the converse is indisputable-from ill-health or imperfection of body irregularities and distortion of figure do certainly result. When circumstances multiply a feeble stock, and no pains are taken to check that unnatural increase, the race so improvident must lose beauty. During ages beyond number the conditions of life tended to eliminate those feeble stocks, while ruthless customs sought out and extinguished the progeny which escaped. For generations now we have been consuming the inheritance of beauty bequeathed to us by those ages. It begins to show the signs of exhaustion. That is the simple fact.

I will not dwell on the most baneful of all influences working for degeneration, because it is admitted on every hand. Our careful efforts to outwit nature by securing the survival of the unfittest are claimed by good people as the special glory of the age. Most are aware of the evil consequences which must needs follow if the same course were pursued in dealing with animals. But they cannot bring themselves to credit that a beneficent providence will avenge the infraction of its laws when the motive is so pure and holy. Surely they will be suspended for such a blessed cause! So, the more utterly and hopelessly unable a child may be to fulfil the duties of man, the more eagerly we nurse any miserable spark of life within him. When skill and care have triumphed over the manifest design of fate, and the poor thing takes a semblance of manhood, neither law nor custom forbids it to multiply its kind. On the contrary, if the case be " interesting," philanthropic peers and personages will concern themselves with the wedding—as was seen not long ago when two deaf-mutes married, with deaf-mute bridesmaids and groomsmen and a cortège of like unfortunates, attended by their offspring, deaf-mutes everyone. The Press gravely wonders and laments when year by year the Registrar-General displays that this terrible infirmity is growing more common. But every newspaper in the land, perhaps, applauded that "pretty and affecting ceremony."

But, kindly folk exclaim, would you deprive these unhappy fellow creatures, the halt and the blind, cripples and paralytic, of the one solace they can enjoy? I have not to answer. But if they be not deprived, the race must pay for the indulgence.

Let us consider the means by which the ape-browed prognathous features of the savage were transformed step by step to symmetry. Whilst the struggle for life was waged sword in hand the most vigorous stocks secured the most attractive women and multiplied; the

Opening now the Book of the Dead-as the Ritual is not very happily called by modern writers-we commence the dirge which followed the process of embalming, that sacred process whereby the corruptible literally put on incorruption before the mortal could enter on the "manifestation to light" (Chap. I.). Book in hand, let us ascend the western side of the northern face, as the mourners ascended the western slope in the sacred cemetery among the hills of Thebes. Then, reciting chapter by chapter as we mount course by course, we approach at the fifteenth step a gateway two courses yet above us, just as the Departed in the fifteenth chapter approaches the "Gate of the Gateway," and invokes "Haroeris, the great guide of the world, the guide of the souls in their secret place, the light dwelling in the horizons." From this point the first veil of secresy begins. For so effectually was the opening concealed from uninstructed eyes in ancient times by a revolving stone that the position, once lost, was impossible to recover; and for many hundred years after the fall of the Roman power the building remained impenetrable, until Caliph Al Mamoon, in the aims century of our era, forced an opening at random through the solid masonry, and hit upon the Entrance Passage. Entering by the low gateway we have before us the passage of the equinox already described, which while descending southwards into the depths of darkness points northwards to the Pole-star. As we cross the gate on the seventeentà course, we recognise the point where, in the seventeenth chapter, the Deceased is said to "cross the door of earth" and exclaim, "I go from the gate of the hill, that is the gate of the North." And in the ascent we have made we recognise also "the ladder of the earth," of which a much older papyrus makes mention. From that gate we enter the descending passage of the horizon, the first "Hall in the House of Osiris," the beginning of the journey in union with that divine guise whose aid alone can enable the deceased to overcome the unseen fees awaiting him in the Secret Places, and to bear the intolerable splendour of the under-world. In that Hall takes place the reconstruction (XXL of every member of the deceased in some divine form, his preservation (XXVII.), his protection (XLII.), and his sustentation with heavenly food (LII.).

Bidding farewell to the light of common day, and treading with the Departed the Entrance Passage, we arrive after a long descent at as *The Roman numerals enclosed in brackets refer throughout to the chapters in the Be the Dead.

aperture in the western wall, and passing through the opening thus disclosed, mount gently into a kind of grotto, at the bottom of the Well, a square perpendicular shaft with footholes cut in the precipitous sides; from the top of which a level passage runs to the Queen's Chamber,* that is, the "Birthplace of Osiris" mentioned in the Ritual, the Chamber of his mother, the Queen of the Pyramid. Returning from the bottom of the Well to the Entrance Passage, and pursuing our course still further downwards, we come, after a short level continuation beyond the bottom of the slope, to a subterranean chamber or abyss. This Infernum is hewn out of the solid rock and roofed over with massive stones; but the floor is inaccessible, being covered with huge blocks of varying height resembling a pool of petrified flame, and a small passage opening beyond leads to nothing.

Precisely similar is the progress of the Departed, described in this portion of the Ritual. While the inner man (or "Ka") is renovated in the First Hall of Osiris, the soul new-born, "the mystery made by the gods" being accomplished (LXIV.), comes forth from the Second Hall, the Chamber of Isis, where Osiris was born. Then passing the gate of Anruhf at the head, or northern opening, of the Well, as the gate of Rusta is the southern or lower opening-" the name of the southern gate is Rusta," says the Ritual, "the name of the northern gate is Anruhf" the soul descends the ladder of the sepulchral shaft, as may be seen in the Papyrus of Ani, into the grotto or Chamber of the Waters at the bottom of the well, the Third Hall in the House of Osiris. In the depths of that Well of Life, wherein, as the Sai-an-Sinsin tells us, approach is made to Osiris, takes place the Regeneration of the Renewed Man (or Ka) by reunion with the new-born soul amid the living waters. 'I give the waters of life to every mummy," says the goddess Nout, who presides over the waters, in the inscription on the vase of Osur-Ur (given in Records of the Past), "to reunite it with the soul, that it may henceforth be separated from it no more for ever. The Resident of the West has established thy person amid the sages of the divine Lower Region"-it will be observed that both the Western position and the Lower Region accord with the position in the Pyramid ;-" he giveth stability to thy body, and causeth thy soul not to distance itself from thee. He evoketh the remembrance of thy person, and saveth thy body

The only authority at present for the title of Queen's Chamber is that of the Arabs; but it is far from improbable that they obtained it from tradition, and it accords with the papyrus mentioned above.

entirely and for ever." Here, too, the sacred bark, each portion a livir. spirit endowed with a mystic name, awaits the Departed, now th Initiate; that saving bark whereby he is to pass the deep waters death, and to approach securely the Fourth Hall in the House of Osir the subterranean abyss, or Place of Ordeal, whence they who cann endure the fire pass away to nothingness. And from that same we' also where he regains his living soul he catches through the opening above his first glimpse of the "Celestial Nile" (CX.), the river of t which rises beneath the throne of the Creator, Tum, that river on the waters of which the Immortals move for evermore.

Resuming our exploration of the edifice, and turning back from the Infernum, as the deceased turns back from Hades (CXIX.), we remount the Passage of the Horizon, until we come to a granite gate, << portcullis, built in the roof. This great gate, which originally wa totally hidden by masonry, and was only discovered by the falling of a stone when Al Mamoon was forcing his entrance into the Pyrami stands at the threshold of the Secret Places. Not only was the whoe gate carefully hidden, but the lower portion of the passage within was blocked inside with enormous stones, still unremoved, and perhaps irremovable. So that even now the Lintel is still hidden, and admissin is only effected through a hole forced by violence in the wall of the passage above the blocks within. With the obstruction of the doorway the experience of the deceased precisely corresponds. "I have come says he, later on, "through the Hidden Lintel; I have come like the sun, through the Gate of the Festival." And, after a litany to the celestial intelligences who keep account of the moral actions of markind, he approaches the difficult portal, and beseeches admission t the Double Hall of Truth, the Chambers of Confession and of Illumin tion, the Fifth and Sixth Halls in the House of Osiris. Here, as the material building, so also in the Ritual, resistance is offered every step to the further advance of the Initiated (CXXV.). "12 not let thee go over me," says the sill, "unless you tell me my naze' "The weight in the right place is thy name," is the profound re of the Initiate. For, as the raising of the portcullis depends upor the true adjustment of the weight, so also is Justice the virtue withe which the upward path remains for ever closed. Creeping with difficuls through a small hole forced in the concealed passage above the blocka we find ourselves in a low corridor about 129ft. long, inclined upwards (at an angle of a little more than 26deg. to the level of the Pyrami

and corresponding to the First Hall of Truth. Then, stooping beneath the low gateway by which it is terminated (but not obstructed) at the top, "the Gate of the Festival," already mentioned, we stand upon a kind of landing-place, from which the whole system of the interior passages opens out. On every side is the "crossing of the pure roads of life," of which the coffin of Amamu speaks. On the western side is the mouth of the well, "the Gate of Anruhf," leading down to the "roads of darkness." Before us lie the Fields of Aahlu, the blessed country where the Justified executes the works which he is privileged to perform for Osiris. "I have digged in Anruhf," he says later on; "I have drilled the holes"-the holes, that is, for the good seed which shall bear fruit in the King's Chamber, where the corn grows seven cubits high," the holes which we shall see are drilled in the ramps of the Southern Ascending Passage, but to which no signification. has yet been attached.

Beyond the fields the road leads direct to the Hall of New Birth, where the soul received her second life in the chamber of Isis, the mother of Osiris, the incarnate Deity dwelling in the House of Humanity. From the entrance, too, of the passage diverge the interior ladders spoken of on the ancient coffin of Amamu (the "ladder of the earth" having been already ascended outside the building). Sheer downwards, "the ladder which has been made for Osiris" descends into the Well. Northwards the Passage of Justification slopes to the Hidden Lintel. And southwards, still upward, but with a very slightly different inclination, runs the Southern Ascending Passage, called by some writers the Grand Gallery, forming the upper portion of the Hall of Truth, the Chamber of the Orbit, or Sixth Hall in the House of Osiris. This remarkable structure consists of a corridor about 158ft. long and 20ft. high, built entirely on a slope, floor, walls, and roof, except a small portion at the southern or upper end. On either side of the sloping floor are twenty-eight ramps, each with a hole in it, the reference to which in the Ritual has been already noticed. And at the upper end the slope of the floor line is closed abruptly just above the Queen's Chamber (or Hall of New Birth) by a block three feet high forming a daïs, or throne of judgment. From hence the top of the block, or seat of the throne, runs level for about sixty-one inches; the wall at the side of the seat thus formed being not quite vertical, but impending very slightly towards the slope. At the back of the throne the gallery is brought to a termination by the southern wall closing down within forty-two inches of the seat, and VOL. IX.-No. 55.

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