238 I GO A -FISHING. 



Chancellor in the pass of Glencoe, and a dozen other such 

 freaks of nature, but there is nothing remotely to be com- 

 pared with this. The expression of his countenance is 

 often fearfully like life. I have been all this evening 

 dwelling on a fancy that in the remote ages, before the 

 first Osirtasen was king in Egypt, or the race of Ninus 

 were on the thrones of Asia, there was here a nation born 

 of the sons of Noah, who built a city and inhabited the 

 mountain country; that in process of time they grew to 

 be very great and powerful, and their fame went abroad 

 through the continent ; that the fate of nations, that des- 

 tiny of which the history of the past is the solemn proph- 

 et for all the future, overtook this unknown race ; that 

 war, famine, and pestilence swept them away; that the 

 convulsions of the earth hurled the mountains down on 

 the ruins of their palaces, and after some mighty earth- 

 quake that sent the great rocks from the very summits of 

 the hills, filling the valleys, crushing the forests, hiding 

 deep under rock and earth all traces of the old glories, 

 yonder sad countenance was visible for the first time, and 

 visible thenceforth forever, looking steadfastly downward 

 to the grave of a forgotten race, a buried nation. 



" Even so that unutterably grand countenance of the 

 Sphinx looks over the plain of the Nile, over the sandy 

 hills of the Necropolis, over the heaps of earth and wav- 

 ing groves of palm that cover and hide every vestige of 

 the once great Memphis. But there is this difference, 

 that the countenance of this Man of the Mountain is only 

 stern and sad, like — very like the faces of the Assyrian 

 kings on the Nineveh marbles, or that face of Rehoboam, 

 the son of Solomon, on the temple wall at Karnak. There 

 is expectation, but not hope in this countenance. The 

 face of the Sphinx, with all its sadness, wears a smile. 



