Roman Empire, there were, it appears, periods of depopulation similar to that historically observed in England -periods, too, of imperial splendour, which David Hume and other writers have felt puzzled to explain.* Such

was the decay of population asserted by the Gracchi as the argument for their agrarian laws for " a new distribution of lands amongst those who had served." It was the belief of Polybius and Diodorus Siculus, that the Roman territory proper was much more populous at the time of the first Punic War, than afterwards under the Triumvirate. The Romans appear, however, in the one instance as a young nation, their majority poor, their wealth little, and their luxury less, beneath the severity of their Republican regime—a state of society, observes Mr Doubleday, possessing all the requisites for an increasing and somewhat dense population. Rome, under the Triumviri, again, was the mistress of the world, wallowing with the whole herd of her wealthy citizens, from the proud patrician to the provincial freeman, in the enormous riches drawn into the city—a state of society, says Mr Doubleday, precisely calculated to limit a population.

The

latter phenomenon was repeated during the age of Trajan and the Antonines, when the great extent of the Roman empire was civilised, cultivated, and settled in profound peace -the very period which Hume declares he would pitch upon as its most populous epoch. Yet Plutarch speaks, at that very time, of "the present deIsolation of the world." These facts are looked upon by Mr Doubleday as confirming his theory.

This theorist lays, in conclusion, no small stress upon the seeming consonance of his theory with the scheme of Divine benevolence. This he seeks to evince in various ways. The immediate stimulus to increase given to any species when endangered by a failure of its natural sustenance, he conceives to be a benevolent provision. Conversely, he regards the immediate

check and decrease which takes place in the reception of immoderate aliment as also benevolent. The fact that moderate sufficient aliment results in mere reproduction without increase or diminution of existing numbers, and the additional fact that, according to the prevalence of these different conditions amongst different portions of a community, the decrease of one portion will be compensated by the increase of another; are both likewise deemed beneficial and providential laws. A provision thus appears to be made for the protection of any species endangered, efficient only when it is wanted, and in the ratio in which it is wanted. A law of constant and equal protection at all times, Mr Doubleday thinks, could never, amidst the change and vicissitude of nature, possess the efficiency of this law; because there must be times-such as those of flood, death, and pestilence-at which vegetable and animal life are more endangered than at others. The opposite effect of this law as a check upon increase, at certain times appears equally beneficial. Physiologists and physicians, for instance, admit that luxuriousness or over-feeding in the human animal is the root of organic diseases, and therefore, by the provision of such a check, the transmission of organic disease is avoided.

It still remains an important question, if this theory be true, how it operates on society? In the true history of the fall of many states, Mr Doubleday thinks that a simple answer may be read. States enervated by luxury soon become the prey of other states less obnoxious to national decay-a political lesson by no means to be despised!

Fully as important are the effects of popular destitution upon popular numbers. The long-continued oppression of any people will in the end avenge itself on its originators, by generating a superfluous and unmanageable pauper population. Fiscal tyranny, and the prostration of poor operatives

X

and cultivators, before the rapacity of master manufacturers or lords of the soil, or the united exactions of government, master, and landlord, occasion at last an overwhelming and starving population, for which society can neither find room, food, nor employment. It is only natural to anticipate that these miserable masses should perpetually be urged by the pressure of want, necessity, and the pangs of hunger, to overset any government which has left them in this miserable condition.

The infinite shades and grades of human character preclude equality of conditions throughout a country or the world. Various degrees of talent amongst men will always produce variations in worldly condition. But men repine at this dispensation, seeing, as they conceive, a limited class in possession of an unfair monopoly, and enjoying the exclusive transmission of it to posterity. It is all futile! A law of extinction is inexorably at work amongst the privileged classes. The holders of wealth die out within a few descents; and the children of the poor, in unbroken succession, rise up, like Banquo's progeny, "to push them from their stools." The inheritance of the great is supplied with heirs from the ranks of abject poverty!

:

Such are the doctrines inculcated by Mr Doubleday and whether that author be right or wrong, he has certainly produced some views which are startling, and others which are instructive enough to merit the attention of all who are desirous to contemplate philosophically the present aspect of society, or are solicitous to discover

the springs of poverty, and the probable causes of population. We wish to be understood as pronouncing no opinion upon his theory. Our object in the present article is simply to give a fair and impartial representation of it, for the consideration of all who take an interest in such questions, in the hope that, in the conflict of opinion which a discussion of it must evoke, its real strength and weakness may be shewn, and its true value elicited; and, on leaving the subject for the present, we have but to remark, that while it stands out in apparent contradiction to the theory of Malthus, that contradiction is more apparent than real, at least in so far as Malthus has been followed by such Christian philanthropists as Dr Chalmers. According to Malthus, the source of overpopulation is to be found in the prevalence of vice, improvidence, and imprudent marriages amongst the masses of the population. According to Mr Doubleday, it is to be attributed to the presence of poverty and privation. Now, even if this be granted, the question still remains, to what is this poverty and privation owing? and if its main sources are to be found in the prevalence of the very evils to which Malthus points, then, after all, the prime remedies must be those of the Malthusian school,—moral agencies-and Malthus and Doubleday may shake hands. To the one will belong the honour of having pointed out the fundamental causes of overpopulation; and to the other, of explaining the particular modus operandi of these causes of the discovery of the special principle, or law of Providence, from which they derive their practical efficacy.

BEING led, about a year ago, to spend some weeks in Cairo, I endeavoured to make the best use of my time in attending to the chief points of attraction which it contains. Months might be profitably spent in that remarkable city and its immediate neighbourhood. The mighty pyramids, the ruins of Memphis and Heliopolis, are among the memorials of the past there presented; and as for the present, the varied features, languages, and costumes of Europe, Asia, and Africa meet and intermingle in strange and picturesque companionship in the crowded bazaars of the Egyptian capital. The religious aspect of Cairo is not the least interesting feature. It is the chief seat of Arabic, and consequently of Mussulman, learning. A large population of Jews, with no fewer than nine synagogues, is settled there, and Christians of every oriental denomination are found in considerable numbers.

The following notes refer to the Coptic Church and its observances, as witnessed in Cairo. Let them be taken for what they really are-a traveller's notes. We wave all antiquarian and literary disquisition, but we undertake to mirror the object clearly and fairly, and present it to our readers as it appears to an attentive and interested observer on the spot.

We would, in a single sentence, bespeak the interest of our readers. The Coptic Church, fallen as she now is in character and condition, is the lineal descendant and representative of the once famous Church of Egypt. The present Patriarch boasts of deriving his ecclesiastical supremacy through an unbroken series of one hundred and seven patriarchs, commencing with St Mark. An " apostolical succession" as well accredited as his the Romanizing Anglican may sigh for, but cannot boast of possessing.

What, then, is the present condi

tion of the Church of Clement, and Origen, and Athanasius? The following notice will suggest part of the melancholy reply.

Being desirous of seeing the public religious services of the Copts, I arranged with Abd-el-melak (servant of the angel), a pupil in the Coptic Institution conducted by the missionaries of the Church of England, to accompany me. Besides being an intelligent young man, he was already a deacon in the Church, and, as such, familiarly acquainted with the service. Public worship in the Coptic Church commences, on the Sunday, morning, about an hour before sunrise, and my young friend and I were ready by half-past six. Passing from the fine square and gardens of the Ezbekieh into the chief Coptic quarter which flanks them on one side, we found ourselves traversing a narrow lane, on both sides of which the houses clustered in high, dark, forbidding masses, their projecting balconies often scarcely leaving a streak of the blue sky visible overhead. Turning into another lane, still more tortuous and confined, we soon arrived at the Patriarch's house, a lofty and spacious building, but sombre and repulsive, like all around it. Connected with it was the church we were in quest of the cathedral Church of Cairo. We found few people in the outer area, and passed to the inner part of the building, in which a considerable number were already assembled. The service was already going on, and the room was tolerably lighted.

The service at once forcibly struck me as resembling what I had elsewhere witnessed among the Israelites. The reading desk in the centre of the room, the reader standing up beside it, the abundant chaunting, and the very, music, recalled the memory of synagogues I had witnessed in easternlands. My next impression was

Э

very painful one, of a total want of reverence in the demeanour of all the persons present. Everything was read or sung precisely in the manner of a school-boy (and a careless school-boy) repeating his task, and listened to with indifference corresponding. How different the apparently rapt devotion even of the deluded Mussulman, as he prostrates himself at evening or morning prayer, from the heartless formalism of these poor Copts! How different often the worship of the very heathen!

The light of day by this time enabled me to take a survey of the apartment, but I was surprised to see the lights multiplied, instead of being extinguished. The reason of this appeared when my young companion whispered, "Now the Patriarch is coming." Some of the attendants were busily arranging a seat, and then the Patriarch made his appearance, issuing from the innermost part of the building in which I had already noticed a table, and pictures hung round on the walls, and which, as I afterwards found, led by a stair into the Patriarch's house. He moved slowly, appeared infirm, was dressed in a cloak of richer materials than most of the people present, the hood over his head, and had a long crosier in his hand. He was greeted with a loud burst of vocal music, the service here, for the first time, kindling into anything like earnestness. He seated himself slowly, and received into his right hand a small cross, seemingly of gold, a bishop taking his place on the left with the crosier. For a long time the people continued to prostrate themselves before him, one by one, until all apparently had done it. They touched the ground with their foreheads, then rose and kissed the small cross, which the Patriarch extended a short way. Some made a motion as if to kiss his hand, but scarcely any seemed actually to do

sitating manner in which the prayers were read, and often blundered, by the deacons. The most important of the readers was a man whom I afterwards understood to be their Coptic teacher in the Mission Seminary. He retained all the schoolmaster in the church, and corrected in a sharp, unpleasant tone the mis-pronunciations of the younger assistants. The irreverence already mentioned is as painfully prominent in this as in any part of the service. Abusive epithets are not spared, when the blunders are at all frequent. A considerable portion of the Scripture was also read, and in Arabic, which is now the vernacular language of the Copts. The Coptic is scarcely understood, even by the priests, and by the common people, not at all. This much was gratifying, that the Scriptures were read in an intelligible language, and that the congregation was perceptibly more attentive during this part of the service. How remarkable, we may note in passing, the tendency, over all the world, for men to attach an idea of peculiar sanctity to the mere sounds of a language, apart from their meaning, and the perception of that meaning, so that, instead of the voice of prayer, we have but a witch's charm-the muttering of a spell. So deals the Hindoo with his Sanscrit, the Parsee with his Zend, the Mussulman with his Arabic, the Jew with his Hebrew, the Romanist with his Latin; and

so on.

The Patriarch read three times. They brought a MS. and held it before him, as he sat in his chair, and, like all the readers, he held in his hand a small candle, which was extinguished when he had finished. Tapers appeared a part of the sacred apparatus of the church, for one was used by every reader, long after the light of heaven was shining clearly around us. During the greater part of the time, the people were simply auditors, if they could be said to be so much, for they frequently conversed together, instead of minding the service. All that seemed expected of them, was occasionally to respond, or, as the service required, to change the sitting

for the standing posture. The people continued for a long time to drop in by twos and threes, until they amounted to at least three hundred-a number quite large enough for the church to contain with comfort. These were all men-the women were in the outermost division of the church, hidden by a kind of lattice work, and so far off that, if they had been disposed, they could with difficulty have seen or heard aught of what was going on. In other oriental churches, the females are not so completely cut off from the rest of the congregation, nor, indeed, in other Coptic churches, but as a general rule they must be considered simply as spectators, and not as worshippers. Within the lattice-work, if report say true, a busy conversation is oftentimes kept up.

The music, throughout the whole service, was almost exclusively vocal. The chaunting was somewhat irregular and harsh, and often very drawling. In a short time two small bells were struck with a metallic rod, and accompanied by cymbals. Incense, not very fragrant, was burnt, and the little censers containing it were swung by the hand frequently during the service. Whenever any book was opened, or any new part of the service commenced, the incense was in requisition.

A box for collecting alms was carried round about towards the end. Few seemed to give anything.

Preaching there was none, nor the slightest approximation to it, not even, as is often the case in the Greek Church, the reading of some legend of the saints, generally worse than useless.

I could by this time take a deliberate survey of the building. It distinctly consisted of four divisions. In nermost, and at the eastern end, was a recess, containing a table on which stood something covered over. Pictures of the Saviour, the Virgin, and the Apostles, were hung on the walls, with glories round their heads. Di vided from this by a screen with a door in the centre, was the compartment where the presbyters and deacons officiated, and the far greater part of

the congregation was assembled. Farther outward was a third compartment, smaller in size, and lastly, the compartment in which were the women. I have now before me the plan of a church according to the 11th Nicene Canon, and it is remarkable that the arrangement among the Copts is essentially the same as that prescribed in the Canon. The eastern extremity, which is nearly semicircular, is marked as containing the holy table in the centre, and round it the bishop's throne, and the gates of the presbyters. It is divided from the next compartment by a curtain, and the holy gates. The second inner division is marked as the place for the faithful and costanders, having the ambo in the centre. This is separated from the next compartment by a fence, having in the middle the beautiful gates. The third compartment is the place for catechumens and hearers. It is separated from the outermost division by the great gates, and this last is marked as the place for mourners and those exposed to the weather. It has the fountain of water in the middle. So tenaciously, then, would the Copts appear to have clung to early usages, embalming, as it were, the dead body, and rejoicing over its unchanging features, as if the poor carcase could profit them after the living spirit had departed. Protestants, of course, do not regard the canons of the Nicene Council, as possessed of any binding authority, but we may point to this faithful adherence to them on the part of the Coptic Church, in refuting the pretensions of these churches, which boast of catholicity and unchanging institutions. The Romish and Greek communions have distinctly departed from the ancient arrangement of a church.

The worshippers, like the oriental Christians generally, laid aside their shoes, but retained their turbans. The dress and appearance of the congregation were outwardly more respectable than I had expected. For sixteen hundred years the Copts have languished under oppressionfirst, being tyrannised over by the Greeks, and, next, bowed to the dust