The Sun.
London, England, 1861-02-11 00:00:00

_ -
reached Malta at 9 a.m. on the sth inst., and left I merchants had arrived at Washington in order to
for Alexandria on the same day at 6 p.m. endeavour to facilitate a compromise.

CHINA.
TIEN-TSIN, DEC. 2 (P 12).
There is no news of importance. The weather
is intensely cold, but the condition of the troops is
satisfactory.

SHANGHAI, DEC. 23.
Lord Elgin is still here, The rebels are quiet.
The second instalment of the indemnity has been
paid. Trade is generally very dull.
News from Japan announces that the state of
affairs was not satisfactory. The Prussian Envoy
to Japan had not attained the objects of his
mission.

CANTON, DEC. 31.
The revised tariff is now enforced. The man-
darins are levying heavy inland duties.
POINT DE GALLE, JAN. 18.
• The Loyal Lily has been lost on the island of
Bintang.

COMMERCIAL INTELLIGENCE.
NEW YoRK, Jan. 29.—The stock market is
steady. New York Centrals are quoted at 80, Illi-
nois Central 791, Erie NI. Money and exchange
are steady ; sterling bankers' bills are quoted 107,
Cotton sales to-day 4,000 bales, at previous rates.
Wheat irregular, corn buoyant. Sugar, coffee, and
provisions brisker.

- NEW ORLEANS: Jan. 29.—Cotton sales to-day
22,000 bales ; middling 11c. to 1 Freights for
cotton to Liverpool, ld.

LITERATURE.

Egypt. in its Biblical Relations and Moral Aspect.
By J. Foulkes Jones, B.A. Smith and Elder.
This book offers some valuable suggestions con-
cerning the Egyptians. There is no people of
ancient days who attract more interest than they
do, and when we read of their marvellous works,
whose remnants still remain to astonish the world,
we feel that we are dwelling on the records of a
race who in the infancy of time seemed to anticipate
the triumphs of civilisation in its zenith. In de-
scribing Alexandria, reference is made to the de-
struction of the literature of the time. The Ptole-
mies were great patrons of learning. "Their schools
were temples of science and fame, and their library
boasted of the collected literature of the East. Of
course there was no printing then, and writing
was by no means common. What marvels of lite-
rature and art must those seven hundred thousand
manuscripts have been at this age of the world.
One's heart swells with admiration and enthu-
siasm as one thinks of the rolls of papyri that
graced the shelves of the Ptolemies, and what if
we had them now ? We should then be in posses-
sion of the literature of the early Pharaohs, and
the history of Ekypt would not have been what it
now is—a labyrinth of darkness and doubt. What
if the destroyer had stayed his hand, we should
then have known something about the mysteries of
the priesthood ; some of us in our childhood would
have been learning to parse hieroglyphics, just as
we used to do Greek and Latin, and reading,
perhaps, from an old papyrus some Egyptian
account of Joseph, or what the Pharaohs
thought of Moses and the " Land of Goshen," and
the marvellous things in the field of Zoan; but the
Saracen came with fire and rapine, and spoiled the
world of its richest treasure." It is remarked that
though in the nineteenth century one can scarcely
realize travelling by rail in Egpyt, but that what-
ever becomes of the Suez Canal, the Suez Railway
is an accomplished fact. " Soon all Indian travel-
lers will be threading their iron way through the
sands of the Desert. If Joseph had been living
now what would he have thought of journeying
through the Land of Goshen in a first class rail-
way carriage." There is a very interesting chapter
of the Napoleon of the East—Mehemet Ali. The
career of this remarkable man was a surprising
one. The following passage is worthy of notice,
as it makes mention of the continuous rule of
strangers in the land :
" What Mehemet Ali got after all his victories, was the
Pashalic of Egypt for himself and children: another proof
of the continued subjection of this country to foreign rule.
There has always been a throne in Egypt, but no native
prince has sat upon it since the last of the Pharaohs—
nearly twenty-five centuries ago. First, the Persian came
and spurred his horse to victory; then came Alexander and
the Ptolemies; and no sooner had the latter become natu-
ralised in the country, than there was a change of masters
again. Then the Caliphs came with fire and sword, and
the Sultans, and the Memlooks, and the Turks ; and now
the Pacha is an Albanian—but no Egyptian. There is no
parallel example of such long-continued foreign domination
on the face of the earth, in a country still having a national
existence, or still possessing an independent civil constitu-
tion. But the Hebrew prophets had seen it all, and had
told us that Egypt should not exalt itself any more among
the nations ;' that there should be no more a prince of the
land of Egypt, but that the sceptre of Egypt should depart
away ;' and they told us this, too, long before Cambyses had
set his foot upon her sands."
One of the most majestic and melancholy pictures
here drawn is that of Carnak. There must be some-
thing peculiarly interesting to the mind of the tra-
veller when he gazes on the relics of such remote
antiquity. " Beautiful for situation" is the city of
ancient Thebes. The limestone ridges of the Ara-
bian chain stand considerably back here, and form
quite an amphitheatre of hills, as if on purpose to
invite some bold adventurers to come and settle in
the plain below. The old Egyptians took the
hint and built Thebes here. When this was nobody
knows. It was some time in the infancy of
the world, before Greece was born, before
Troy flourished and fell. I wonder if old Homer
ever was here—there is no telling ; but he heard
of its mighty temples, and he sang of its hundred
gates. We know that Strabo was here; but he
only saw what we saw to-day—its grave. Dust
to dust is the fiat that has gone forth against
ancient 'Thebes, and now its clay-built streets lie
buried in their primeval earth." In nothing does
this ancient race seem more peculiarly distinct
from others than in the way in which they
regarded a future state. It is truly observed that
we might have expected such a superstitious people
would have shrunk afraid from the approach o
the king of terrors, but we find the contrary to
have been the case. The Egyptians knew death,
looked out for it with calm, thoughtful demeanour
—they met it like men. They ordered their coffins
and their tombs early in life—they called their
houses inns, where they sojourned for a while—
the tomb was the long home, and they hewed it
out in the rock. This feeling was general all
over Egypt. It was this that touched the
peasant's heart as he trudged along the banks of
the Nile, when out of his scanty earnings he
saved what he could to get some decent place to
pillow his head in death, and to rest his bones in
a neat and comfortable tomb." Further on it is
stated that the idea of the grave to them
was not what it is to us, and the bodies
were, by being embalmed, preserved from.
decay. Hence their remains were very dif-
ferent from our corpses. The strange idea of the
human frame being preserved so long while gene-
rations that have since existed have long since
mingled with the dust could not have been more
forcibly expressed than in the lines on the mummy
in Belzoni's exhibition :
" Antiquity appears to have begun
Long after thy primeval race was run.
Since first thy form was in this box extended
We have above ground seen some strange mutations;
The Roman Empire has begun and ended,
New worlds have risen, we have lost old nations,
And countless kings have into dust been humbled,
While not a fragment of thy flesh has crumbled."
The main reason which suggested this work was
the desire to dwell on the religious aspect of Egypt,
which is a subject to which few travellers give
their attention. The readers of this book will
therefore be presented with an additional at
traction, as it must be with all thinking
people a source of interest to " note those points
in the life and history of ancient Egypt which
serve to illustrate its connection with religion
and the Book of God." The work concludes
with the following eloquent remarks on the
Pyramids. Those mighty creations of old days
are an everlasting source of wonder to all who
dwell upon them, whether through the medium of
description or with remembrance to aid them in
realising the vision. The great conqueror of mo-
dern days, ever prone to seize on all calculated to
impress his followers, exclaimed to his surrounding
army—' Soldats, du haut de ces pyramides qua-
ran te siecles vous con templent,' " and all thoughtful
and enlightened minds will agree in the majesty
and glory of the matchless and marvellous creations
that stand now as they stood before the Christian
worlds had birth :
"At the same time, there is a wrondrous charm in con•
templating such mighty erections; and, of all others, there
is the charm of antiquity. Here is a link that connects us
with the remotest past, and associates us with men that one
can scarcely think of as belonging to our race and kindred.
It seems an effort to grope one's way back to the days of
Herodotus • but, having reached here, what a way we
should still be from the era of the Pyramids ! The Egyp-
tians of the time of Herodotus, is speaking of Cheops and
Chephren, must have thought of them much as we do of
Hengist and Horsa. Indeed, some of the heroes of Greek
Mythology look almost young by the side of Old Father
Cheops, for the pyramid kings long preceded beings whose
existence we have been taught to regard as fabulous. It
seems, in fact, as if we had in some monuments of Egyptian
art the source and substance of some of the grandest ideas
of ancient Greek poetry, while to the Greeks themselves
these ideas existed only in semblance and shadow. We can
here think of the old fable of the Giants over again, and
almost realise it as a living fact. We had before heard of
piling Ossa upon Pelion, and what is this but something
like These men are the real Titans—those old pyramid-
builders, men that have achieved works of such vastness
and power that it looks as if, in their mad rebellion, they
were warring against Heaven I"

Life of the Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B. By Joseph

Allen. Routledge.
The first two vols. of " The Autobiography of a
Seaman," by the )ate Earl of Dundonaid,
recapitulating as they did the chivalrous exploits
of their gallant author in bis own straightforward
and honest style have, to a certain extent, lifted up
the veil of years and brought back to the memory
of Englishmen the glory of our old navy, when
Armstrong and Whitworth guns were not thought
and cutlass vindicated
England's supremacy. But although the gallant
of, and the boarding pike
Cochrane has furnished a most interesting narra-
tive of his exploits and vicissitudes, together with
an exposition of Admiralty patronage and neglect,
still I.2is death has, for a time at least, deprived the
public or .‘lll account of his adventures in the New
World, where his talents were, if possible, called
into more play uzider adverse circumstances than
they were under the !Inion Jack. The victim of a
conspiracy, his character traduced, and his pros-
pects in the service, the pres*: of which he had