ps) in
the desert between Palestine and Egypt. "On the fifth day of my
journey," says the accomplished author of 'Eothen.' "the sun growing
fiercer and fiercer, ... as I drooped my head under his fire, and closed
my eyes against the glare that surrounded me, I slowly fell asleep--for
how many minutes or moments I cannot tell--but after a while I was
gently awakened by a peal of church bells--my native bells--the innocent
bells of Marlen that never before sent forth their music beyond the
Blagdon hills! My first idea naturally was that I still remained fast
under the power of a dream. I roused myself, and drew aside the silk
that covered my eyes, and plunged my bare face into the light. Then at
least I was well enough awakened, _but still those old Marlen bells rang
on_, not ringing for joy, but properly, prosily, steadily, merrily
ringing 'for church.' _After a while the sound died away slowly_; it
happened that neither I nor any of my party had a watch to measure the
exact time of its lasting; but it seemed to me that about ten minutes
had passed before the bells ceased."[22] The gifted writer proceeds to
give a metaphysical explanation of the phenomena; but it may be
questioned whether he did not hear actual musical sounds, emitted by the
rocks that lay beneath the sands over which he was moving.

And similar sounds have been heard when the stones that sent them forth
were quarried blocks, no longer in a state of nature, but shaped by
human tools, and employed in architecture. Three members of the French
Expedition, MM. Jomard, Jollois, and Devilliers, were together in the
granite cell which forms the centre of the palace-temple of Karnak,
when, according to their own account, they "heard a sound, resembling
that of a chord breaking, issue from the blocks at sunrise." Exactly the
same comparison is employed by Pausanias to describe the sound that
issued from "the vocal Memnon."

On the whole, we may conclude that the musical qualities of his
remarkable colossus were unknown alike to the artist who sculptured the
monument and to the king whom it represented. To them, in its purpose
and object, it belonged, not to Music, but wholly to the sister art of
Architecture. "The Pair" sat at one extremity of an avenue leading to
one of the great palace-temples reared by Amenhotep III.--a
palace-temple which is now a mere heap of sandstone, "a little roughness
in the plain." The design of the king was, that this grand edifice