has now entered into the history of nations. There is a definite point of departure, and a living germ of expansion in Liberia.

Furthermore, this Liberian republic is a really Christian State. There is not now, probably, an organized commonwealth upon the globe, in which the principles of Christianity are applied with such a childlike directness and simplicity, to the management of public affairs, as in Liberia. New England, in the days of her childhood, and before the conflicting interests of ecclesiastical denominations introduced jealousies, Geneva, in the time of John Calvin, when the church and the state were practically one and the same body, now acting through the consistory, and now through the council, in fine, all religious commonwealths in their infancy, and before increasing wealth and luxury have stupefied conscience and dimmed the moral perception, furnish examples of the existing state of things in the African republic. Even the common school education, which the Liberian constitution provides for the whole population, has been given by the missionary, and in connection with the most direct religious instructions and influences. The state papers of the Liberian Executive and Legislature breathe a grave and serious spirit, like that which inspires the documents of our own colonial and revolutionary periods.

It is not necessary, in the heart of New England, and before such an audience as this, to enlarge upon the significance of the fact that the most influential radiating point for civilization throughout Africa, is a religious republic. No reflecting man can ponder the fact, and think of all it involves, without ejaculating, from the depths of his soul: "God save the Commonwealth."

Such, then, is the general nature of the argument for African colonies, and for the American Colonization Society. The race itself, which it proposes to elevate and Christianize, is one of the three great races in and through which God intended, after the total destruction of all antecedent ones by the flood, to re-people the globe and subdue it. The tropical man and the tropical mind is destined, sooner VOL. XIV. No. 55.

55

or later, to enter into human history, and to have a history. It is in this faith that the Society, whose anniversary we are celebrating, toils and prays. It has been its misfortune that its vision has been clearer than that of others, and that it has, consequently, cherished plans that have appeared impracticable. But this is always the misfortune of faith within the sacred sphere, and of genius within the secular. Each of them may say to the torpid soul:

"I hear a voice thou canst not hear;

I see a hand thou canst not see."

Through good report, and through evil report, this Society has pursued its straight-onward course, and now begins to see what it foresaw. It sees four hundred miles of the African coast secured, by fair purchase and peaceable occupation, to the area of freedom. It sees this coast-line widened into a surface of fifty miles towards the interior, and destined to stretch rapidly inland and coastwise. It sees the slave trade extinct not only within Liberian jurisdiction, but shrinking away from the remoter borders of it. It sees ten thousand colonists from America, with their descendants, mingling with, and giving tone to, three hundred thousands of native population. It sees a large annual commerce coming into existence, and one that is increasing in rapid ratio. It sees a regular republican government working, firmly and equally, through the forms of law, and administered with singular prudence and energy. It sees a system of education, from the primary to the collegiate, exerting its elevating influence upon the mass of the people, and an incipient literature, in state-papers and public addresses. It sees the church of Christ crowning all other institutions, and giving direction to the mind and heart of the rising state.

Looking back, then, over the brief forty years of its exist ence, and pointing to what God has wrought by it, is not the American Colonization Society justified in boldly appealing to the philanthropist for the means of still greater benefits to the African, and to Africa? For the time has now arrived for enlarged operations. Africa is evidently up

on the eve of great events. The explorations of Barth, and Vogel, and Anderson, and Moffat, and Livingston; the English Niger expeditions; the curiosity and courage of individual explorers, in search of the head waters of the Nile; the discovery of fine stalwart races all through the interior; the very rapid growth of African commerce, at points upon both the Eastern and Western coasts; the very mystery, itself, which overhangs this part of the globe, the more stimulating because all the rest of the world lies in comparative sun-light all these things combined tend to the belief that, comparatively, more will be discovered, and more will be dore, in and about Africa, within the coming century, than in and about any other quarter of the globe. The other continents have had their hour of deliverance. The hour for Africa has now, for the first time, come. Her scores of races prove to have capacities for Christianity and self-government. The American emancipationist is ready and waiting to send out, among them, hundreds and thousands of Americanized colonists. Shall not the philanthropists of this land now make full proof of the Colonizing method? - that method which was employed with such vigor by Rome in Romaniz ing the barbarians whom she conquered — that method by which Britain, the modern Rome, has made her drum-beat to be heard round the globe? And, especially, shall not the church of Christ secure a foothold and a protection for its missionaries in Africa, by helping to extend the influence of those Christian colonies which have hitherto been their best earthly protection, and in connection with which alone (so the history of past missions in Africa, for four hundred years, plainly shows) can missionary operations be carried on with permanent success?

ARTICLE VII.

THE EGYPTIAN YEAR.'

By Joseph P. Thompson, D. D., New York.

Ir is about thirty years since Champollion le Jeune made public his discovery of the notation of the ancient Egyptian calendar. The most ancient form of the Egyptian year seems to have been a year of twelve lunar months. "The hieroglyphic signifying 'month,' was represented by the crescent of the moon."2 The first change made in the year, was the substitution of solar for lunar months, making twelve months of thirty days each, and a year of three hundred and sixty days. To correct the variation of the seasons consequent upon such a division, five Epagomenæ, Epact, or Intercalary days were added after the twelfth month. This, however, was still a "vague year." To compensate for the retrocession of this, the Sothic year was invented; though at what period, is uncertain; which, dating from the heliacal rising of the Dog-star, which preceded the annual overflow of the Nile, made a year of three hundred and sixty-five and a quarter days. The Sothic period, on a great scale, answered the same purpose with our intercalation of a day in leapyear. A Sothic cycle of 1460 siderial years was equal to 1461 vague or solar years; when the seasons, having receded through the whole round of the solar year, came again to their original point of departure, coincident with the rising of Sirius.

This solar year, of twelve equal months-leaving out of

1 Die Chronologie der Egypter bearbeitet von RICHARD LEPSIUS. Einleitung und Erster Theil, Kritik der Quellen. Berlin. 1849.

Nouvelles Recherches sur la division de l'Année des Anciens Égyptiens. Suivies d'un Mémoire sur des Observations Planétaires consignées dans quatre Tablettes Égyptiennes en Écriture Démotique, par HENRI BRUGSCH. Berlin

and Paris. 1856.

Wilkinson, 4: 13.

view the five Epagomenæ — was subdivided into a tropical year of three seasons, based upon natural phenomena. These seasons were of equal duration, each comprising four months of the solar year. This was the discovery of Champollion, first announced in his letters, and afterwards elaborated in his Grammaire Egyptienne, his Grammaire Hiéroglyphique, his Mémoire sur les Signes, and other works edited from his manuscripts, after his early and lamented death. The result of this discovery is thus described by his elder brother, M. Champollion-Figeac.

The twelve names of the months, in the Egyptian calendar, are divided into three series, each of which is characterized by a particular sign, surmounted in all by an inverted lunar crescent; beneath which are one, two, three, or four marks, to indicate the number of the month in that season. These three series, representing the twelve months, show that the Egyptian year was divided into only three seasons. The first sign signifies the season of Vegetation; the second, that of Harvest (récolte); the third, the season of Inundation. The crescent over the first sign, with one stroke beneath it denotes the first month of the season of vegetation (whose special sign was a Garden); a crescent with four Crescent strokes above the same sign, denotes the fourth month of the same season; i. e. the fourth month of the Garden Season, the season of growth. And in like manner for the three seasons and the twelve months. The year began with the season of the Inundation; the rising of the Nile being the great phenomenon of nature in Egyptian history.2

Garden.

This division of the year by Champollion has been fol lowed, with slight variations in terminology, by all leading Egyptologers since his day. It has been accepted as a settled fact, and has formed an important datum in Egyptian chronology.

Wilkinson styles the three periods, the Season of the Wa

1 Published by Didot Frères, of Paris. Most of these are in the Astor Library. • Égypte Ancienne, par M. Champollion-Figeac. Paris, Didot. p. 235.