process for transferring the atomic motion contained in the said gas or fluid to the aggregate and fluid parts of the animal.

8. That, in its concentration during the act of respiration, it imparts the atomic motion which existed in the gas or media to the animal; or, in other words, that transferred or converted atomic motion warms and variously excites the several fluids of the animal.

For the Monthly Magazine. RECENT DISCOVERIES made by MESSRS. CAVIGLIA and SALT in EGYPT.*

CAVIGLIA and Mr. Salt have met

consequent.

10. That when the body cools, the natural means of increasing the heat is to increase the respiration, and create atomic motion in the system by some exercise, by

which the atomic motion or sense of heat is not merely increased, but accumulated and accelerated.

11. That this accelerated atomic motion imparted to the fluids of the animal, produces a corresponding expansion of the fluids, and an evaporation by the pores of the skin, when they duly perform their func

tions.

12. That, to replace the consumption of the fluids by evaporation, it becomes necessary to supply the roots of the animal system, where they centre in the stomach, by introducing suitable substances or manures into that cavity, which, during their decomposition, impart atomic motion, as well as assimilate to the substance of the

animal.

13. That the progress of various kinds of animal growth may be always expressed by a curve line, or path of a projectile, with different curvatures, the abscissa representing the flow of time, from the generating increment; while the form of curvature is determined by a law of simultaneous accumulation and dispersion, which law limits the form of the curve; and, when the apex or greatest effect has been attained, a corresponding descent takes place owing to the gradually exhausted excitement, which diminishes the accumulation, the ascent and descent being represented by a series of parallel ordinates. Hence we have all the varieties of durations of youth, maturity, decay, and life; and hence it is that those periods bear necessary relations to each other.

These succinct principles of Physiology might be increased, so as to embrace every species and variety of animal phe nomena, and explain the causes and cure of diseases; but the Monthly Magazine has not room for such details; and it is not necessary that this task should be performed either in this place or by this writer, in a country which

in exploring the contents of several of the ruined edifices and tumuli which, when viewed from the top of the great Pyramid, appear in countless numbers scattered among the pyramids, extending on the left bank of the Nile, north and south as far as the eye can reach. They have been mentioned by travellers, but never examined before with the attention they merit. The stone buildings to which they gained access, by freeing them from the sand and rubbish with which they were choked, and which Mr. Salt supposes to be mausoleums, are generally oblong, with their walls slightly inclined inward from the perpendicular, flat-roofed, with a parapet rounded at top, and rising about a foot above the terrace. Their walls are constructed of large masses, made nearly to fit with each other, though rarely rectangular. Some have door-ways, ornamented above with a volute, covered with hieroglyphics; others only of square apertures, gradually narrowing inward. The doors and windows are all on the north sides; perhaps because least exposed to the wind-carried sands from the Libyan desert. The inside of the walls of the first he examined was stuccoed, and embellished with rude paintings; Boat, another a Procession: and in the one of which represented the Sacred southern extremity were found several mouldering mummies, laid one over the other, in a recumbent position. Many of the bones were entire; and on one skull was part of its cloth covering, inscribed with hieroglyphics. The second which he examined had no paintings, but contained several fragments of statues; two of which composed the ensize of life, with the arms hanging down tire body of a walking figure, almost the and resting on the thighs. Mr. Salt thinks this was intended as a portrait, the several parts of which were marked

with

information on the same subjects, published in this Magazine at the beginning of

*This article continues the valuable

last

year.

with a strict attention to Nature, and coloured after life, having glass eyes or transparent stones, to improve the resemblance. A head was also discovered, which Mr. Salt describes as a respectable specimen of art. Many of the fragments of granite and alabaster sculptures give a higher idea of Egyptian art than has usually prevailed, much attention being shown to the marking of the joints and muscles. In another of these buildings was a sculptured boat of a large size, with a square sail, different from any now in use on the Nile. In the first chamber were bas-reliefs of men, deer, and birds, painted to resemble nature: the men engaged in different mechanical occupations. In the second apartment there were similar productions,-a Quarrel between some Boatmen, executed with great spirit; men engaged in agricultural pursuits, ploughing, hoeing, stowing the corn in magazines, &c.; vases painted in vivid colours; musicians, with a group of dancing women. Another chamber was without embellishment; a fourth had figures and hieroglyphics; and, in a fifth, were hieroglyphics executed on white plaster, as it would appear, by means of stamps. In all the mausoleums which were opened, fragments of mummy cloth, bitumen, and human bones, were found; but, what is perhaps most singular of all, in one apartment or other of all of them was a deep shaft or well. One that was cleared out by Mr. Caviglia was sixty feet deep; and, in a subterranean chamber a little to the south, at the bottom of the well, was found, without a lid, a plain but highly-finished sarcophagus; and from this it may be inferred that, in each mausoleum, such a chamber and sarcophagus may be found, at the bottom of the well. Mr. Salt mentions that all the mausoleums consisted of different apartments, some more, some less, in number, variously disposed and similarly decorated, and that the objects in which the artists have best succeeded are animals and birds: the human figures are in general out of proportion, but the action in which they are engaged is intelligibly, and in some instances energetically expressed. In many of the chambers the colours retain all their original freshness. The bas-reliefs and colouring after nature, in these early efforts of art, serve, he says, to embody the forms, and to present a species of reality that mere painting can with difficulty produce.

But the most brilliant of M. Caviglia's labours was that of uncovering the great

Andro-sphynx, in front of the pyramid of Cephrenes. The labour was immense: it cost him three months incessant exertion, with the assistance of from 60 to 100 persons every day, to lay open the whole figure to its base, and expose a clear area, extending 100 feet from its front;-a labour in which they were greatly impeded by the movable nature of the sand, which, by the slightest wind or concussion, was apt to run down like a cascade of water, and fill up the excavation. This colossal figure is cut out of the rock; the paws, and some projecting lines, where perhaps the rock was deficient, or which may have been repaired since its first construction, being composed of masonry.

On the stone platform in front, and centrally between the paws of the sphynx, which stretch out fifty feet in advance of the body, was found a large block of granite, two feet thick, fourteen high, and seven broad. It fronts the east, as does the face of the sphynx, is highly embellished with sculptures in bas-relief, representing two sphynxes on pedestals, and priests presenting offerings, with a well-executed hieroglyphical inscription beneath the whole covered at top, and protected as it were with the sacred globe, the serpent, and the wings. Two other tablets of calcareous stone, similarly ornamented, were conjectured, with the former, to have constituted part of a temple, by being placed one on each side of the latter at right angles to it. One of them was in its place, the other thrown down and broken. A small lion couchant, with its eyes directed towards the sphynx, was in front of this edifice. Several fragments of other lions and the fore-part of a sphynx, were likewise found; all of which, as well as the sphynx, the tablets, walls, and platform, on which the little temple stood, were covered with red paint, which would seem here, as in India, to have been appropriated to sacred purposes; perhaps as being the colour of fire. A granite altar stands in front of the temple, one of the four horns being still in its place, and the effects of fire visible on the top of the altar. On the side of the paw of the great sphynx, and on the digits of the paws, are Greek inscriptions; as also on some small edifices in front of the sphynx, inscribed to the Sphynx, to Harpocrates, Mars, Hermes, to Claudius, (on an erasure, in which can be traced a former name, that of Nero,) to Septimius Severus, (over an erasure of Geta), &c.

To

To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine.

SIR,

NHOUGH the public attention has

the most interesting and important of all subjects, the moral improvement of mankind, and much enquiry has been made respecting the causes which impede its progress, there are some circumstances calculated to diminish the strictness of moral principle in many, which seem to have nearly escaped ob. servation. It will be found on examination, that the social inducements to commit falsehood and perjury are very numerous; that they are so strong as to be almost irresistible; and that many of them are the consequence of regulations which are entirely useless. I shall say a few words on each of these points, in the hope that, by directing to them the attention of the readers of your Magazine, some person who has more leisure, ability, and means of gaining observation on the subject, than I have, may be induced to make minute enquiries into the extent of the evil, and to lay the result of them before the public.

1. That the temptations are very numerous.-Though I am unable to form any estimate of the number of the regulations which in different departments offer inducements to falsehood and perjury, a brief enumeration of such as I happen to know of, and to recollect, will be sufficient to show that the whole amount is not trifling. The oaths to observe college regulations, and the subscriptions to the articles which are required at the Universities; the oaths which are required from boys, to qualify them for entering on the foundation of some of the public schools; the declaration necessary to be made by candidates for holy orders; the declaration that a prisoner is obliged to make of his innocence, to entitle himself to a trial; the oaths which are required in consequence of the excise laws and of various commercial regulations; the oaths which are necessary in many legal proceedings; are sufficient to justify the assertion, that the occasions which may lead to falsehood and perjury are so numerous, as to entitle the subject to attention.

2. That the temptations are very strong. This will plainly appear, on considering the inconveniences to which a refusal to make the required declaration will, in a great number of cases, subject the refuser; and it should not be forgotten, that the temptation to do MONTHLY MAG. NO. 336.

ciples are likely to suffer most by yielding to it. By refusing to make the required declaration, a great number of persons would lose the power of procuring the education which is essential to their following the line of life for which they are intended; and many would be obliged to relinquish the pursuit of the profession for which they have been educated, and for which alone they are now fitted. By refusing to declare himself innocent, the prisoner loses all the chances of escaping punishment, which legal errors, deficiency in the evidence, and a variety of other circumstances, give to all who take their trial; sometimes too, he loses the chance of escape which the innocence of his intentions would give him, if he were tried; for he may have committed the fact of which he is accused, without the guilty intention, and yet think himself obliged, by his regard to truth, to plead guilty, as experience has sometimes proved. The inconvenience attending the refusal to take the oaths which the excise laws, commercial regulations, and the forms of law proceedings, require, will be acknowledged to be so great, as to throw a strong temptation in the way of those to whom they are offered.

3. That many of the regulations which present these temptations, are useless. Of this kind are all those that require declarations which are not supposed to express the real sentiments of the declarer, or which impose oaths which the person who takes them is not expected to observe. The custom of requiring these declarations and oaths, as it must always be useless, so it must often be injurious. Many of those who are induced to make them, by the common argument that they are a mere form, are probably not entirely satisfied that they are doing right; on these the effect of compliance cannot be entirely harmless, and even to those who comply without hesitation or thought, it cannot be quite without danger to learn to declare what they believe to be false, and to swear to do what they are determined they will not do. The greatest evil is done, no doubt, to those who are convinced that they are doing wrong, and yet have not resolution enough to sacrifice all their prospects and to ex

D

pose

pose themselves to ridicule, and perhaps to reproach. Even the general effect of a custom which makes declarations and oaths appear as matters of no consequence, must be injurious; and it can hardly be expected, that a declaration of opinion, or an oath, when they are given in a more serious manner, should be considered in as solemn a light as they would be if they were not so often treated as mere idle forms.* Let it now be considered, what is the tendency of the effect produced by these customs, in those instances in which persons are prevented by conscientious scruples from complying with them. It is to deprive of advantages those to whom it is the most desirable they should be given, and to secure punishment to those to whom it would be most desirable to allow a chance of escaping it. Those young men who, from conscientious motives, refuse to swear to observe rules of which the observation is in many instances no longer possible, and who refuse to sign the Articles of the Church of England, because in that long list there may be some to which they cannot assent, are deprived of part, or of the whole, of the advantages offered by those institutions to which their strength of principle makes it probable they would do peculiar honour. Those candidates for orders, who, though they may be firm believers in the doctrine of the Church of England, and fully resolved to do their duty as ministers, yet cannot reconcile it to their conscience to declare that they believe themselves moved by the Holy Ghost to take on themselves the office of deacon, and therefore give up the design of entering into orders, are the very persons who would be most likely to be an honour to the Church. The prisoner who, though he may have been guilty in violating the law, is yet still possessed of so much principle, that he will not add to his guilt by uttering what seems to him to

It is a certain fact, that many persons who are considered as respectable and honourable men, do, without scruple, subscribe to declarations which they know to be untrue, and this not merely on political subjects, but on many others: it is difficult to account for conduct so inconsistent with the usual habits of their lives, but it seems possible, that the various circumstances which tend to bring subscriptions to declarations into contempt, may have some influence in producing this effect.

be a falsehood, and therefore determines to plead guilty, is surely the person from whom it is most desirable that punishment should be averted; yet he receives it to a certainty; while all his fellow-prisoners, who have less moral principle remaining, have various chances of escape.*

In regard to the oaths which are meant to be observed as well as taken, it would be very desirable to ascertain, as far as it is practicable, what is the degree of their real utitity. Many of them seem little likely to produce any good effect. To make a man swear to be honest, can be of little service: if he is honest, he will not need the oath; if he is not honest, he will not be restrained by it. A man who is inclined to cheat or defraud, would not be likely to be deterred from so doing by an oath, even if it were given in a less hurried, careless, and improper, manner than that in which they are so frequently administered. Those oaths which, on enquiry, it should be found necessary to retain, would certainly be more likely to be respected, if the multitude of useless ones, which have almost brought an oath to be considered as a mere mockery, were done away. L. E. E.

To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine.

SIR,

N the present agitated and alarming

cour and defiance are substituted for benevolence and goodwill, when every angry and unsocial passion is heightened by the indiscreet or infuriated zeal of party spirit; what chance has the "small still voice" of reason and humanity to make itself heard in the raging of the storm: or, if heard, of being lis tened to with complacency? In proportion however to the difficulty, should the friend of peace and virtue feel the necessity of inteference; and every individual

I hope that, amongst the alterations which are about to be made in regard to the criminal laws, the abolition of this custom will have a place, as it seems to be one which can by no possibility lead to any good; and which, besides the injury which it sometimes inflicts on a scrupulous prisoner, has some tendency to weaken the respect for truth in the standers-by, which tendency is increased by the humanity of the judges and lawyers, who anxiously endeavour to persuade the prisoner to plead Not guilty.

dividual is bound by every claim of patriotism and religion to endeavour to soothe and regulate the public feeling. If there be a safety lamp," that may possibly secure us from the so-much-tobe-dreaded explosion, in the name of all that is valuable to the human heart, let us endeavour to ascertain where it may be found, to profit by its light, and in this path to invoke Heaven for its guidance and protection.

There is one point in which all parties are agreed, one main difficulty which all must deplore; one obvious source of discontent, which must either be mitigated, or that discontent must inevitably increase to an extent which no foresight can ward-off or estimate; and that is, the want of employment for the population. I do not mean here to enquire into its causes, but to call the public attention to the subject, as the most imperious one that ever came under its notice. Will the magistracy, the guardians and overseers, the Chamber of Commerce, the good and enlightened of every denomination, pardon the appeal of an individual to their intelligence and patriotism, whether it be not a paramount duty to investigate this growing evil, and to make some vigorous effort for its remedy? We have upwards of 600 persons in the workhouse, with so few sources of employment, that they may, in a general sense, he said to be in a state of complete idleness; and we have about 400 children in the Asylum. The number of out-poor receiving pay is, by the last report, 3646, which, at four individuals to a case, will nearly approach to 15,000; and it is a fair presumption, that other large manufacturing districts are in similar circumstances, or perhaps generally worse, as the more staple the articles which are made, the lower will be the general average of wages, and, of course, the greater the distress, when the hands are unemployed.

Our poor-rates are about 60,000l. ayear, and these, with public and private subscriptions for general benevolence, may bring it near to 100,000l. for the relief of that class which might contribute mainly to its own support, if the means could be put into its hands. This is no temporary affair. We have been misled by the delusive expectation that "revulsion and transition" must have their time, and that, after a while, better times would follow; but five years' continuance of peace has produced no such effect. I believe, no

partial fluctuation of the poor-rates has, during that period, exceeded 10 per cent. on the amount, up or down; and I may venture to challenge the commercial world to shew, that the present system can bring any permanent relief. Under these circumstances, can it be wondered at that murmurings and disaffection should abound? Is it possible they should cease to increase? The people feel that they want protection: they petitioned almost unanimously against the Corn Bill, which, to the want of employment superadded the galling evil of doubling the price of their bread; and their respectful prayer was rejected. They ask for the admission of those friends into the Legislature who should advocate their cause, and this, under the name of reform: but this they are denied, as an arrogant and insolent claim. What then remains to be done? If their distresses are too great for endurance, are disdain, contumely, and violence, the modes an enlightened Legislature should adopt to assuage the irritation? The remedy is simple and obvious, if there be virtue and policy enough left to call forth some public union for the attempt. Let the subject of employment become a more general enquiry and feeling; let committees be appointed to scrutinize within their own districts, and then communicate the results for the public notice; let the zealous and patriotic efforts of the great and good Sinclair have their due consideration; let manual labour in all cases have the preference to cattle or machinery, wherever it can be employ ed; and let the country look for its tranquillity, in the honest and laborious occupation of its patient and meritorious population.

China, on a rough estimate, will be allowed to have double our populalation in proportion to its land; it has extremely little foreign commerce; it has little machinery; it has few cattle to supersede human labour; and, as to its happiness, compared with our miseries, can one hesitate in opinion? While our horses consume the produce of as much land as our human beings, we cannot substantiate the idle clamour of a redundant population. There only wants contrivance and management; and all may yet be well. The Legislature, the landowner, the merchant, the farmer, the fundholder, and the manufac turer, are all equally interested: let them open their cyes, and they may yet escape the precipice to which they are