142 



KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[July 28, 1882. 



The rest of our calculation is soon made. The XVIIIth 

 Dynasty, iK'giiming with Ahmcs, aa 1703, and ending 

 with Hortmheb, ac, UGl', lasted exactly 2tl years. The 

 XlXth Dynasty began with Rameses I., and Kameses I. 

 (who reiguetl from uc, 14C2 to rc, 1456), was succeeded 

 l)y Seti I. Seti I. reigned for tifty-one years — i.e., from 

 ac 14i>6 to 1405. He, however, took his son, Ramcses II., 

 into partnership ; and this partnership, in the opinion of 

 13rugsch, extended over the last thirty years of his reign. 

 It would, therefore, have begun in ac. 1435. And now, 

 observe (for here is the turning-point of Brugsch's syn- 

 chronous theory), Hanieses II. begins to dale Ins reign from 

 t/tis period of partnership. From B.r. 1435 we must 

 accordingly count the sixty-seven years of liis reign, 

 which would close with his death in the year u.c. 13(JS. 

 In the meanwhile Seti I. has died B.C. 1405, five years 

 after which event, in the year B.C. MOO, Rameses II. 

 celebrates the fourth centenai-y of Set-aa-peh-pch Nubti, 

 by erecting the famous " Tablet of 400 years " at Zoan 

 (Tanis). Finally, Raniescs II. is succeeded by his 

 thirteenth son, Mencphthah, B.r. 13G8. Jloses, who had 

 tied to Midian forty years before, now returns to Egypt 

 for the purpose of delivering his people. The story of his 

 contention with Pharaoh, as told in the Book of Exodus, 

 covers apparently but a short time. The plagues of Egypt 

 follow swiftly one upon another, and wc shall probably not 

 l>c far wrong if we place the ilight of the Hebrews in the 

 second year of Menephtliah's sole reign — that is, in n.c. 

 13GG. It now only remains to be seen how this date would 

 correspond with the teiin of the Hebrew sojourn, as 

 recorded in the Mosaic narrative. Turning to the IJook of 

 Exodus, we find that "the sojourning of the children of 

 Israel who dwelt in Egypt was four hundred and thirty 

 years. And it came to pass at the end of the four 

 hundred and thirty years, even the self-same day it came 

 to pass, that all the hosts of the Lord went out from the 

 land of Egypt" (Exodus, chap, xii., v. 40-41.) Ko historical 

 Rtatement could possibly be more precise than this. Kot 

 only is the number of years twice recorded, but a singular 

 coincidence is noted by way of corro>x)ration. Although 

 tlie same fact is ehsewhere roughly -stated in round num- 

 bers at 400 years, there cannot, I think, be any doubt that 

 the careful and precise computation of the twelfth chapter 

 of Exodus is that upon which wc are bound to rely. All 

 that we have therefore to do is to count back 130 years 

 from the second year of the reign of Menephthah ; and 

 430 years of retrograde calculation, beginning with the 

 year ac 13G6, will take us to ac. 179G, which is the exact 

 year already assigned to the arrival of Isaac and his 

 household, in the third year of the famine. 



8TLMULANTS AND STUDY. 



Bv THE Editor, 



'"j"^IIE AbW Moigno gives the following interesting 

 X account of his experience, not only as to the efTects 

 of tobacco, whereof he had first only .spoken, but of the 

 effects of stimulants — or, rather, of the absence of stimu- 

 lants — generally : — 



"I have learned," he says, "twelve foreign languages, 

 all by the method which I have 'published in my ' Latin 

 for All ; ' that i.s to say, I draw up the catalogue of tho 

 1,500 or 1,*^00 root words, or simple primitive words, and 

 I fix their meaning in my memory by mneuiotcchnic 

 formulas. I had thus taken into my mind nearly 41,500 



foreign words, whoso connection generally, or oftenest, has 

 no connection with the word itself, and from ten to twelve 

 thousand facts, with their precise data 



" All this existed simultaneously in my memory, always 

 at my disposal when I wanted the meaning of a word or 

 the date of an event. If anyone asked me, for example, 

 who was the twenty-fifth king of England, I perceived 

 in my mind that it was Edward, called Plantagenet, who 

 ascended the throne in 1154. I was, as respects philo- 

 logy and chronology, one of the most extraordinary cha- 

 racters of my time, and Frani^ois Ai-ago used laughingly 

 to threaten to have mo burnt as a wizard. 



"But I had lately fallen into the practice of snuff-taking, 

 and an abode of several weeks in Munich, where I passed 

 my evenings in a smoking-room with tho learned Bavarese, 

 who would each smoke four or live cigars, and drink two or 

 three cans of beer (the most illustrious of these savants, 

 Steinheil, used to boast that he smoked six thousand cigars 

 a year — si.c tausend cigarren iin yahr), I attained to 

 smoking three or four cigars a day. When I edited my 

 treatise on the Calculus of Variations — the most diflUcult 

 of my mathematical treatises— I would at times, without 

 thought of mischief, use up in a day the whole contents of 

 my snuff-box, which contains 25 grammes (nearly an 

 ounce) of snuff. Kow, I was painfully surprised one day 

 to have to recognise that I was constantly obliged to turn 

 to my dictionaries for the meaning of foreign words, which 

 before happened to me seldom, or never, and that the dates 

 of numerous facts which I had made my own had lied from 

 my memory. 



" In despair at this melancholy failure of my memory, I 

 took forthwith an heroic resolution, which nothing since 

 has been able to shake. On Aug. 31, 18G3, I had smoked 

 three cigars and used 25 centimes (about 2id.) worth of 

 snulF; the day following, Sept. 1, 1863 [usually, Ed.], and 

 to the day of writing this, June 25, 1882, I have not 

 taken a single pinch of ■snuff or smoked a single cigarette. 



" It was for me a complete resurrection, not only of the' 

 memory, but of the general health and well-being. It was 

 only necessary for mo to do what I did eighteen years 

 later, to diminish nearly one-half tlie quantity of food 

 which I took each day, to eat less meat and more vegetable 

 food, to obtain such incomparable health as one can 

 scarcely imagine— indefinite capacity for work, unconscious 

 digestion, perfect assimilation of food, no luemorrhoids, 

 no constipation, no wrinkles, pimples, kc, <kc., and i 

 may be permitted to allirm it with perfect confidence — 

 those who follow in my footsteps will be rewarded as 

 I have been. 



"Add to this the habitude, irrevocably established, d 

 never saying / will <h, or / am doing, but / have done, 

 and you have the secret of the enormous quantity of work 

 I have been able to achieve, and which I achieve each day, 

 daspitc my eighty year.s. No one will deny me, hereafter, 

 the honour of having been one of the greatest workers of 

 my age. 



" f ought, finally, to add that I find it well for mo to 

 take at breakfast a small half-cup of coffee without milk, 

 to which, when only two or three teaspoonsful remain at 

 the bottom of the cup, I add a small spoonful of brandy, 

 or other alcoholic liquor. That is my whole allowance of 

 stimulants. How happy would those be who should adopt 

 my rigimn. They would be able, without harm, to sit at 

 their desk immediately after l)roakfast, and to stay there 

 till dinner-time. No sooner would they be in bed, at alx)ufi 

 nine o'clock, but they would be softly asleep a few minutes 

 lat<r, and could rise at five in the morning, full of strength, 

 after a nourishing sleep of eight hours. 



" F. MoiONO." 



