100 
THE STOEY OF A SCENE PAINTEE. 
[Nature and Art, September 1, 1866. 
Elysium, where the virtuous and wicked receive 
their appropriate reward and punishment. The four 
deities in the compartment below them, having a 
human, ape, hawk, and jackal head, are the genii 
of the Amenti, or Purgatory, children of Osiris, 
who particularly presided over the interior por- 
tions of the body and insured their preservation. 
They were called Amset, Hapi, Kabhsenuf, and 
Tuautmutf. The sepulchral vases were made in 
their shape and consecrated to them. In the third, 
or next compartment, is the judgment scene, 
having above the hawk of the Sun flying, and at 
the sides the jackals of Anubis, to whose care was 
confided the paths or roads of the Upper and 
Lower Hemisphere, or World. Sometimes they 
are seen conducting the Sun’s barge along its 
empyreal course. The judgment scene, the usual 
vignette in the Papyri of the 125th chapter of the 
Ritual, has the god Osiris, the Pluto or judge of the 
dead, standing and listening to the speech of the 
god Horus, who introduces Pakhratharaubsh into 
his presence, attended by the goddess Ala, or Truth, 
in whose hall the judgment has taken place. Before 
Osii'is is a papyrus flower with the four genii ; 
behind him are Isis- and Neplithys ; at the sides 
are two lion-headed deities with snakes, also the 
demons of Aahlu. The inscriptions announce the 
names and titles of the deities, and that Osiris has 
given the usual good things to the deceased. In 
the fourth compartment the standard of the East is 
raised by Thoth, Ibis, and Horus, hawk-headed. 
At their sides are rams, emblems of Chnanus, 
the Demmrgos, or creator. The winged goddess on 
each side is Uati, who presided over the lower 
hemisphere. The fifth compartment has the Tat, 
a mystical form of Osiris, supported by the god- 
desses Nit, or Neitli, Minerva, having a shuttle, and 
Selk having a scorpion on her head and symbolic 
eyes. The hawks at the side are emblematic of Hut 
or Tebhut, the winged disk, or Agathodaimon. In 
the fifth compartment the vulture of the goddess 
Nenshem soars, holding the standard of Victory in 
its claws. Shu, a solar, god, kneels underneath on 
the emblem of refulgence, elevating the solar disk, 
hr which is the Scarabseus, emblem of existence. 
At the sides are deities from the halls of the 
Elysium. The inscriptions in these scenes explain 
their meaning. The side inscriptions are dedications 
to Ptah-Socliaris-Osiris, a pantheistic form of Osiris, 
who was considered to preside especially over the 
tombs. Besides the usual statement that he affords 
the usual food to the dead, they affirm that this 
god has granted the soul to come out of the Nu, or 
Firmament, and to enter into the empyreal gate of 
the Morn. Round the lower part of the chest, 
which is not seen in the plate, are several demons 
of the Aahlu, or Amenti, and other mystical types, 
as the cow and fish of Athor, the Egyptian V enus. 
The inscriptions of this portion state that the gods 
grant to the deceased to receive his food and drink 
oft’ their table or altar like one of themselves ; to 
enter also the gateway of the Hall of Truth, where 
he is tried and acquitted ; and that his heart is poised 
equally in the balance, for were it lighter he would 
be condemned to the flames of Egyptian purgatory 
or sent back to re-enter the world in another form. 
THE STORY OF A SCENE-PAINTER. 
W HEN, in the middle of the seventeenth 
century, Sir William Davenant, manager of 
the theatre in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, discarded the 
“ Haverses ” and tapestries which had theretofore 
been accepted as sufficient for the purposes of stage 
illusion, and substituted regular scenes “painted in 
perspective,” without doubt there were to be found 
many conservative old playgoers who lifted up their 
voices against the startling innovation, and pro- 
phesied the approaching downfall of the drama. If 
the grandsons present marvelled how elder genera- 
tions could for so long have gone without such useful 
and necessary appliances, assuredly the grandsires 
were complaining that now things had come to a 
pretty pass indeed, when a parcel of beardless, 
empty-pated boys, not content with stage fittings 
such as had been esteemed good and sufficient by 
the late Mr. William Shakespeare and his great 
brother-dramatists, demanded foolish paintings and 
idle garniture, that diverted attention from the 
effoi'ts of the players and the purpose of the play- 
wrights, and had never been dreamt off, and would 
never have been tolerated in the good, and simple, 
and palmy days gone by. Unquestionably, the 
first “ painting in perspective ” brought upon the 
boards was in the judgment of many the thin end 
of a wedge, which, as it thickened, was certain 
to drive forth and destroy all that was intellectually 
and vitally precious in the drama, and to lead the 
way to a last scene of all in the eventful history of 
the stage, which should be “second childishness and 
mere oblivion.” 
But the scene-painter having set foot within the 
theatre was not to be expelled. The intruder soon 
won for himself a large popularity ; held his ground 
against criticism and opposition. He was no mere 
journeyman dauber. From the first he had taken 
distinct rank as an artist. Lustrous names adorn 
the muster-roll of scene-painters. Inigo J ones 
planned machinery and painted scenes for the 
masques, written by Ben Jonson, for performance 
before Anne of Denmark and the Court of James 
the First. Evelyn lauds the “very glorious scenes 
and perspectives, the work of Mr. Streeter,” sei’jeant- 
painter to King Chai’les the Second. In February, 
1G64, the Diarist saw Dryden’s “ Indian Queen ” 
acted “ with rich scenes as the like had never been 
seen here, or, haply, except rarely, elsewhere on a 
