the continual motion which was the groundwork of his systemthe Fate* which "guided the way upwards and downwards"-it was daily destroyed and daily renewed; daily rekindled and extinguished. "It could not go beyond its appointed measure; for, if it did, then would the Erynnes, handmaidens of justice, find it out." Anaxagoras, on the contrary, while he shocked the Greek belief in their bountiful god Helios, who shone alike on mortals and immortals, by asserting the sun to be a mass of redhot iron,t-yet held many just notions of both sun and moon, particularly of the latter; explained solar and lunar eclipses; speculated rationally on the cause of the winds and of the rainbow, and (Sir John Herschel may be quoted here) "less absurdly on earthquakes than many modern geologists have done;" and taught that the moon shone by reflected light, which he justly inferred from her phases, and regarded as the reason why the light was faint, and unaccompanied by sensible heat. It is even attributed to him that he asserted absolute coldness to be a property of the moon's rays; a chimerical notion at first sight: yet modern discoveries have shown a real connexion between clearness of the atmosphere (accompanied of course with a greater brightness of the moon), and the cold produced by the radiation of heat from the earth's surface at night, which is impeded by the presence of clouds.

In other points this excellent philosopher, this profound and cautious thinker (as he is well named by Aristotle), had more distinctly anticipated modern science: even to the revelations of the telescope. He supposed, as after him Democritus, the dark spots in the moon to be occasioned by the shadows of inequalities in its surface.

The moon, whose orb

Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views
At evening, from the top of Fesolé

Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands,

Rivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe:

yielded the same fruit to the observation of Anaxagoras. It was one of his beliefs that, like the earth, she had plains, mountains, valleys, and habitations; evidently for rational beings. And from this he seems to have gone to another notion which might also find a home in the thoughtful speculations of modern days, that life was probably enjoyed in greater perfection by the rational inhabitants of the other mundane bodies than of those occupying earth.

In fine, it must always be said of this famous man, that his attention was alive to Nature, and his mind open to just reason

*

· εἰμαρμένη.

† μυδρὸς διάπυρος.

ing on its phenomena. Could he, more freely than he did, have escaped the trammels of the school in which he was involved, and which, enlarge its method of inquiry as he would, was still too exclusively fixed on the laws of outward existence to grasp the more essential and abiding truths of Reason and of Being,-he would have been entitled to remembrance with the greatest names of antiquity. The last words he uttered are a memorable and affecting evidence of what he himself felt of those hard limits that had restrained his pursuit of truth, when, at the close of a long and laborious life, exclusively devoted to knowledge, his mind, involved in darkness and uncertainty, saw that the Universal Intelligence, overlooking the infinite mixtures of all seeds, equally knew what is, what was, and what shall be. Contrasting, then, the Infinite to be known with the Little he had attained -Nothing can be known, he said. Nothing can be learned. Nothing can be certain. Sense is limited. Intellect is weak. Life is short.

ARCHELAUS, a pupil, succeeded Anaxagoras: and in him the Ionian system of philosophic inquiry found its last teacher. It had done all it was fitted to accomplish. It had conducted investigation to a point from which the view beyond was so farreaching and sublime, that its own incapacity to conduct inquiry further stood suddenly confessed. The Temple of Mind, upon whose vast threshold Anaxagoras placed his successors -the service of the Great Being that filled it-demanded other priests. It was a want that had indeed been felt before Anaxagoras, and had discovered itself in what has been already named as the Eleatic School.

With this School is directly connected the publication of the great ATOMIC DOCTRINE-the most definite, it may perhaps be allowed, of all the physical doctrines of the ancients applied to actual phenomena: as some balance to its evil qualities, the suggester, through a long series of ages, of a habit of really physical observation and inquiry and the subject of respectful disquisition by Lord Bacon. From the Atomists, then sprang up the Athenian Sophists; men whose exact career and influence are, of all the problems of antiquity, perhaps the most interesting and the most important. In discussing it, the practice of regarding these men apart from the forms of opinion which had plainly given birth to the sophistical effort, has not tended to its satisfactory solution. Following to some extent the course of Dr. Ritter, it is our intention to bring the SOPHISTS into view in their double relation to their great predecessors of the Eleatic School, and to their greater enemy and ultimate destroyer-SOCRATES.

ART. V.-Reisen in Europe, Asien, und Afrika. (Travels in Europe, Asia, and Africa, with a particular View to the natural Characteristics of each Country.) By JOSEPH RUSSEGGER. Stuttgart. 1842.

WHEN Mehemet Ali had in a great measure exhausted the resources of Egypt and Syria,-countries from which under a wise and paternal government it would be difficult to say what resources might not be looked for, he was seized with a belief that the quickest way to acquire new treasures would be to dig into the earth for them, and his oriental imagination pictured to him the boundless wealth of which he might possess himself by the fortunate discovery of a gold mine, or of some noble stratum of diamonds, hidden from all human eyes but those of the lucky pasha predestined to possess them.

A less enlightened Turk, haunted by a fixed idea of the sort, would probably have had recourse to dervises and talismans, to sorcerers and mystic charms, to aid him in the interesting search. Mehemet Ali, on the contrary, felt that the "beautiful simplicity" of the conjurer's wand was hardly likely to show him the most expeditious route to the discovery of the new Golconda which floated in beatic visions before his waking meditations; at all events, he was wise enough to feel that he might look a long time in the streets of Cairo without finding the precise conjurer he was in search of; and in his embarrassment he determined to apply to his friend, Prince Metternich, who, he naturally thought, might be supposed to have at all times a goodly host of cunning men in his pay.

The old pasha had already declared himself the sole lord of the soil throughout the wide extent of his dominions. He had converted the whole land of Egypt, formerly parcelled out into a number of small possessions, into one vast farm to be cultivated for his exclusive benefit. The fellah, once a freeholder, had become glebæ adscriptus, and by thus lowering the station of the husbandman, the pasha had hoped to make a better farmer of him, and to make the land more productive. Even the lands of the mosques had been declared public property, and their revenues had passed into the viceregal treasury. Nor was this all. Not content to monopolize agriculture, the wily old Turk had resolved to monopolize commerce also, in the fond hope that by so doing he should secure to himself all the profits which under a system of free trade would have found their way into the coffers of a host of merchants.

Yet with all his monopolies, Mehemet found it impossible to bring together as much money as he was willing to spend upon his ships and soldiers. He could not bring his expenses within the bounds of his income, and the only thing left for him was to try and extend his income till he brought it up to the point of his expenditure, and as far beyond that point as his good genius might allow him to go. To his friend Metternich, accordingly, he applied for the loan of this conjurer, and Metternich, without more ado, agreed to let him have one. As the pasha's wish was to find out gold-mines, and to get gold out of those that he had already, Metternich, reasonably enough, thought that the best sort of conjurer to send to Egypt would be one who had some practical knowledge of mines, and, accordingly, the author of the work

now before us was selected for the mission.

M. Russegger had for several years been attached to the mines of Gastein, which belong to the Austrian government, when in 1834 Mehemet Ali applied for assistance in his mineralogical researches. Russegger was selected as the chief of the expedition, which was ordered to direct its attention to other departments of science, besides those from which the viceroy of Egypt looked for an immediate profit. The departure of the expedition was delayed by various causes. In 1834, by the breaking out of the cholera in Egypt, and in 1835 by the plague which in that year raged fearfully. In December 1835, however, all preliminary arrangements had been concluded, among which not the least important seems to have been the guarantee of a banker at Trieste, that the gentlemen of the expedition should receive their pay regularly, and that all necessary accommodations should be constantly provided them. Russegger had scarcely been twenty-four hours in Cairo before he felt the propriety of this precaution. Metternich knew the Levantine character too well to rely on the fulfilment, in Egypt, of any promise, for which he did not hold a tangible security at Trieste.

On the 10th of January, 1836, Russegger embarked with his companions at Trieste for Alexandria, with the determination of taking Athens in his way, apparently for the purpose of conferring with the distinguished orientalist, Von Prokesch, who at that time resided as Austrian ambassador at the court of king Otho. When the Austrian mineralogist arrived at Cairo, the pasha had not yet determined in what direction he should send the wise man, who shows, in the work before us, that he knew how to turn his involuntary leisure to the best account. He made himself acquainted with many new and interesting facts relating to the government and natural resources of Egypt, without ne

Russegger's Travels in Egypt.

95

glecting to see the usual lions of the place, and undertook even an excursion into the Libyan desert, to visit the celebrated Natron Lakes. In due time old Mehemet resolved that the Austrian mineralogist should make Syria the field of his first investigations. Russegger accordingly proceeded to Beirout, and thence to the northern provinces. He made a short stay at Antioch and Aleppo; then went by sea to Tharsus; and thence to Gulek among the mountains of the Taurus, where the mining operations of the expedition may be said to have commenced. These, however, did not so entirely engross the attention of Russegger, as not to leave him time for sundry excursions into the pashalics of Adana and Marasch. In autumn, 1836, he left Gulek and returned to Egypt, after inspecting the collieries and ironworks of the Lebanon. These movements have furnished materials for the first volume, which is all that M. Russegger has as yet thought proper to publish.

Early in 1837 he commenced his journey into the interior of Africa. He ascended the Nile, and visited on his way the classical monuments of Thebes, Dendara, &c. At Korosko he quitted the river, and traversed the great Nubian desert. At El Mekheir, the capital of the Berber land, he again embarked on the Nile, and continued to ascend the river till he arrived at Khartoom in 16° N. lat., the point where the Blue and White Rivers join to form the Royal stream, that thence flows in uninterrupted majesty to the Mediterranean, without standing indebted to a single tributary on its way. Khartoom was selected by our traveller as his head-quarters. Thence it was he undertook his various gold-hunting expeditions, in the course of which he acquired a great deal of highly interesting knowledge of that part of the interior of Africa, though he did not succeed in discovering for his employer those mines of gold by the aid of which armies were to have been maintained, and fleets created; that were to change the face of the political world, and to make the modern Pharaoh arbiter of nations. Russegger ascended the White River as far as the country of the Shilluk negroes; went overland to Obeid, the capital of Kordofan; traversed the whole country of the Nubas; and after visiting Shaboon, their capital, returned through Kordofan to Khartoom. The equinoctial rains compelled him to remain at Khartoom till October, and during this time, one half of his European companions died of fevers brought on by the climate. Early in October he started again in another direction. He went up the Blue River to Sennaar, and crossed the country to Roserres, where a small army was drawn together for the purpose of escorting him to