Moldavia, and the islands of the Archipelago.-For the administration of ecclesiastical affairs, a synod, convened monthly, is composed of the heads of the church resident in Constantinople. In this assembly the pa triarch of Constantinople presides with those of Antioch and Jerusalem, and twelve arch.bishops.

In regard to discipline and worship, the Greek church has the same division of the clergy into regular and secular, the same spiritual jurisdiction of bishops and their officials, the same distinction of ranks and offices with the church of Rome.

"There is a branch of the Greek church that, though joined in communion of doctrine and worship with the patriarch of Constantinople, refuse to receive his legatees, or to obey his edicts. This division is governed by its own laws and institutions, under the jurisdiction of spiritual rulers, who are independent on all foreign authority.

44

The Greek church comprehends in its bosom a considerable part of Greece, the

Grecian isles, Wallachia, Moldavia, Egypt, Abyssinia, Nubia, Lydia, Arabia, Mesopo tamia, Syria, Silicia, and Palestine; Alexan dria, Antioch, and Jerusalein; the whole of the Russian empire in Europe; great part of Siberia in Asia; Astracan, Casan, and Geor gia.

"It is asserted by Dallaway, in his account of Constantinople, ancient and modern, which was published in 1797, that all orders of the Greek clergy interior to bishops are permitted to marry, Celibacy and the assumption of monastic habits, are indispensably requisite in those who are candidates for the mitre.

"The riches of some of the Greek churches and monasteries, in jewels, particularly pearls, in plate, and in the habits of the clergy, are very great, and reckoned not much inferior to those in Roman Catholic countries."

the inconclusive and illiberal essay on The least valuable part of the work is truth which is prefixed by the English editor.

THESE three volumes are dedicated to the son of sir Ralph Abercromby, and may be considered as a result of that interest, which, since his achievement, the British public has taken in Egypt.

The history of distant ill-known countries ought always to begin with a geographical sketch of those permanent features of the land, water, and air, which influence the distribution, the movements, and the manners of the inhabitants; because whatever peculiarities of the present dwellers necessarily result from their situation, may confidently be ascribed to the antient ones, although not specifically recorded of them. Mr. Wilson has with propriety consecrated his first chapter to the geography of Egypt. We should have preferred a description more entire of the features of nature from Bruce and Brown, and of the monuments of art from Pocock. We are sorry at observing references to Bryant; this looks as if his dreams were trusted.

The second chapter treats of the manners of the early Egyptians. Closely connected with these phænomena is the investigation of their origin. Volney, from personal observation, and Monboddo, from ancient authority, have thought that the progenitors of the Copts were negroes. Mr. Browne does not perceive, in these Copts, the African physiognomy, but rather the Arabian; and denies to them the snub nose and the woolly hair. There are other clues of investigation which may be called in aid. A close resemblance has been observed between the Hindoo and the Egyptian superstitions: the names of several divinities agree; the veneration for the cow, and for the lotos, as an emblem of production, prevail among both; their zodiacal signs are alike, and are of a nature to have been invented in India; both nations were divided into casts; both had underground temples, an arcane theology for the educated, and a gaudy idolatry for the multitude. It is

likely, therefore, that the Egyptians are from one stock with the Hindoos. The Hindoos are from Tibet; for it is clear that they flourished in the Penjab, and adown the Indus, or Sind, as well as adown the Ganges: and it is also clear that a people, having many of the radical rites and manners of the Hindoos, must have descended the yellow river, and have formed the basis of Chinese population. A situation about Tibet for the progenitors of the Hindoos solves all the phænomena. But how could these people get to Egypt? The most probable answer is this; coastwise, from river's mouth to river's mouth. Colonies spread in the antient world, as in the modern. Those who inhabited the Delta of the Indus, would, in their coasting voyages, discover the Delta of the Euphrates. The merchants of Patala, Minnagora, and Barigaza, would found a Babylon; and attempt there the same interchange of finger-work for food, of manufactured for raw material, which our merchants began successively at the mouths of the American rivers. The Delta of the Sind, or Indus, has incurred desertion, probably from natural causes; perhaps from some very great flood, of which the early settlers at Babylon and in its vicinity seem to have preserved a strong recollection.

From the Jewish or Babylonian scriptures it appears, that this same people had already in the time of Solomon, founded sea-ports, or emporiums, in both the forks of the Red Sea, at Ezion-geber, and at Eloth, or Suez. From this last place the colonization of Egypt is a mere step; and it seems to have begun about Cairo, or Kahira, as a town called Babylon, after the old country, existed in that neighbourhood in the time of Cambyses. Tyre branched from Ezion-geber, as well as the first seats of Egyptian commerce. Memphis, signifying mouth, was, when first founded, on the Mediterranean: the Delta is subsequent accretion.

This order of filiation being admitted, the Copts, or ancient Egyptians, must be referred to the Asiatic Blacks, to the same human race as the Lascars, and not to the African breed. But although the inhabitants of Memphis and Cairo, and the commercial population of the Delta, may with great confidence, be derived from an oriental source, it is not equally clear that No-ammon in Upper Egypt, the Diospolis or Thebes of the Greeks, was a colony from the same quarter. Its population may have ascended the Nile; but there is not proof so strong: a resemblance of language however is stated to prevail between Upper Egypt and Abyssinia, and the language of Abyssinia is said to resemble that of Syria and Arabia: so that an oriental and not an African origin may most rationally be assigned to the whole Egyptian nation, and indeed to the mass of settlers on the African coast of the Red Sea. Pyramids seem to have been contrived for places of refuge during inundation: the numerous or lower classes were naturally arranged on the wide steps; the priests, the nobles, and the kings, on the narrower summits of the structure; and thus each order of the people was secure, during the public danger, in proportion to its rank in the social pyramid. The tower of Babel, according to the description of Herodotus, must have been a pyramid of this kind, consisting of seven mounds, or steps. The rage for these anti-diluvian structures would be peculiarly natural in a people, compelled by inundations to emigrate from the Delta of the Sind. It may be inferred, from the description of the ark of Noah, that the navigation of these early mer. chants and fugitives, was conducted in ships of wicker.

What the Greeks called the aversion of the Egyptians for strangers, seems to have been nothing more than the enaction and execution of some quarantine precautions: for the fact of a ready intercourse with Persians, Jews, and Greeks, at all periods of their history is notorious and the Greeks had a landing-place, or as we should call it a lazaretto, assigned to them at Naucrates, on their complaining of these restraints.

In the second book Mr. Wilson begins the history. The first chapter talks of Menes, Osymandias, Sesostris, and Pheron. It is wise to say little about them. All nations were originally governed by judges, or village-caciques, each of whom was sovereign in his own establishment,

or district. Beside these local, hereditary, patriarchal, petty, sovereigns, who are often called kings by the historians of early times, another class of powerful chieftains existed, elective generals of the fighting population, a sort of leaders of banditti, whose trade, like that of the Arabs, was plunder, and who occasionally collected for some specific inroad a considerable army: these military chieftains are also called kings. Of this last kind was Sesostris; but the relations concerning him are too extravagant to merit more than a qualified confidence.

Mr. Wilson relies too much on Diodorus Siculus, a compiler of Greek romance, who flourished under Augustus: it was the story of Herodotus that should have been told, if it was not to be sifted, as having some claim to the rank of early and original testimony; but Herodotus himself may safely be corrected by the book of Joshua.

In mentioning the Sethos of Herodotus, Mr. Wilson might more confidently have attributed to him an identity with the king Hezekiah of the Jews. Among the Greeks, the Jews passed, like their Chaldean and Persian progenitors, for fireworshippers; and hence it happens that Hezekiah is called a priest of Vulcan, We may know the fire-worship to have been at most emblematic, or rather ritual; but the idolatrous by-stander, seeing no image, supposed the worship addressed to the flame on the altar. Michaelis assents entirely to the identity of Sethos and Hezekiah. The deliverance of Hezekiah from Sennacherib must have been recorded in hieroglyphic characters, whence Herodotus inferred a deliverance by mice. He says mice gnawed the bowstrings of the Assyrians, and thus compelled their retreat. But we know from the hieroglyphics of Horappollo (No. 50) that the mouse was the symbol of disappearance, and from 2nd Chronicles (xxxii. 21.) that the disappearance resulted from an epidemic malady, by which armies have often been thinned; yet there are hints which may infuse the suspicion that this disappearance was partly accomplished by the payment of a contribution out of the temple-treasury.

Psammeticus was the true founder of kingship, of an hereditary dynasty of sovereigns, among the Egyptians: his brother-judges lifted him into power, and thus his authority partook the stationary character of theirs, and comprized twelve hitherto independent pharaohships. The