Greek
arts in Africa. But a review of this history will show that, as far as
human forethought can judge, this could not have been done. A people
whose religious opinions were fixed against all change, like the pillars
upon which they were carved, and whose philosophy had not noticed that
men's minds were made to move forward, had no choice but to be left
behind and trampled on, as their more active neighbours marched onwards
in the path of improvement. If Thebes had fallen only on the conquest by
Cambyses, if the rebellions against the Persians had been those of Kopts
throwing off their chains and struggling for freedom, we might have
hoped to have seen Egypt, on the fall of Darius, again rise under kings
of the blood and language of the people; and we should have thought the
gilded and half-hid chains of the Ptolemies were little better than the
heavy yoke of the Persians. This, however, is very far from having been
the case. We first see the kings of Lower Egypt guarding their thrones
at Sais by Greek soldiers; and then, that every struggle of Inarus, of
Nectanebo, and of Tachos, against the Persians, was only made by the
courage and arms of Greeks hired in the Delta by Egyptian gold. During
the three hundred years before Alexander was hailed by Egypt as its
deliverer, scarcely once had the Kopts, trusting to their own courage,
stood up in arms against either Persians or Greeks; and the country was
only then con-quered without a battle because the power and arms were
already in the hands of the Greeks; because in the mixed races of
the Delta the Greeks were so far the strongest, though not the most
numerous, that a Greek kingdom rose there with the same ease, and for
the same reasons, that an Arab kingdom rose in the same place nine
centuries later.

[Illustration: 098.jpg NIT, GODDESS OF SAIS.]

[Illustration: 099.jpg A CAT MUMMY]

Moral worth, national pride, love of country, and the better feelings of
clanship are the chief grounds upon which a great people can be raised.
These feelings are closely allied to self-denial, or a willingness on
the part of each man to give up much for the good of the whole. By this,
chiefly, public monuments are built, and citizens stand by one another
in battle; and these feelings were certainly strong in Upper Egypt
in the days of its greatness. But, when the throne was moved to Lower
Egypt, when the kingdom was governed by the kings of Sais, and even
afterwards, when it was str