had experience in these matters attach no importance to such specimens, unless the alleged discoverer is a scientific observer, of whose character and competency there can be no question. When, therefore, Mr. Horner gave special instructions to his agents to attend to the following point, among others:-'If any fragments of human art be found in the soils passed through; and, unless they be brick or other rude material, to preserve them— our experience of similar excavations would lead us to expect that such fragments of human art would be sure to be forthcoming. But, even if this be not the case, and the pieces of pottery were actually found in the places indicated, there are several circumstances which render Mr. Horner's inference respecting their extreme antiquity extremely doubtful. If we adopt a date of the first colonization of the country consistent with the chronology of the Septuagint, and admit the correctness of Mr. Horner's estimate of the mean rate of the increase of the alluvial soil, we may fairly calculate that at that time the general surface of the plain of Memphis was at least thirteen feet below its present level, and that the bed of the Nile was in the same place much more than twenty-six feet below its banks—that is, much more than thirty-nine feet below the general surface of the plain; for the bed of the river rises at the same rate as the bordering land, and is in this part of Egypt at least twenty-six feet below the land in most of the shallower parts. Now, according to an ancient tradition,* Menes (that is, one of the earliest kings of Egypt), when he founded Memphis, is related to have diverted the course of the Nile eastwards, by a dam about 100 stadia (about twelve miles) south of the city, and thus to have dried up the old bed. If so, many years must have elapsed before the old bed became filled up by the annual deposits of the inundation; and the piece of pottery may have been dropped into it long after the time of this early king, for we do not know the course of the old bed, and the statue may stand upon it. Or the piece of pottery may have fallen into one of the fissures into which the dry land is rent in summer, and which are so deep that many of them cannot be fathomed even by a palm-branch. Or, at the spot where the statue stood, there may have been formerly one of the innumerable wells or pits, from which water was raised by means of earthen pots. Again: we know from the testimony of Makrîzî that, less than a thousand years ago, the Nile flowed close by the present western limits of Cairo, from which it is now separated by a plain extending to the width of more than a mile. In this plain, See Herod. ii. 99. therefore, therefore, one might now dig to the depth of twenty feet or more, and then find plenty of fragments of pottery and other remains less than a thousand years old! Natural changes in the course of the Nile similar to that which we have here mentioned, and some of them, doubtless, much greater, have taken place in almost every part of its passage through Egypt. Thus far we have adapted our remarks to Mr. Horner's esti mate of the mean rate of the increase of the alluvial soil. But this estimate is founded upon a grave mistake: that is, upon the assumption that the upper surface of the platform, on which the colossal statue stood, was scarcely higher than the general surface of the plain. The temple which contained the colossal statue was one of the buildings of Memphis; and according to Mr. Horner's assumption, it is a necessary consequence that both the city and the temple must have been for many days in every year, to the depth of some feet, under the surface of the inundation! This is quite incredible; and we may therefore feel certain that the Nile-deposit did not begin to accumulate at the base of the statue till Memphis had fallen into ruins about the fifth century of our era. These considerations, and many others which we might urge, tend to show that Mr. Horner's pottery is no more likely than M. Bunsen's chronology, to compel us to abandon our faith in the old Hebrew records. But one fact, mentioned by Mr. Horner himself, settles the question. He tells us that 'fragments of burnt brick and of pottery have been found at even greater depths [than thirty-nine feet] in localities near the banks of the river,' and that in the boring at Sigiul, fragments of burnt brick and pottery were found in the sediment brought up from between the fortieth and fiftieth foot from the surface.' Now, if a coin of Trajan or Diocletian had been discovered in these spots, even Mr. Horner would have been obliged to admit that he had made a fatal mistake in his conclusions; but a piece of burnt brick found beneath the soil tells the same tale that a Roman coin would tell under the same circumstances. Mr. Horner and M. Bunsen have, we believe, never been in Egypt; and we therefore take the liberty to inform them that there is not a single known structure of burnt brick from one end of Egypt to the other earlier than the period of the Roman dominion. These fragments of burnt brick,' therefore, have been deposited after the Christian era, and, instead of establishing the existence of man in Egypt more than 13,000 years, supply a convincing proof of the worthlessness of Mr. Horner's theory. 2 F 2 ART. ART. V.-1. Bibliotheca Devoniensis: a Catalogue of the Printed Books relating to the County of Devon. By James Davidson, Exeter. 1852. 2. Monasticon Diocesis Exoniensis. By George Oliver, D.D. Exeter and London. 1846. 3. Transactions of the Exeter Diocesan Architectural Society. Vols. I.-VI. Exeter. 1843-1858. 4. A Perambulation of the Ancient and Royal Forest of Dartmoor. By Samuel Rowe, M.A., late Vicar of Crediton, Devon. 2nd edition. London and Plymouth. 1856. 5. The Anglo-Saxon Episcopate of Cornwall, with some Account of the Bishops of Crediton. By E. H. Pedler, Esq. London. 1856. WHEN WHEN the learned Jean Bodin, toward the end of the sixteenth century, published his famous treatise De Republicâ,' there was one among his many critics whose name, at least from the men of Devonshire and Cornwall, deserves to be redeemed from the complete oblivion into which it has fallen. This is Nathaniel Carpenter, whose father was rector of Hatherleigh, near Oakhampton, and who was himself a fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, where he seems to have been one of the most remarkable men of his time. In his 'Geographie delineated forth,'-the first complete treatise on the subject published in English-he replies at considerable length to Bodin, who is over peremptorie in overmuch censuring all mountainous people of blockishnesse and barbarisme, against the opinion of Averroes, a great writer, who, finding these people nearer heaven, suspected in them a more heavenlie nature.' Carpenter proceeds accordingly to 'checke Mr. Bodin's bold conjecture' by an express reference to our mountainous countries of Devon and Cornwall,' and by a display of choice flowres cropt from that Hesperian garden': 'It cannot be styled,' he asserts, our reproach, but glorie, to draw our offspring from such an aire, which produceth witts as eminent as the mountains, approaching far nearer to heaven in excellency, than the other in height transcend the valleys. Wherein can any province of Great Britain challenge precedency before us? Should any deny us the reputation of arts and learning, the pious ghosts of Jewell, Raynolds, and Hooker would rise up in opposition.' A long string of names follows, setting forth the riches of the 'sweete hive and receptacle of our western wittes' in statesmen, soldiers, seamen, philosophers, poets, and in many inferior faculties wherein our Dævon hath displayed her abilities;' and whatever the hills and rocky tors of our Dævon' may have had to to do with the matter, it is certain that the list is one that can be rivalled by few other counties, probably by none:— I should not,' he concludes, alluding perhaps to the glorification of nous autres Français,' implied in the bold conjecture of Mr. Bodin,' have spun out this theme so long, but to stop their mouthes, who, being sooner taught to speak than understand, take advantage of the rude language and plaine attire of our countrymen, admiring nothing more than themselves, or the magnificent splendours of their own habitation. As though all the witt in the world were annexed to their own schooles, and no flowres of science could grow in another garden. But a rude dialect being more indebted to custom than nature, is a small argument of a blockishe disposition; and a homelie outside may shroude more witt than the silkworme's industry. I have sometimes heard a rude speech in a frize habit expresse better sense than at other times a scarlett robe; and a plaine yeoman with a mattocke in his hand, speake more to the purpose than some counsellours at the barre.' Mr. Bodin's acquaintance with the sweet receptacle of western wits was in all probability very limited; and, if he ever lighted on it, he must have been considerably edified by this elaborate attack on his general proposition. As a Devonshire man, however, Carpenter may have thought that some defence of his native county was not uncalled for on other grounds. Notwithstanding Queen Elizabeth's often quoted saying, that 'The Devonshire gentry were all born courtiers, with a becoming confidence,' it is certain that, as well at that time as long afterwards, the remote land of Western Barbary enjoyed, on certain points of civilization and manners, a very questionable preeminence. A sweet_county?' said Quin the epicure, on his return from eating John Dories at Plymouth-no, sir; I found nothing sweet in Devonshire-except the vinegar.' Fifty years since the nicer delicacies of the table were evidently quite unknown to the savage natives. Some ignorance of so refined a science may reasonably be expected from a people whose manners, when Herrick wrote, were rockie as their ways,' and whose gentry, according to Lady Fanshaw, however loyal and hospitable, were of a crafty and censorious nature, as most used to be so far from London.' After this, we are not surprised to find Clarendon accounting for Monk's 'rough and doubtful' answer to the Duke of Ormond about the regiment to be sent from Ireland for the King, by the fact that he had no other education but Dutch and Devonshire.' The roughness and independence which are perhaps to some extent still characteristic of the men of Devonshire, were no doubt greatly fostered by two geographical features of their County, which have influenced its history from the earliest times. -its isolation and the position of its harbours. Shut in by the Cornish peninsula on one side, with which the Saxon Defnsætas' felt little sympathy, and by the sea on the north and south, the only land communication of Devonshire with the rest of England lies eastward through Somerset and Dorset. Great woods and deep marshes, however, formed for many centuries a kind of natural barrier, and would have prevented much intercourse with the neighbouring counties had their original settlers been more nearly of kindred race than in fact they were. The men of Devonshire were thus early compelled to depend upon their own resources—a task in the prosecution of which no small difficulties were to be successfully encountered. The earliest notices of 'our Dævon' suggest very different images from those with which its name is now associated-the soft sea breezes, the rose and myrtle covered cottages, and the broad green meadows dotted with lazy cows. The country was wild and desolate, and so thickly covered with forest that the woodlands of Dyvnaint' is the expression by which it is generally referred to in the earliest Welch poems. Aldhelm's Dira Domnonia' * alludes perhaps as much to the moral condition of the district, where the heretical Britons refused to keep their Easter in due season, as to its physical character; but the Domesday Survey, with its miles of wood and coppice, and its thinly-scattered population, supplies material for a sufficiently rugged picture, the accuracy of which is confirmed by subsequent chroniclers. Poor and hungry (jejunum et squalidum), according to William of Malmesbury, was the land about Exeter, now among the most productive in the county. Its scanty crop of oats, says the Monk of Devizes, somewhat varying Johnson's famous definition, supplied one and the same nutriment to man and beast. There were indeed certain districts, in the South Hams and elsewhere, which seem always to have been noted for their fruitfulness; but the mass of the county had to be reclaimed by patient industry. In Fuller's time the work had been tolerably accomplished, and Devonshire stood high among the agricultural counties. No shire,' says, 'shows more industrious, or so many husbandmen, who .. make the ground both to take and keep a moderate fruitfulnesse; so that Virgil, if now alive, might make additions to his Georgicks from the plough-practice in this county.' he The expression occurs in one of his poems 'Quando profectus fueram If, |