diplomatic body,-in all, two hundred and six deputies, over whom the influence of the crown may be exercised. The number of lawyers, and men of letters, is about fifty-five; the manufacturers, bankers, notaries, merchants, &c., muster fortyfive votes; there are one hundred and fifty-three landowners, and men of fortune-being in all, two hundred and fifty-three members, who are in an independent position.

When party-feeling runs high, and the majority is perfectly certain of the objects it has in view, it chooses a candidate, not for his position, but for his character and principles. But when opinions fluctuate, the position of the candidate becomes a sort of rallying point. Thence arises the influence of the government over the elections, although the majority of the electors have no decided feeling either for or against it. Independently of this temporary circumstance, the return of a certain number of public functionaries is unavoidable in a French Chamber. In England, the aristocracy, either Whig or Tory, has undoubtedly a large share in the elections. M. Jollivet has reckoned, that the present House of Commons contains fifty eldest sons of Peers, fifty-two sons or brothers of Peers, seventy-five relations or connections of Peers, and eighty-two Baronets. In France, where the aristocracy is no longer rooted in the soil, the superior influence naturally belongs to the agents of the government; and as long as the government represents the wishes of the majority, this is of little importance. But it must be added, that no minister is free to dismiss a public officer who should happen to vote against the government. The Chamber would regard such a measure as an attack on its independence, and it would not be repeated with impunity. Nay more, if public officers were excluded from the Chamber, it would be very difficult to discuss certain questions with adequate ability. In a country whose organisation is democratic, the persons employed by the administration are necessarily the best informed and the best educated. They are sent into the provinces as the missionaries of civilisation, and it is not very wonderful if the provinces send them back to the Chamber to defend those interests which they went to examine and to regulate.

We are of opinion that little more can be deduced from the number of public officers in the Chamber, than a fact to

gratify the curiosity. The great securities required must be placed in the electoral body; the choice will be good, if the electors are independent. But the more numerous are the places and the favours in the gift of the government, the more necessary is it to extend the right of suffrage, in order to protect it from corruption and intimidation. The French government has two hundred thousand places at its disposal, in the different branches of the administration, in the magistrature, and in the army; whilst the number of electors does not amount to two hundred thousand. There is only one competent purchaser at the elections, but the means of corruption in the hands of that purchaser are immense. In a country more addicted to traffic and more accustomed to venality in the public morals, this state of things would be the ruin of the representative system. In France, bargains for votes are impossible in moments of high excitement. The patriotism of every elector fills him with a kind of military ardour, and none deserts to the enemy's camp in the heat of the conflict. In tranquil moments it is more easy to weaken the resolution of the electors; they may rather be said to give themselves away than to sell their votes. The promises of ministerial favour may then carry an election; but corruption can only take place when it ceases to be fraught with danger to the commonwealth. Nevertheless, these capitulations of conscience are always an evil; they are an outrage to morality, and they cast a reproach upon the authorities. Representative governments subsist by the faith, not by the obedience of nations; and nations have no faith except in virtue.

We stop short at these ultimate consequences, having passed all the divisions of the elective system in review. If we have judged it aright, democracy is its basis, and aristocracy its apex. The laws on the National Guard and on the municipal councils have stepped beyond the present civilisation of France in some respects. The laws on the departments and on the electoral franchise, are exclusive measures, which are at variance with the diffusion of knowledge and the division of property. We can, indeed, foresee which element of this bicephalous system will ultimately prevail; but the time and place of that conquest are only known to Providence.

534

ARTICLE V.

Monumens de l'Egypte et de la Nubie; d'après les Dessins exécutés sur les lieux, sous la direction de CHAMPOLLION le Jeune. Publiés sous les auspices de M. THIERS et de M. Guizor. Par une Commission spéciale. Paris: 1836.

SINCE Our analysis of Rosellini's work on Egypt, in the last number of this Review, a new work on Egyptian discovery has been brought before the public, of an importance equal to Rosellini's, as regards the distinguished reputation of the author-the high auspices under which it makes its appearance the new lights which it throws upon this interesting and important subject; and, finally, from the splendid and expensive form of its publication. We refer to the posthumous work of Champollion, on Egypt, which heads our present article, and which, as the reader will perceive, is ushered into the world under the sanction of an especial commission, at the head of which are the present premier of France, M. Thiers, and his late official colleague, M. Guizot. We may, en passant, while we congratulate France on having cabinet ministers capable of appreciating the still buried treasures of ancient Egypt, regret the supineness which has been manifested by our own cabinet on the subject, and which, by enabling France to associate her name with the idea of Egyptian influence, has given to her agents and consuls a monopoly of the most valuable antiquities of Egypt; and put it in their power to appropriate monuments which are, by right, the property of this country, and ought to grace its museums; and indeed, to proceed to a most disgraceful extent of extortion and rapacity, in stripping the palaces and temples of ancient Egypt of appendages, by which those extraordinary monuments are greatly deteriorated. But quitting this painful subject of defeated British competition in Egypt, which might be very easily proved to be closely connected with social and commercial prosperity, we return to a consideration of Champollion's great work. This posthumous work may be naturally expected to be at present imperfect. It is so indeed. The commission superintending the papers and drawings of the late M. Champollion, have published a few livraisons of illustrations; but having probably no warrant for giving unity to the work,

by accompanying letter-press descriptions, in consequence of the condition in which the voluminous MSS. of the defunct writer, have fallen into their hands, they have merely attached some meagre, vague, and sometimes hypothetical interpretations, in numerical order, to the series of plates of which the livraisons consist. The work will, at present, be "cavire to the multitude." It will, doubtless, be admired sometimes for the pictorial amusement of the subject, sometimes for the magnificence of the getting up; but as far as a perspicuous and intelligible view of its purposes and revelations is concerned, it will remain for the present a sealed book. It is to throw a light upon these purposes and revelations, without being slavishly guided by the "provisional numerical explications" to which we have referred, and which are in many respects incorrect and inapplicable, that we lay before our readers these brief remarks. A considerable portion of the drawings of Champollion, which are given in the first livraisons of this work, is occupied with illustrations of similar objects, animate or inanimate, to those which had previously occupied the pencil or graver of Rosellini. There will be no occasion, therefore, to employ the reader's time with any description or explanation of these, since that has been sufficiently done, for all useful purposes, in our preceding article. The circumstance, however, furnishes ground for one gratifying remark on the corroborative testimony which is supplied by this collation to those startling inferences which we drew from the subjects submitted to the faithful evidence of the eye by Rosellini. We compared some of those inferences to the sudden discovery of a new volume of history, or a new pagan Genesis, and we do not think that we at all exaggerate their importance by applying to them such emphatic phraseology. Of that our readers, however, will have been the best judges. But, if the designation be even partially correct, the importance of a double corroborative testimony, as to the truth of the visible data whence those inferences are drawn, will be admitted to be of paramount importance.

By way of example, we may state that Champollion exhibits drawings, taken from the same localities, of some of the Pharaohs, and their wives and daughters, which perfectly agree, not in outline only, but in those minute shades of physiognomical distinction, which we have urged before as being

equally curious and important;—as exhibiting the Retzch-like skill of the Egyptian artists 4000 years ago-as showing that they were as perfectly cognisant, as their pupils the Grecian sculptors were afterwards, with the great truths of physiognomy; -and as preserving substantial evidences, in the character of the persons represented, either to confirm what history has said of them, or to fill up the void of what it has omitted to say. For example, we have in Champollion a full-length portrait, and a half-length portrait, of the great Sesostris. Both are coloured in imitation of the extant representations, in the temples or tombs whence they are drawn, and both perfectly agree in complexion, expression, and costume. The resemblance of the great conqueror to Napoleon, in facial outline, we before adverted to, although Champollion, in his slavish anxiety,

"To crook the pregnant hinges of the knee,
Where thrift might follow fawning,"

degraded himself by comparing the portrait to Charles X., under whose sanction he was sent to Egypt, as is well understood, on a mission equally political and scientific. Champollion also gives another portrait of the conqueror, at full length, in the act of being apotheosised by himself, from which Rosellini took his copy of the head of the conqueror, on a large scale; to the beauty of this, as well as the graceful form in which the horn of Ammon is disposed, we bore testimony in our last number. Although the scale of size be different, the truth of each copy is proved by the accurate resemblance of the details of both. According to the coloured portraits of Sesostris, his complexion would seem, like that of all the Egyptians represented on the various monuments of Egypt, to have been of a copper colour, like that of the Moors who now occupy the Northern Coasts of Africa, and the ruined dwelling places of Hannibal and the Carthaginians. We may, therefore, very safely pronounce, that the ancient Egyptians and Carthaginians were of the same Moorish complexion, and possibly of the same hereditary lineage. Our learned readers will, doubtless, recollect that there is a vexata questio of ancient standing, connected with this department of the subject. Of what colour were the Egyptians? Were they, as Herodotus says, in his Euterpe, black, with crisped hair? Does he mean by the words which we translate crisped or curly, woolly