210 BE VIEWS — INDIGENOUS BAOES OE THE EABTH. 



analogy, (p. 557,) " oldest of historical lauds, representing < 

 therefore but the ' middle ages,' of mankind's development upon 

 earth, typified by our cosmic man, arrived at one third of the • three 

 score and ten years' imagined by Hebrew writers to be the average 

 of post-mosaic human longevity, it follows that at the third dynasty, 

 say 5300 years ago, the Egyptians at least, among, very likely, other 

 oriental nations whose annals are lost, h.:d long before passed 

 through their periods of adolesence, childhood, and infancy." Tet 

 the bewildered student who looks in vain for some terra firma, 

 pretending not (as even the best educated of scholars or students of 

 natural science may surely be allowed, without charge of unbecoming 

 ignorance,) to judge for himself of Turin papyri, petrogl'yphic 

 inscriptions, Apis-periods, and disputed dynasties, is not to suppose 

 that he may ask for any definite chronology on which learned 

 Egyptologers are agreed. The very Chevalier Bunsen, whose views 

 are quoted approvingly on p. 587, as newly received, and interest- 

 ing matter "in support of preceding remarks," is referred to on 

 p. 487, before such new matters had come to hand, in these terms : — 

 which disclose to us the the pregnant fact that even Mr. Gliddon is 

 now reserving his own final decision, till the forthcoming of the long 

 promised " Book of Kings" ofLepsius: "until the appearance of 

 which, I have consistently maintained since 1844, no professed sys- 

 tem of Egyptian chronology can, in the very nature of human things, 

 possess solid or durable claims to attention : such as have recently 

 appeared, worthy of respect, being either like M. Brunet de Presle's, 

 a re-examination of the classical sources : or else like Chev. Bunsen's 

 second volume, a labyrinth of arithmetical adjustments, satisfactory to 

 no one but their learned calculator : or again, similar to the useful 

 but very piece meal coverings of a skeleton chronology, by M. 

 Brugsch, who, in the main, agrees with the time-measui'ements 

 previously laid down by Lepsius ; or finally, ingenious attempts at 

 unsettling that which had been generally agreed upon, by 

 Champollionists, through M. Poitevin's attorney-like process of 

 detecting some supposititious flaw in the indictment. Eor myself, 

 therefore, as before stated, I have no more precise Egyptian 

 chronology to offer than that already sketched in Types of Mankind ; 

 and having waited some twelve years for Lepsius, it is small hard- 

 ship to extend one's patience a few months longer." 



But what, meanwhile, is the inquiring student to turn to, while 

 waiting till the luminaries of Egyptian chronology shall have made 

 up their minds what is to be believed ? There is the Geological 



