maxims which appear to be popular proverbs, as for instance:  “He who hates idleness will come without being called;” “A good walker comes to his journey’s end without needing to hasten;” or, “The ox which goes at the head of the flock and leads the others to pasture is but an animal like his fellows.”  Towards the end, the son Khonshotpu, weary of such a lengthy exhortation to wisdom, interrupts his father roughly:  “Do not everlastingly speak of thy merits, I have heard enough of thy deeds;” whereupon Ani resignedly restrains himself from further speech, and a final parable gives us the motive of his resignation:  “This is the likeness of the man who knows the strength of his arm.  The nursling who is in the arms of his mother cares only for being suckled; but no sooner has he found his mouth than he cries:  ‘Give me bread!’”

It is, perhaps, difficult for us to imagine an Egyptian in love repeating madrigals to his mistress,* for we cannot easily realise that the hard and blackened bodies we see in our museums have once been men and women loving and beloved in their own day.

* The remains of Egyptian amatory literature have been collected, translated, and commentated on by Maspero.  They have been preserved in two papyri, one of which is at Turin, the other in the British Museum.  The first of these appears to be a sort of dialogue in which the trees of a garden boast one after another of the beauty of a woman, and discourse of the love-scenes which took place under their shadow.

The feeling which they entertained one for another had none of the reticence or delicacy of our love:  they went straight to the point, and the language in which, they expressed themselves is sometimes too coarse for our taste.  The manners and customs of daily life among the Egyptians tended to blunt in them the feelings of modesty and refinement to which our civilization has accustomed us.  Their children went about without clothes, or, at any rate, wore none until the age of puberty.  Owing to the climate, both men and women left the upper part of the body more or less uncovered, or wore fabrics of a transparent nature.  In the towns, the servants who moved about their masters or his guests had merely a narrow loin-cloth tied round their hips; while in the country, the peasants dispensed with even this covering, and the women tucked up their garments when at work so as to move more freely.  The religious teaching and the ceremonies connected with their worship drew the attention of the faithful to the unveiled human form of their gods, and the hieroglyphs themselves contained pictures which shock our sense of propriety.  Hence it came about that the young girl who was demanded in marriage had no idea, like the maiden of to-day, of the vague delights of an ideal union.  The physical side was impressed upon her mind, and she was well aware of the full meaning of her consent.  Her lover, separated from her by her disapproving