That there was a well-ordered and efficient civil administration admits of no doubt. Whether there existed a thrifty middle class or not we can not decide. The tendency was for the child to follow the vocation of the parent, but there were no rigid barriers of caste. Not until the New Empire, was there an attempt to build up such a wall even about the priesthood. THE RELIGION.--With the Egyptians, religion was a matter of supreme and absorbing interest. There was a popular religion; and there arose early, in connection with it, an esoteric or secret doctrine relative to the gods and to the legends respecting them,--a lore that pertained especially to the priesthood. Moreover, while the religious system, from the earliest date, is polytheistic, we have proof that the educated class, sooner or later, put a monotheistic interpretation upon it, and believed in one supreme deity, of whom all the particular gods were so many forms and manifestations, or that one being under different names. Whether this more elevated faith preceded the reigning system, or was a later offspring of it, is a matter of dispute. For a long period the two co-existed, and without collision. The great divinities of Egypt are pre-eminently gods of light. They are associated with the SUN. With the agency of that luminary, with his rising and setting, they stand in a close relation. All Egypt worships the sun under the names of _Ra_ and _Horus_. Horus is the adversary of _Seth_ (called _Typhon_ by the Greeks), the god of darkness, and is born anew every morning to attack and conquer him. In honor of Ra, the lofty obelisks, or symbols of the sun's rays, are erected, each of which has its own name and priests. With the sun-gods are joined the goddesses of the heavens,--_Nut_, _Hather_, _Isis_, and others. But _Osiris_ became the most famous sun-god. His worship was originally at Abydos and Busiris. At length his cult spread over the whole land. In the legend, he is murdered by Seth; but Horus is his avenger. Horus conquers the power of darkness. Henceforward Osiris reigns in the kingdom of the West, the home of the dead. He is the sun in the realm of the shades. He receives the dead, is their protector, and the judge whose final award is blessedness or perpetual misery. The departed, if their lives have not been wicked, become one with him. They are each of them called by his name. To Osiris, all sepulchral inscriptions are addressed. His career, with the victory of the power of darkness over him, and his glorious revival in the regions of the West, typifies human life and destiny. The principal god at Memphis is _Ptah_, the primal divinity, the former of heaven and earth; yet, perhaps, a god of light, since he is styled by the Greeks, _Hephaestus_. At Thebes, _Ammon_ was revered as the king of the gods: he shared in the properties of the sun. _Thoth_ is the chief moon-god, who presides over the reckoning of time. He is the god of letters and of the arts, the