majesty, and passion, in which the original groundwork of nature-worship is as much as possible concealed by the working of a plastic imagination; on the other side are forms bestial or grotesque, featureless and passionless, exhibiting nature-worship in one of its lowest stages. But in every respect, in language, in physiognomy, in mind, in political tendencies, in manners, as well as in religion, the contrariety between the Egyptian and the Athenian is complete. There is nothing on the other side except the vain pretensions of the priests of Thebes, the credulity of Herodotus, and the wildest legends of the mythical age; and we are surprised that so strict an ethnologist as Mr. Kenrick should be inclined to admit even the general fact of an Egyptian colonization. "The most degrading part of the religion of the Egyptians was their animal worship, which they carried to a higher pitch than any other people, not excepting the Hindoos. Almost the whole animal and some part of the vegetable kingdom enjoyed either a national or a local sanctity. Gods it was said grew in the gardens. The most cogent reasons of policy and the terrible name of Rome failed to save from death the Roman who had killed a cat. Fancy had first assigned to each god his favorites or symbols among beasts or plants. Then the beasts and plants themselves were reverenced, and at last worshipped. Stately avenues of colossal statues, magnificent porticoes and columned courts ushered the awe-stricken devotee into the sacred presence of an ibis or an ape. The highest object of this superstition, the bull Apis, was regarded as an actual incarnation of Osiris. No rational account of such a system can be given. The serpent cannot have been respected for its utility. The ibis cannot have been honored as the destroyer of the sacred serpent. Nothing divine can have been perceived in the beetle or the ape. The connection between the god and the beast was originally the offspring of a grotesque imagination, and priestcraft and the superstitious tendency of the people did the rest.