Gentleman's Magazine: And Historical Chronicle

We are sorry to find that from a slight and apparently unimportant omission on the part of our printer, some readers have supposed that the letter of Mr. H. N. Coleridge to Mr. Daniel Stuart, which was inserted in our Number for July, and replied to by the latter in the same number, had been communicated to us by Mr. Stuart, and not by Mr. Coleridge himself. We beg to say that the letter, as sent by Mr. Coleridge to Mr. Stuart, had a Postscript to this effect: "A copy of this letter will be sent to the Gentleman's Magazine:" and it will be seen in our June number, p. 590, that the receipt of that copy was then publicly acknowledged, though we had not then room for its insertion. Thus Mr. Stuart was doubly apprised of its proposed publication, first by Mr. Coleridge, and then by ourselves (in public), and therefore he desired us to append to it his reply.

An anonymous Correspondent is indebted to a friend in the West of France, an antiquary of considerable reputation, for the following curious fact. After observing that in the 12th and 13th centuries, Popes' Legates, and even Bishops, frequently pronounced excommunication, not only against princes and other lay persons, but against the clergy, a consequence of which was the refusal of christian burial in consecrated ground; and that to elude in some degree the rigour of this law, the mode was some: times resorted to, of depositing in sarcophagi above ground the bodies of those whom it was forbidden to bury in holy earth; he relates that there exists at Nay, a small parish near Periers, in the diocese of Coutances, a stone coffin of this I kind with its flat cover, which is placed near the church on the south side. In this, according to the common tradition of the country, was deposited the body of the Curé of the parish of Nay, who was bound to pay to the Pope an annual rent; having delayed the payment too long for transmission within the proper time, he made a compact with the devil to carry him to Rome, "as quick as woman's thought," and as the reward of this service, promised his body as soon as it was buried. But the priest was too cunning for the devil, for he left directions that his body should be placed in this sarcophagus, which never was and never will be put under ground, if regard be had to the expression of his intentions. The sarcophagus is of large dimensions, so as to admit an opening to be made on the south side, wide enough to allow a man to pass into it; through this it used to be the custom of the peasants in the canton of Carenton to creep, and lie down to sleep, if

they could, within the sarcophagus, in order to be cured of intermittent fevers. A late Curé of Nay, a man of good sense and intelligence, assured my friend that he had frequently used all his means of persuasion to root out this superstition, and that he had only been able to succeed with the inhabitants of his own little parish. This sarcophagus lying on the ground, is the only one in the present churchyard of Nay. History informs us that Pierre de Vilaines, Bishop of Bayeux in the year 1360, having failed to pay his debt to the court of Rome, died under excommunication; not being able to receive christian burial, his body remained deposited in the episcopal palace 80 years, (probably in a leaden coffin) and was not interred till 1440, when the debt was paid by Zanon, one of his successors. The policy of Rome probably tolerated this degree of relaxation in the severity of its spiritual judgments, since it gave an opportunity to the piety or benevolence, or sense of propriety, of heirs and successors, to make up the losses occasioned by the carelessness or insubordination of some of its tributaries.

In the number for July, page 105, the Rev. J. S. Pratt is represented by a typographical error to have died in Herefordshire instead of Hertfordshire, in which county he held the living of St. Margaret's near Stanstead. The Reverend gentleman was formerly Vicar of the parish of St. John Baptist in Peterborough; and in 1834 published a volume of "Short and plain Sermons for reading in Families." He was an eminently pious and benevolent christian minister; and his decease will be long and deeply lamented.

P. 224. Mr. Barham's name was John, not Joseph. He sat in Parliament for Stockbridge in 1831, and for Kendal from the death of James Brougham, esq. in Feb. 1834 to the dissolution of 1837. He was Sheriff of Pembrokeshire in 1834, and married in that year Lady Catharine Grimston, eldest dau. of the Earl of Verulam.

P. 226. The late Sir Ralph Bigland was the son of Mr. Joseph Owen, of Salford near Manchester (not Jones), by Elizabeth-Maria Bigland, only daughter of Richard Bigland of Gray's Inn, widow of Mr. Jenkin Davies of Lanarthney in Carmarthenshire, and sister of Ralph Bigland, esq. Garter. Sir Ralph assumed the name of Bigland by royal licence in the year 1774.

ERRATA.-P. 81. Read, Rev. John Reynell Wreford, then of Birmingham, and now of Bristol; p. 141 a, 16, for forty-three, read forty-four.

GENTLEMAN'S

MAGAZINE.

MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS.
By J. S. WILKINSON, F.R.S. &c. 3 vols. 8vo.

THE earliest and most faithful records which we possess of Egyptian history, must undoubtedly be found in the writings of Moses; who gives a very curious and faithful picture of the state of that country in his day. Yet, as his mention of Egypt only arose from his connexion with the history of the Jewish people, that country being in early ages their habitation and house of bondage and of trial, no full or continuous account can be expected from the Pentateuch: still, what we possess in the scriptural narrative is very important, and, as a history, superior to all others, Of the profane or classical authors, Herodotus stands pre-eminently in the foremost place. He was in Egypt about half a century after the throne of the Pharaohs had been overthrown by the Persian conquest. He received his information from the priests, who possessed all the learning and preserved the traditions of their country; and no doubt he has faithfully delivered to us the knowledge which he received from them but how far they themselves were acquainted with their early annals, and from what source their information was derived, is a point not to be overlooked, when we place our confidence on the fidelity of the venerable father of history. Mr. Wilkinson thinks that there are marks in the narrative of Herodotus, which shew that, when in Egypt, he was not admitted into the best society ;—a remark, perhaps, a little invidious and indiscreet, as it would seem to intimate that he had no letters of introduction from the Greek merchants, and was confined to the conversation of the clergy. The knowledge which the priests possessed in the days of Herodotus of the early history of their country, must have been from traditions preserved in hieroglyphical characters: but as that language, both in fulness and completeness as well as in precision, is amazingly inferior to the alphabetical; and as it could only be opened by a key which was in the exclusive possession of the priesthood, who certainly had the power of adding or altering at their own will, as national pride, or professional interest, and prejudice suggested; and further, as these sculptured monuments-these alphabets of stone admitted an allegorical interpretation, and consequently might be misinterpreted; and as we further know that it was customary with the priests in the time of Herodotus to conciliate the Greek and Egyptian authorities; we cannot therefore, with these cautions in our mind, place such confidence in it, as to suppose it to be a strict historical narrative, or make it the basis of our reasonings and calculations. Diodorus visited Egypt about 400 years subsequent to Herodotus, and collected his history from the documents shown to him by the priests, from their oral instruction, and from the accounts of the elder Greek historians. The third leading authority on this subject is Manetho, who was a high-priest at Heliopolis in the reign of Ptolemy, about 260 B. C. His catalogue of the ancient regal succession is preserved in the works of Eusebius and Syncellus; and his authority, once so despised, has received a great confirmation, as the names of the Pharaohs mentioned by him have been decyphered on the Egyptian monuments. "It is," says a German writer, "worthy of observation, that in Herodotus we have the documents of the priests of Memphis; in Diodorus, those of the priests of Thebes; in Manetho, those of the priests of

Heliopolis -the three principal seats of sacerdotal learning." Certainly the history of this nation is most worthy of our research, if we consider only the high antiquity which it claims. Egypt is called "the Mother of Nations ;" and the very first page we open in her history, the first glimpse we gain of her institutions, shews a nation far advanced in the arts of civilised life. Its political civilisation must have commenced at the earliest period to which scriptural traditions will permit us to ascend. Abraham had presents from the King of Egypt; and in the time of Moses, its government was regularly organized: there was a brilliant court, an influential and learned priesthood, and an industrious, ingenious, and agricul tural people: the arts of life were known, and the instruments of luxury and splendour possessed. "Many circumstances (says Mr. Wilkinson) unite in proclaiming the civilisation of Egypt at least as early as the eighteenth century before our æra. How far does this throw us back into the infancy of the world! at least, of the world peopled by the descendants of Noah: and when we recollect that the pyramids of Memphis were erected within 300 years after the æra assigned to the Deluge; and that the tombs of Beni Hassan were hewn and painted with subjects describing the arts and manners of a highly civilised people, about 600 years after that event; it may occur that the distance between the Deluge and the construction of these pyramids and tombs, is not greater than from the present day to the reign of our own Elizabeth, or Henry the Third.” * It might, indeed, be asked, whether the civilisation of India did not accompany or even precede that of Egypt: but on that subject only some casual inferences and imperfect deductions could be made. Voltaire, and subsequently G. Vico, have laboured to prove the earlier claims of the Chaldean history; but supposing with them, what cannot here be discussed, that the great Babylo-Chaldaic Empire rose at the same early dawning of the days that succeeded the retiring flood, we cannot help admiring how different has been their fate. Babylon has fallen; and her boasted bulwarks, her aërial terraces, and her towers that seemed to defy the heavens, and to mock the destroying power of the earth, have shrunk into an obscure heap of mouldering clay-a ruined mound of shards and rubbish. The lion and the serpent couch in dark and obscure dens where once glittered her sumptuous palaces; and the Euphrates, as it rolls through its sedgy solitudes, seems to mourn a desolation, which itself was the fated instrument to make. Thebes, too, has suffered from the hand of violence and time; but it preserves in its granite bosom the traces of its former greatness. Those gigantic portals, that once rolled open to admit its military processions and its august ceremonies of religious worship, are still standing to receive and repay the crowd of modern travellers whom an enlightened curiosity leads to her shores. There we still behold the imperishable monuments of her former wealth, magnificence, and glory. There, in long succession of pictured annals, are seen the wonders wrought by the hand of her living inhabitants; and there, still more surprising, exist, semblant even now with life, the very bodies of the dead, to which art has given a second existence after nature failed;-an existence which, though it yielded to death, defied his companion the worm, and has equalled in duration the very pyramids themselves.

"There the dread fanes on Nile's forsaken shore,
Whose ruins still their pristine grandeur tell,

Wherein the demon-gods themselves might deign to dwell."

* Vol. iii. p. 260.

↑ "Tradidit Ægyptis Babylon, Ægyptus Achivis." (Prov. Lat.)

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Gentleman's Magazine: And Historical Chronicle, Volume 165