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THE reader of history may be compared to a traveller, who leaves his own country, to visit others which are far off, and very different from that in which he has been living. The manners and customs of the nations which he is going to see are either wholly new to him, or he is already in some measure acquainted with them, by the information and researches of others. So it is with the reader of history. He is either beginning a study, to which he was altogether a stranger, and meets for the first time with facts and circumstances of which he had never heard before, or he is partly retracing his own steps, and filling up the details of a plan which had been exhibited to him previously in outline. It is, perhaps, difficult to say in which of the two cases his gratification and amusement will be greatest; and the minds of different readers will be differently affected, according to the degree of knowledge already possessed upon the subject which they are reading.

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It must not, however, be forgotten, that gratification and amusement are not the only results which the history of past events produces on the mind. Many persons, it is true, are fond of history, and study it with avidity, without its enabling them to confer any direct practical benefit on mankind. Others, also, as is the case with children, are set to read the histories of different countries, though it is not expected that much moral improvement should be derived from such lessons.

But even in these cases, the study of history has its own peculiar benefits. The mere recollection of facts and dates is found to be of great service to the mind, as soil is improved by being frequently turned over with the spade, though it is not constantly bearing

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a fresh crop. History is thus an indispensable instrument in the culture of the memory; and though few persons retain, in after life, the minute details of history or chronology which they learned in their childhood, it might be difficult to point out any one of their mental faculties which had not been rendered more acute, and more frt for its peculiar application, by this early exercise of the memory.

Nor can history be said to be without its use, though it does not enable all its readers to confer any direct practical benefit on mankind. To measure the advantage of all knowledge by its practical utility, would be as absurd as to require all persons to be of the same height, or to expect every production of the animal and vegetable kingdoms to be useful for the same purpose. The great distinction between man in a savage and in a civilized state is, that the savage seeks for nothing but what is useful, whereas, the civilized member of society seeks for moral and intellectual enjoyment. The reader of history is therefore benefited, and is able to extend the benefit to others, if his reading supplies him with the means of making himself and others better and happier than they were. That the study of history will enable him to do this, requires no demonstration; and it would not be difficult to show that the great end and object of this study is to improve the moral condition, and to increase the happiness of mankind.

There is undoubtedly a nearer and more apparent utility which results from an acquaintance with the events of former ages. If history has been correctly described to be "philosophy teaching by example," it becomes at once the necessary study of all those who are concerned in the government of states. To disregard the examples of past times is imprudent in all persons, but in those who are engaged in governing others, it is positively culpable; and for a statesman to be ignorant of history which supplies him with practical experience in the department which he has chosen to follow, must be attended with the same consequences to himself and others, as if a tradesman or a mechanic should undertake to serve his employers without a knowledge of his goods or of his tools.

But though the past history of his own or other countries may supply the statesman with many useful lessons, and he may thus be better able to carry on the government, he has gained but a small portion of experience, if he has merely treasured up a certain number of facts which may serve as a guide to his own conduct under similar circumstances. The lesson which he is to read in the page of history is the art of making men happy by making them good. He must observe in the events of past ages how

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righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people:" and he who reads history without constantly remembering, that the persons of whom he has been reading will be judged hereafter for those very actions which he has been admiring or condemning, is likely to mislead both himself and others, when he comes to apply his historical experience to practice.—BURTON's Christian Church.'

1. Anything to remark about the use of the superlative in such a case as this? 2. Ought the verb to be singular here?

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If I were to have the choice of a fairy gift, it should be like none of the many things I fixed upon in my childhood, in readiness for such an occasion. It should be for a great winnowing fan, such as would, without injury to human eyes and lungs, blow away the sand which buries the monuments of Egypt. What a scene would be laid open then! One statue and sarcophagus, brought from Memphis,1 was buried one hundred and thirty feet below the mound surface. Who knows but that the greater part of old Memphis, and of other glorious cities, lies almost unharmed under the sand! Who can say what armies of sphinxes, what sentinels of colossi, might start up on the banks of the river, or come forth from the hill sides of the interior, when the cloud of sand had been wafted away!

The ruins which we now go to study might then appear occupying only eminences, while below might be ranges of pylons, miles of colonnade, temples intact, and gods and goddesses safe in their sanctuaries. What quays along the Nile, and the banks of forgotten canals! What terraces, and flights of wide shallow steps! What architectural stages might we not find for a thousand miles along the river where now the orange sands lie so smooth and light as to show the track,-the clear foot-print-of every beetle that comes out to bask in the sun! But it is better as it is. If we could once blow away the sand, to discover the temples and palaces, we should next want to rend the rocks, to lay open the tombs; and heaven knows what this would set us wishing further. It is best as it is; for the time has not come for the full discovery of the treasures of Egypt.

It is best as it is. The sand is a fine means of preservation;

and the present inhabitants perpetuate enough of the names to serve for guidance when the day for exploration shall come. The minds of scholars are preparing for an intelligent interpretation of what a future age may find; and science, chemical and mechanical, will probably supply such means hereafter as we have not now, for treating and removing the sand, when its conservative office has lasted long enough. We are not worthy yet of this great unveiling; and the inhabitants are not, from their ignorance, trustworthy as spectators.

It is better that the world should wait, if only care be taken that the memory of no site now known be lost. True as I feel it to be that we had better wait, I was for ever catching myself in a speculation, not only on the buried treasures of the mounds on shore, but on means for managing this obstinate sand.

And yet, vexatious as is its presence in many a daily scene, this sand has a bright side to its character,-like everything else.* Besides its great office of preserving unharmed for a future age the records of the oldest times known to man, the sand of the desert has, for many thousand years, shared equally with the Nile the function of determining the character and the destiny of a whole people, who have again operated powerfully on the characters and destiny of other nations.

Everywhere, the minds and fortunes of human races are mainly determined by the characteristics of the soil on which they are born and reared. In our own small island, there are, as it were, three tribes of people, whose lives are much determined still, in spite of all modern facilities for intercourse, by the circumstance of their being born and reared on the mineral strip to the west,-the pastoral strip in the middle, or the eastern agricultural portion. The Welsh and Cornwall miners are as widely different from the Lincolnshire or Kentish husbandmen, and the Leicestershire herdsmen, as Englishmen can be from Englishmen. Not only their physical training is different; their intellectual faculties are differently exercised, and their moral ideas and habits vary accordingly.3

So it is in every country where there is a diversity of geological formation and nowhere is the original constitution of their earth so strikingly influential on the character of its inhabitants as in Egypt. There everything depends-life itself, and all that it includes-on the state of the unintermitting conflict between the Nile and the Desert. The world has seen many struggles; but no other so pertinacious, so perdurable, and so sublime as the conflict of these two great powers. The Nile, ever young, because perpetually renewing its youth, appears to the inexperienced eye to have no chance with its stripling force, against the great old

Goliah, the Desert, whose might has never relaxed from the earliest days till now; but the giant has not conquered yet. Now and then he has prevailed for a season; and the tremblers whose destiny hung on the event have cried out that all was over; but he has once more been driven back, and Nilus has risen up again to do what we see him doing in the sculptures-bind up his water-plants about the throne of Egypt.

These fluctuations of superiority have produced extraordinary effects on the people for the time: but these are not the forming and training influences which I am thinking of now. It is true that when the Nile gains too great an accession of strength, and runs in destructively upon the Desert, men are in despair at seeing their villages swept away, and that torrents come spouting out from the sacred tombs in the mountains, as the fearful clouds of the sky come down to aid the river of the valley. It is true that in the opposite case, they tremble when the heavens are alive with meteors, and the Nile is too weak to rise and meet the sand columns that come marching on, followed by blinding clouds of the enemy and that famine is then inevitable, bringing with it the moral curses which attend upon hunger. It is true that at such times strangers have seen (as we know from Abdallatif, himself an eyewitness,) how little children are made food of, and even men slaughtered for meat, like cattle. It is true that such have been the violent effects produced on men's conduct by extremity here-effects much like what are produced by extremity everywhere. It is not of this that I am thinking when regarding the influence on a nation of the incessant struggle between the Nile and the Desert. It is of the formation of their ideas and habits, and the training of their desires.H. MARTINEAU's 'Eastern Life.'

1. Memphis was an ancient city of Egypt. It was of immense extent and great architectural beauty.

2. There is a soul of goodness in things evil

Would men observantly distil it out.-Shakspeare. 3. It may be doubted if this is not a little too strongly put.

THE CHARACTER AND INFLUENCE OF THE XII TABLES

OF ROMAN LAW.

Partial.

Composition.

Diligence.

Integrity.

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WHATEVER might be the origin or the merit of the twelve tables, they obtained among the Romans that blind and partial reverence which the lawyers of every county delight to bestow on their municipal institutions.

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