarlet and gold, and invested throughout its brilliant plumage with the four sacred colours (the same as those employed by Moses in the tabernacle, and by the Brahmins of the present day), but as a divine winged youth, such as the poets and Platonists have interpreted it to mean-the incarnation of a great period, or sacred year; but his wings are invested with the sacred colours to which we have referred. It is perfectly well known that the phoenix was the emblem of a period ended and revived; by some it has been presumed to represent the canicular cycle; by others it has been inferred to be a symbol of some periodical return of a comet ; at all events, its period was a cycle of five hundred years. We have stated the demonstrated era of Moeris, who preceded Sesostris by seven generations, to comprehend one hundred and thirty-nine years, to be July the 20th, B. C. 1325. We have already stated on other grounds the era of Sesostris to be almost demonstrable as B. C. 1189. Now the suggestion connected with this figure of the phoenix, in this battle-piece of Sesostris, is this-was it

the symbol of a comet, having a period of about five hundred years? One historical authority, says, that the phoenix first appeared in Egypt fourteen years before the accession of Sesostris, and in his days. Another confirms it by saying, that it was first seen in the age of Sesostris. The phoenix, therefore, appearing to Sesostris in his battle with the Scheti, clearly confirms this historical tradition. If it was the symbol of a comet, its period, in round numbers, was five hundred years. Was it, therefore, Whiston's great comet of 1680, whose period is five hundred and seventy-five years. All learned men knew the theory of Whiston and Burnet;—that this comet has been the great agent in all the revolutions of this globe, and is to be the great agent in its future revolutions. Its period, with tolerable precision, brings it to the Hebrew date of the creation-to the Hebrew date of the flood-and to the appearance of the great star which designated the death of Julius Cæsar, and preceded the birth of the Messiah.

Calculating retrospectively, its alleged period will bring it, with tolerable accuracy, to the time when a comet appeared to Cyrus in his march upon Sardis; and one more revolution calculated retrospectively, will bring it very nearly to the era of Sesostris; 1194. If this be so, then the period of this battle with the Scheti may, with very little trouble, be fixed. The inscriptions which accompany these battle pieces, and which will doubtless be produced by Champollion's succeeding livraisons, state the month, and day of the month, when the event, with which they are associated, occurred; but the Egyptian chronologers had no other means, or did not publicly employ them, of recording the general lapse of the earth's time, except by reckoning the years of the successive kings; and it was in the fifth year of the reign of Sesostris when this campaign occurred.

We have now concluded the subject as far as the illustrations of Champollion's great work on Egypt extend. We presume that the line of publication, chalked out in this instance, will be preserved, that portraits of all the Egyptian sovereigns of the 18th dynasty, after the reign and acts of Sesostris have been rendered complete by illustration, will be given; and that each will be followed by all that is interesting in the personnel of his court, or the materiel of his army; in his pacific actions,

or in his belligerent exploits. We wait with much anxiety and curiosity for the succeeding livraisons of this important work. At no time could they appear more opportunely than at the present. Knowledge of every kind is indeed devoured with delightful eagerness. But no information can be more useful, or is at this moment more required, than historical narration, which unites the period of our classical recollections with distant times, and exhibits one course of consistent Providence ruling through all ages.

ARTICLE VI.

Minutes of Evidence taken before a Select Committee of the House of Commons, respecting Dramatic Entertainments. 1832.

The Drama Vindicated; with copious Notes. By JOHN DENMAN, ESQ., S. C. L. Cambridge: 1835.

THE laws affecting Dramatic Literature were never, perhaps, so comprehensively misunderstood as at the present period; to use a happy phrase of the late Sir James Mackintosh, they are, indeed, "flourishing in the full vigour of their incapacity." Notwithstanding that the Commons House of Parliament, in its anxiety for the wise nourishment and advancement of the intellectual amusements of the people, appointed, in June 1832, Mr. E. L. Bulwer, Sir Charles Wetherell, Mr. Alderman Waithman, together with twenty-one other noblemen and gentlemen of various talents and acquirements, to inquire into the subject, to "call for persons, papers, and records," and to report thereon; and, notwithstanding that this Committee put 4197 questions within the space of "one little month" to nearly forty managers, actors, critics, and authors, and made their report, nothing has been done by the Legislature to effect an amelioration of laws confessedly acknowledged by all parties to be widely and effectively mis-understood. A Bill, apparently framed upon the report, was prepared and brought into the House of Lords by the Marquis of Clanricarde; and though it flirted with reform, it acquired no favour in men's eyes, attached itself to no worthy object, and, on the 27th of June, 1834, died a natural death in that condemned cell for measures of Reform, the