of purification; they still looked on it as a calamity; which to avert or to mitigate, they deemed no attempt, no act, no exertion, no sacrifice, ought to be spared. In the manner, however, in which these two nations conceived this doctrine, there was a striking and fundamental difference; and if the leading tenet was the same among both, the views which each connected with it were very dissimilar. Deprived, as we are, of the old books and original writings of the Egyptians, we are unable perfectly to comprehend and seize their peculiar ideas on this subject, and state them with the same assurance as we can those of the Indians, whose ancient writings we now possess in such abundance, and which in all main points perfectly agree with the accounts of the ancient classics. But we are left to infer the ideas of the Egyptians on the Metempsychosis only from their singular treatment of the dead, and the bodies of the deceased; from that sepulchral art (if I may use the expression) which with them acquired a dignity and importance, and was carried to a pitch of refinement, such as we find among no other people; from that careful and costly consecration of the corpse, which we still regard with wonder and astonishment in their mummies and other monuments. That all these solemn preparations, and the religious rites which accompanied them, that the inscriptions on the tombs and mummies had all a religious meaning and object, and were intimately connected with the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, can admit of no doubt; though it is a matter of greater difficulty to ascertain with precision the peculiar ideas they were meant to express. Did the Egyptians believe that the soul did not separate immediately from the body which it had ceased to animate, but only on the entire decay and putrefaction of the corpse? Or did they wish by their art of embalmment to preserve the body from decay, in order to deliver the soul from the dreaded transmigration? The Egyptian treatment of the dead would certainly seem to imply a belief that, for some time at least after death, there existed a certain connection between the soul and body. Yet we cannot adopt this supposition to an unqualified extent, as it would be in contradiction with those symbolical representations that so frequently occur in Egyptian art, and in which the soul immediately after death is represented as summoned before the judgment-seat of God, severely accused by the hostile demon, but defended by the friendly and guardian spirit, who employs every resource to procure the deliverance and acquittal of the soul. Or did the Egyptians think that by all these rites, as by so many magical expedients, they would keep off the malevolent fiend from the soul, and obtain for it the succour of good and friendly divinities? Now that the gates of hieroglyphic science have been at last opened, we may trust that a further progress in the science