but when it entailed an injury on any other person was punishable by law. A calumniator of the dead was condemned to a severe punishment; and a false accuser was doomed to the same sentence which would have been awarded to the accused, if the offence had been proved against him; but to maintain a falsehood by an oath was deemed the blackest crime, and one which, from its complicated nature, could be punished by nothing short of death. For they considered that it involved two distinct crimes-a contempt for the gods, and a violation of faith towards man; the former the direct promoter of every sin, the latter destructive of all those ties which are most essential for the welfare of society.

The wilful murder of a freeman, or even of a slave, was punished with death, from the conviction that men ought to be restrained from the commission of sin, not on account of any distinction of station in life, but from the light in which they viewed the crime itself; while at the same time it had the effect of showing, that if the murder of a slave was deemed an offence deserving of so severe a punishment, they ought still more to shrink from the murder of one who was a compatriot and a free-born citizen. In this law we observe a scrupulous regard to justice and humanity, and have an unquestionable proof of the great advancement made by the Egyptians in the most essential points of civilization. Indeed, the Egyptians considered it so heinous a crime to deprive a man of life, that to be the accidental witness of an attempt to murder, without endeavouring to prevent it, was a capital offence, which could only be palliated by bringing proofs of inability to act. With the same spirit they decided, that to be present when any one inflicted a personal injury on another, without interfering, was tantamount to being a party, and was punishable according to the extent of the assault; and every one who witnessed a robbery was bound either to arrest, or, if that was out of his power, to lay an information, and to prosecute the offenders; and any neglect on this score being proved against him, the delinquent was condemned to receive a stated number of stripes, and to be kept without food for three whole days.

Although, in the case of murder, the Egyptian law was inexorable and severe, the royal prerogative might be exerted in favour of a culprit, and the punishment was sometimes commuted by a mandate from the king. Sabaco, indeed, during the fifty years of his reign, "made it a rule not to punish his subjects with death," whether guilty of murder or any other capital offence, but," according to the magnitude of their crimes, he condemned the culprits to raise the ground about the town to which they belonged. By these means the situations of the different cities became greatly elevated above the reach of the inundation, even more than in the time of Sesostris ;" and either on account of a greater proportion of criminals, or from some other cause, the mounds of Bubastis were raised considerably higher than those of any other city.

The same laws that forbade a master to punish a slave with death took from a father every right over the life of his offspring; and the Egyptians deemed the murder of a child an odious crime, that called for the direct interposition of justice. They did not, however, punish it as a capital offence, since it appeared inconsistent to take away life from one who had given it to the child, but preferred inflicting such a punishment as would induce grief and repentance. With this view they ordained that the corpse of the deceased should be fastened to the neck of its parent, and that he should be allowed to pass three whole days and nights in its embrace, under the surveillance of a public guard.

But parricide was visited with the most cruel of chastisements; and conceiving, as they did, that the murder of a parent was the most unnatural of crimes, they endeavoured to prevent its occurrence by the marked severity with which it was avenged. The criminal was therefore sentenced to be lacerated with sharpened reeds, and after being thrown on thorns he was burnt to death.

When a woman was guilty of a capital offence, and judgment had been passed upon her, they were particularly careful to ascertain if the condemned was in a state of pregnancy, in which case her punishment was deferred till after the birth of the child, in order that the innocent might not suffer with the

guilty, and thus the father be deprived of that child to which he had at least an equal right.

But some of their laws regarding the female sex were cruel and unjustifiable; and even if, which is highly improbable, they succeeded by their severity in enforcing chastity, and in putting an effectual stop to crime, yet the punishment rather reminds us of the laws of a barbarous people than of a wise and civilized state. A woman who had committed adultery was sentenced to lose her nose, upon the principle that, being the most conspicuous feature, and the chief, or, at least, an indispensable ornament of the face, its loss would be most severely felt, and be the greatest detriment to her personal charms; and the man was condemned to receive a bastinado of one thousand blows. But if it was proved that force had been used against a free woman, he was doomed to a cruel mutilation.

The object of the Egyptian laws was to preserve life, and to reclaim an offender. Death took away every chance of repentance, it deprived the country of his services, and he was hurried out of the world when least prepared to meet the ordeal of a future state. They, therefore, preferred severe punishments, and, except in the case of murder, and some crimes which appeared highly injurious to the community, it was deemed unnecessary to sacrifice the life of an offender.

In military as well as civil cases, minor offences were generally punished with the stick; a mode of chastisement still greatly in vogue among the modern inhabitants of the valley of the Nile, and held in such esteem by them, that, convinced of (or perhaps by) its efficacy, they relate "its descent from heaven as a blessing to mankind."

If an Egyptian of the present day has a government debt or tax to pay, he stoutly persists in his inability to obtain the money till he has withstood a certain number of blows, and considers himself compelled to produce it; and the ancient inhabitants, if not under the rule of their native princes, at least in the time of the Roman emperors, gloried equally in the obstinacy they evinced, and the difficulty the governors of the country experienced in extorting from them what they were bound to pay;

whence Ammianus Marcellinus tells us," an Egyptian blushes if he cannot show numerous marks on his body that evince his endeavours to evade the duties."

for the superintendents to stimulate labourers to their work by the persuasive powers of the stick, whether engaged in the field or in handicraft employments; and boys were sometimes

beaten without the ceremony of prostration, the hands being tied behind their back while the punishment was applied.

It does not, however, appear to have been from any respect to the person that this less usual method was adopted; nor is it probable that any class of the community enjoyed a peculiar privilege on these occasions, as among the modern Moslems, who, extending their respect for the Prophet to his distant descendants of the thirty-sixth and ensuing generations, scruple to administer the stick to a Shereef until he has been politely furnished with a mat on which to prostrate his guilty person. Among other amusing privileges in modern Egypt is that conceded to the grandees, or officers of high rank. Ordinary culprits are punished by the hand of persons usually employed on such occasions; but a Bey, or the governor of a district, can only receive his chastisement from the hand of a Pasha, and the aristocratic daboss (mace) is substituted for the vulgar stick. This is no trifling privilege: it becomes fully impressed upon the sufferer, and renders him, long after, sensible of the peculiar honour he has enjoyed; nor can any one doubt that an iron mace, in form not very unlike a chocolate-mill, is a distingué mode of punishing men who are proud of their rank.

Having noticed the pertinacity of the modern Egyptians in