paint,
and belonged to a royal bow-bearer of the nineteenth dynasty, named
Renfu. There is another complete set, which do not appear to have been
opened, marked 636-39. The arragonite vases are the most expensive,
and, as we have remarked the most highly finished; but the visitor may
notice also those in coarser material.

Having sufficiently examined these vases, the visitor may take a
general glance at the contents of the saloon, and prepare to examine
the Sphinxes, and colossal figures that are crowded into it. In these
he will recognise only colossal copies of many of the little figures
he saw in the Mummy room up stairs. He will see huge granite
representations of the strange gods and goddesses to which the
ancients devoutly knelt; and in many of these forms he will trace a
placid beauty that reveals often the soul of the sculptor fettered by
the strange formulas of his religion. The visitor having examined the
high reliefs on the tablets and sepulchral monuments of the ancient
Egyptians, has now to examine the specimens that remain of their
statuary. But first of

EGYPTIAN HUMAN STATUES.

In viewing cursorily the statuary of the ancient Egyptians, the
investigator is first struck with the colossal proportions adopted by
their sculptors. In those days, when iron was unknown, and when bronze
was the manufactured metal, men contrived without the use of
gunpowder, to remove vast masses of granite from their quarries, and
to shape these masses into the form they chose. Had they a hero to
whom they would pay honour? Forthwith his figure was immortalised in
colossal granite. How these vast masses, when separated from the rock,
and chiselled into statues, were removed to their destination in the
court, or at the entrance of a temple, is a point not satisfactorily
determined. That thousands of lives were spent, year after year, in
the production of the vast monuments which now lie scattered in
confusion about the valley of the Nile is certain; and some men
contemplate this large expenditure of human muscle upon these rude
masses, with a gentle melancholy that is not altogether called for.
There was a spirit in the work that made it noble. And here it is well
that the visitor shall see the opinion of a man whose conclusions were
based upon profound erudition in his art, on the subject of ancient
Egyptian art, artistically viewed. In his lectures on sculpture,
Flaxman says, "Their (the Egyptian) statues are divided into