for our purpose to observe, that his Nuba were not within the limits of modern Nubia.

In little more than a century after Ptolemy, we find the Nobatæ (the original name having received a more thoroughly Greek form) brought from a distance and established in the valley of the Nile by Diocletian. Here, therefore, in the vicinity of Egypt, in the country most thickly studded with Ethiopian temples, we see clearly the comparatively recent introduction of the Nubians. Scanty gleams of historical light, and an inscription or two, just suffice to show us the fluctuating fortune of the Nubian colony. They were at first driven up the river, but their conversion to Christianity obtained for them abler guidance, and a temporary superiority. The general spread of the Christian religion soon after united the hostile nations; and the Nobatæ or Nubians occupied the valley of the Nile as joint tenants with a people of totally different race, and who were evidently the prior possessors of the soil. Then comes a long period of historic obscurity and confusion, and, as the darkness clears off, we discover a nation called Nubians, occupying a long extent of territory above Egypt, and hear, for the first time, of a country called Nubia.

If our readers should seek, for they would not be justified in peremptorily requiring of us, an explanation of this change, or a developement of the silent and almost imperceptible revolution by which one nation came to supersede another, we must again appeal to their candour; and warn them, that though they might feel strong in denying our proposition, they would be sadly at a loss for positive proofs in support of its contradictory. Mankind, though always mistrustful of new hypotheses, have no objection to the most gratuitous assumptions which have been some time in circulation. Yet, where history is silent, we must necessarily have recourse to conjecture to explain the course of events. The utmost that can be done, in such a case, is to offer an explanation conformable to the general history of mankind, in which each event is referred to its most natural cause, the peculiar circumstances of society being taken into consideration, and the individual influence of heroes and other poetic agencies being jealously excluded;-an explanation which relies, in short, on the operation of no causes but those which the experience of history shows to be more or less inevitable.

Nature has nowhere prescribed in a more authoritative manner the social condition of man, than in the countries immediately above Egypt. The chain of high mountains which flank the western shores of the Red Sea, are visited by periodical and heavy rains; and pour down numerous torrents, which are ab

sorbed by the intervening plains before they reach the Nile. These hills, therefore, with the plains of Taka, which are annually inundated by the Mareb, are capable of supporting many nomadic tribes; the impulse towards a wandering life being continually communicated by the nature of the soil and climate. But the vast plains which spread on the western side of the Nile, like the valley itself of the river, north of latitude 17°, are never or very rarely refreshed by passing showers. Hence we find that the roving tribes on the eastern side of the Nile have been in all ages formidable neighbours to the more civilized settlers on the river; while the scanty nomadic population of the western desert (above Egypt) makes no figure in history. But among the hills of Kordofan a more humid atmosphere, with less violent vicissitudes, encourages cultivation and the habits of settled life. The Nubas, when they descend from their hills, still retain their original habits; they cultivate the soil where water can be found, but have never been seen associated in wandering tribes. In this way they now occupy small spots on the caravan routes northward from Kordofan; and it is highly probable that in ancient times they were the scattered tenants of the desert of Bahiúda, thus approaching the Nubian portion of the Nile only at its southern extremity, or at Dongola.

If we compare all the circumstances, physical and moral, of the Beja tribes on the one side, with those of the Nubas on the other, we cannot avoid arriving at the conclusion, that the former were the masters of the soil in the valley of the Nile, and that the latter were an adscititious labouring population. The negroes from Kordofan and the countries immediately south of Sennâr, are most highly esteemed as slaves; being peaceable, intelligent, and more or less acquainted with the humble arts which minister to social comfort. Bruce found flourishing colonies of Nuba in Sennar; similar colonies have been recently established in Nubia. Now, if we take into consideration the permanence of manners of unlettered nations, may we not confidently infer that the same negro tribes were equally esteemed in antiquity, and that the Nubas were as eagerly sought then as at present to fill every vacancy in the productive class? Or, we might rather ask, would it not be highly absurd and paradoxical to maintain that the nations dwelling on the Nile, in ancient times, had no slaves, or supposing they had, that these were not chiefly Nuba? Now it is well known that negroes were numerous in the population of Ancient Egypt; and whence they came may be easily col

* Rifaud, Tableau de la Nubię.

lected from the fact, that Nuba numerals have been detected in some specimens of the Egyptian Demotic writing.*

The Blemyes continually harassed the Roman territorry above Egypt, of which the Nobatæ, under the imperial protection, had virtually the sole enjoyment, or where, as Procopius expresses it, 'they had every thing their own way,' (äyov naι spɛgov). But as soon as the Romans, weary of protecting at great expense an unproductive province, (like the Caliphs afterwards, and perhaps the Pharaohs before them,) withdrew from the valley of the Nile above Egypt, and ceded it to the Nobatæ, the natural balance was soon restored between the two races, in spite of Roman influence, and the Blemyes (a Beja tribe) became masters of the soil. The influence which the presence or proximity of the Romans must have had in raising the productive and checking the more turbulent party, cannot be reasonably doubted; and before it was totally extinguished, Christianity had reached the Nobatæ, and given them national unity. We need not enlarge here on the political results which we ascribe to the spread of the Christian religion, nor explain why the Nobata took precedence of their Beja neighbours in coming within its pale. These matters offer no difficulties to the minds of those who are tolerably conversant with the history of mankind. The Blemyes, worsted by the Christian Nobatæ, embraced the religion of their conquerors; and it was probably at this period of their history that they took the name of Macorrah. The two races now became politically united, though not blended together, under a hierarchical form of government, whence we might be justified in conjecturing that the ruling families were of Greek or Coptic descent.

A century after the conversion of the Nobatæ, the Arabs invaded Egypt, propagating a new faith by fire and sword. The Coptic clergy, flying from these conquerors, sought refuge in Nubia, where they strengthened the cause of Christianity at a most important crisis. The Mahomedans, carrying their arms southward, easily succeeded in making converts and allies of the more powerful Beja tribes, the kinsmen of the Macorrah. This circumstance is of the utmost importance to our speculation; since it is evident that it must have operated directly on the population of the river. In the course of the often repeated warfare carried on during a long period of eight centuries and a half, (for Christianity was not extinct in Nubia at the beginning of the sixteenth century,) between the Christians on the river and

See a paper by Mr Hinckes on the Enchorial Language of Egypt, in the Dublin University Magazine. No. III. 1833.

the Mohamedan invaders, the Macorrah, it is manifest, occupied an equivocal and dangerous position-a position indeed which could not possibly be long maintained in a contest inflamed by religious hatred. They must have been compelled either to quit the river and join their brethren in the plains, or else, forgetting their origin, to lay aside the distinctions of their race, and to assimilate themselves as much as possible to the less questionable, that is to say, to the Nubian portion of the Christian community. In short, if Christianity first raised the Nubians into a nation, the long-continued struggle which they maintained with the Mahomedans must have had the effect of blending and uniting their society more closely together; the heat of religious animosity expelling every heterogeneous particle. The Macorrah disappeared, but not without leaving a faint vestige behind; the dialect spoken in the districts which they occupied differs from that spoken at the extremes of the Nubian valley, in the Wady el Keniúz and in Dongola; the physiognomy also of the inhabitants of Mahass and Sukkot betrays a Bejáwy extraction.

In fine, the chief articles of the historic creed which we here endeavour to promulgate, are, that the Ethiopians above Egypt, who resembled the Egyptians in manners, language, and religion, and whose monuments we gaze on with so much admiration at the present day, were of the Bejáwy race; that the Nubas or Negroes from Kordofan were always numerous in the Valley of the Nile, constituting the predial or servile population; that these latter were protected and increased by Roman policy; and finally, that their conversion to Christianity gave them a national existence, while their subsequent warfare with the Mahomedans rendered them the nucleus or main prop of a mixed population, and caused all lingering differences of race to be absorbed in the Nubian

name.

and

We have not by any means exhausted the considerations which countenance our theory; but it is not our intention in the present instance to do more than to offer to the meditation of our readers such a chain of argument as fairly warrants our conclusion; thus to submit the question in its simplest form to the decision of the learned world. The age which produces such splendid works as those of Gau and Rosellini,--works in which the scholar and the artist unite their efforts to perpetuate all that remains of ancient Nubia, cannot surely be indifferent to a discussion which aims at establishing, with respect to that country, the historical relationship between the past and present, and at supplying, in some measure, the deficiencies of historical details from the philosophy of history.

ART. III.-The Collected Poems of the late N. T. CARRINGTON. Edited by his son, H. E. CARRINGTON. 2 vols. 12mo.

London: 1834.

Cou OUNTY histories, the antiquities of towns, topographical and legendary anecdotes of remarkable places, are not made half as much of as they deserve. How few persons have really studied them, although they are valuable for a variety of purposes! To instance only one: It is very desirable to connect the material and moral world as much as possible, and to multiply the links, by which a rational affection binds us to all the different concentric circles, which spread from home to countryfrom country to the world. Now, no Worcestershire squire, who is unacquainted with the three folios of its historian, Dr Nash, can at all know and love his county as he ought to do. The unknown and the nonexisting are so much the same, that, in this respect, he might almost as well have been born in Kentucky, where, some fifty years back, there was no history at all. The pride which the inhabitants of Lincolnshire and Yorkshire take in their cathedrals-the miles that the yeomen rode into Lincoln from the fens, when an accident had happened to Great Tom'-the passion with which, on rebuilding York Minster, both laity and clergy were recently seen debating the future position of its screen-as things touching their inheritance-exemplify the degree to which, in even our wandering and business-like age, the living principal of local attachment may be strengthened by a single class of monuments and traditions. Interests to the full as powerful, whether in striking buildings or in curious remains, in beautiful scenery or in spots consecrated by great men and extraordinary events, are doubtless scattered over almost every district inhabited by an ancient nation. The difficulty is, in bringing them forward with the same effect, and keeping them equally present to the mind. The success of many a popular provincial ballad, shows what an important and delightful auxiliary towards the preservation of these feelings poetry may become; and certainly on easy terms. With these sentiments we took up the poems of Mr Carrington, the poet of Dartmoor and the banks of Tamar; and we have a satisfaction in thinking that they may be extremely useful and deservedly popular in Devonshire, although readers at the other end of the island should find them a little dull.

'Open rebuke,' says the wise man, is better than concealed 'love.' Be that as it may, there can be no doubt of its being infinitely better than preposterous and injudicious praise. It is