kings of Egypt, their sculpture was enlivened by
Grecian animation, and refined by the standard of Grecian beauty in
proportions, attitude, character, and dress. Osiris, Isis, and Orus,
their three great divinities, put on the Macedonian costume; and new
divinities appeared amongst them in Grecian forms, whose
characteristics were compounded from materials of Egyptian, Eastern,
and Grecian theology and philosophy."

First, to give the visitor an idea of the magnitude of the colossi of
the ancient Egyptians, let him notice from the southern extremity of
the saloon the gigantic cast of the face of Sesostris, placed against
the southern wall of the central saloon. This face is a cast from a
colossal statue of that great king of the Egyptians, which was one of
four discovered by the energetic Belzoni, in front of the great temple
of Ibsamboul in Nubia. It is a sitting figure, fifty feet high. These
colossal figures of the great Egyptian monarch were plentiful
throughout Egypt. As the visitor stands before this fragment of a
stupendous piece of sculpture, he may recall to mind the points in the
career of Giovanni Battista Belzoni. First, the boy helping his father
to shave the beards of the Paduans; then the young adventurer flushed
with hope, jogging on his way to Rome; then the grave young man, with
his vast physical development shrouded in the monkish habit; then, in
1800, when Napoleon was busy in Italy, the monkish garments thrown
aside, he wanders about the continent, stared at everywhere for his
size and strength of limb; then as lecturer on hydraulic machinery,
and exhibitor of feats of strength at Astley's Theatre; then, under
the patronage of the Pasha, constructing a machine to water some
gardens on the banks of the Nile; then engaged by the English Consul
in Egypt, Mr. Salt, to prosecute some of the investigations into the
monuments of antiquity, upon which that gentleman was expending much
time and money; and here he is for the first time recognised in his
true position. Of his labours as explorer of the tombs and temples of
ancient Egypt few people are ignorant. How, dressed as a Turk, he
transported the colossal granite bust of Memnon to Alexandria, and saw
it safely on its way to England; how he penetrated into the Temple of
Ibsamboul; how he patiently explored the rocks of the valley of
Beban-el-Malouk, beyond Thebes to discover the entrances to tombs, and
took exact copies of the thousands of figures he dis