tself,
in spite of the progress it has made, would find it difficult to
discover a flaw. Well, what Victor Hugo has done for mediaeval Paris, M.
Ernest Feydeau has attempted for the Thebes of the Pharaohs, and his
restoration, as complete as it is possible for it to be, and which no
historian had attempted, stands out before us as sharply as a plan in
relief, and with all the perspective of a panorama. Thebes of the
Hundred Gates, as Homer called it,--antiquity has told us nothing more
about this ancestress of capitals; but M. Ernest Feydeau takes us
walking with him through the city of Rameses; he shows us all its
monuments, its temples, its palaces, the dwellings of the inhabitants,
the gardens, the harbour, the fleet of vessels; he draws and colours the
costumes of the people; he enters the harems, and shows us the
travelling musicians, the dancers, the enslaved nations which built for
the Egyptians, the soldiers manoeuvring on the parade ground, the
processions of Ammon, the foreign peoples which come seeking refuge and
corn, the caravans of thirty-five hundred years ago bringing in the
tribute. Then he describes the colleges of priests, the quarters
inhabited by the embalmers, the minutest details of the embalming
processes, the funeral rites, the construction of the thousands of
hypogea and mummy pits which are to receive the mummies. Finally he
shows us, passing through the streets of that strange city, the funeral
procession of a royal scribe upon its catafalque, drawn by oxen,--the
numberless mourners, the hosts of servants bearing alms and offerings. I
regret that the length of that passage does not allow of my quoting it
in full and enabling the reader to mark the union of a beautiful style
with scientific knowledge. Unquestionably no modern traveller has ever
given a more picturesque description of any existing city,
Constantinople, Rome, or Cairo. The artist seems to be seated upon the
terrace of a palace, drawing and painting from nature as if he were a
contemporary of Rameses, and as if the sands had not covered with their
shroud, through which show a few gigantic ruins, the city forever
vanished. And yet he indulges in no chance supposition, in no rash
padding. Every detail he gives is supported by the most authentic
documents. M. Ernest Feydeau put aside every doubtful piece of
information and all that appeared susceptible of being interpreted in
more than one way. He seems to have been anxious to forest