EGYPT. 41

marvels, so that the modern reader may just observe the dawning of the critical spirit. Predominantly in his Egypt, Herodotus appears as the traveller and archaeologist ; nor is he fairly afloat on the current of history until he launches himself into the narrative of the Persian invasions of Greece, of the circumstances of which he had more immediate knowledge if not as an eyewitness, yet from those who had themselves been eyewitnesses. Egypt has been in all ages the land of wonders, from the time when its "magicians" found their en- chantments fail before the mightier Power which was with Moses, to that when Napoleon told his soldiers that from the top of the Pyramids four thousand years looked down on their struggle with the Mame- lukes, and to our own day, when a French engineer repeats the feat of the old native kings and the Greek Ptolemies, in marrying by a canal the Eed Sea to the Mediterranean ; an achievement which will make the name of Lesseps immortal, if the canal can only be kept clear of sand. The civilisation of Egypt is older than time or at least, than its records. Her kings were counted wholesale not by individuals, but by dynasties, of which there were said to have been thirty-one, exclusive of gods and heroes. She was the mother of the arts to Greece, as Greece has been to us. Her monuments are nearly as vast and as seemingly indestructible as the everlasting hills them- selves, and the study of her mere remnants seems to present a field as inexhaustible as that of nature. No wonder that Herodotus willingly lingered in this in- teresting country. He was no holiday traveller, but one all ears and eyes, not likely to let any fact or