THE ISLE OF MURANO, VENICE. IT may hardly be necessary to tell our readers, that the famous city of Venice is built on a cluster of small islands, or rather shoals, in the midst of a shallow muddy estuary, called the Lagoon, which intervenes between the open sea and the dry land, at the head of the Adriatic. Besides the islands which the city, strictly so called, occupies, there are several smaller ones, which were formerly well inhabited, and some of which even now possess a rather thick population. To the north-east of the city is the town of Murano; a sort of miniature Venice, being built on several smaller islands in the Lagoon, and intersected by a number of canals. In former times, it had a separate Podestà (or governor) to itself, and enjoyed the privilege of coining money; fifty years ago it had 7000 inhabitants, it is now said to have only 4000. It used to possess four parish-churches, six monasteries, one convent of regulars, one oratory or private chapel, and two colleges for the education of youth. The churches are not very remarkable for their architecture, but like many others in Venice, they are curious for the interesting specimens of mosaic work which they present in their interior. Murano is chiefly remarkable for its manufactory of glass, which used in former times to be very much celebrated. "I passed over," says the celebrated John Evelyn, "to Murano, famous for the best glasses of the world, where having viewed their furnaces and seene their work, I made a collection of divers curiosities and glasses which I sent for England by long sea. 'Tis the white flints which they have from Pavia, ev pound and sift exceedand mix with ashes made of a sea-weed brought out of Syria, and a white sand, that causes this manufacture to excell. The towne is a Podestaria by itselfe, at some miles distant on the sea from Venice, and like it built upon several small islands. In this place are excellent oysters, small and well tasted like our Colchester, and they were the first as I remember that I ever could eate, for I had naturally an aversion to them." At the present day, the glass-manufacture of Murano possesses a sort of local preeminence; it gives employment to a considerable portion of the popu lation of the city. Among the other islands which are to be found in the neighbour hood, one of the most interesting among the islands belonging to Venice, is that which bears the name of Torcello, or Torzelo. In the days of the old Venetian Re public, it formed with Burano, and some smaller isles, a separate district, with a Podestà, or governor, of its own; it was also the seat of a bishopric, the jurisdiction of which extended over Murano. The city of Torcello was originally founded by the inhabitants of Altino, when they fled from the approach of Attila, in the middle of the fifth century; and two hundred years afterwards it afforded the same citizens a similar shelter against the attack of the Lombards. In the earlier ages of the Republic, it was a very flourishing place; but its prosperity would seem to have flown for many years. "Of the ancient greatness of this city," says an Its lian writer in the year 1787, “and of wealth, from which it was called, by the Emperor Constantine Porphy rogenitus, the great emporium, Torcello,' there scarcely remain the smallest vestiges; it is become one of the most deserted Islands in the Venetian Lagoon." Its present condition is well described in the fol lowing passage from the pen of Mr. | Rose, who viewed it as one of those bjects of curiosity, deriving their interest from association or some ther less-definable cause, which deerve the notice of the traveller, hough not registered amongst the onders of a place. half-ruined tower tolled twenty. Time only had suffered no change, together with the monuments he had overthrown. He spoke an antiquated language, hardly intelligible to the generation of the day." The church here mentioned was the Cathedral of the bishopric of Torcello. According to the writer before quoted, it was built in the year 1008, by the then bishop Urso Ur seolo, son of the famous doge Pietro Urseolo the Second, under whose rule the power of the Republic had so much increased, and who was the first to add to the title of Duke of Venice that of Duke of Dalmatia. Having visited the manufacries of Murano and Burano," says at gentleman, "and witnessed ach a scene of promiscuous misery, $I feel no temptation to describe, prolonged my voyage, and landed n the nearly desert island of Torelo, about six miles from Venice. his spot, once the summer resort f the Venetian patricians, and co-"Every where," says our author, in ered with their villas and gardens, resented a very different character fdesolation. My eyes were neither ained by the visible progress of ain, nor disgusted by the meanness fthe instrument which had wrought t. Time was here the great detroyer, and moreover, time had lone his work. "I was favoured by one of those lelicious days of sunshine, common ven in a Lombard winter, which in some degree mitigated the melansholy of the prospect, and enabled me to saunter and view without inconvenience all the circumstances of the scene. Amidst the vestiges of departed grandeur were left some poor and scattered houses, and a church, the restoration of which dates, I believe, from the eleventh century. Abroken column marks the centre of what had been the piazza (or place), and from which had once waved the standard of St. Mark. Amidst these remains glided a few human beings, the miserable tenants of the place. There was nothing Striking in the architecture, nothing picturesque in the landscape, but the whole made an impression upon me which no other ruins ever produced. Whilst I was musing upon the prospect before me, a clock from a the description of the church as it existed in the last century," is seen the utmost splendour and magnificence. Two rows of columns fashioned of Greek marble, divide the body of the edifice into three portions; its pavement is mosaic, and the walls also are decorated in the same manner." Mr. Rose says that the architecture of the church is not very striking, yet the edifice possesses some interesting features. "Its stone-shutters, carrying one's ideas back to days of violence, are, as far as my observation goes, a singular remnant of such an age; and some very curious mosaics in the inside, may vie in beauty and in antiquity with those of St. Mark." SAARDAM. A remarkable place in the vicinity of Amsterdam is Saardam, or Zaardam, celebrated as the village where Peter the Great worked as a shipwright. At a distance it appears a city of wind-mills, there being no less than four hundred saw, paper, tobacco, and corn mills, which add greatly to the wealth and prosperity of the place. There were formerly large magazines of timber, but no large ships are now built here, as the harbour has been long choked up with mud. The houses are principally built of wood. The principal street, or road, is about two miles long, and is bordered by a narrow canal, over which there are upwards of one hundred small bridges, forming the approaches to the houses, which are situated in small gardens on the opposite bank. It was in 1696 that Peter the Great, under the name of Peter Michaeloff, presented himself at Saardam in the dress of a sailor, and entered the employ of one of the shipwrights. He worked for many weeks without any idea of his rank being entertained by his fellowlabourers; but when they discovered that he was the Czar of all the Russias, they wished to pay him suitable respect; this, however, he refused and insisted that they should all work together on the same terms of familiarity as before. The use which he made of the knowledge he obtained here and at Deptford is well known. The hut in which Peter resided has been carefully preserved in the same state, and, in 1823, was purchased by the Princess of Orange, the sister of the Emperor Alexander. By her direction a brick building has been erected over it, so as to preserve it from injury. The hut consists of two rooms on the groundfloor above which is a loft where Peter kept various specimens of boat-building. The sitting-room contains his oak table and three chairs, as well as the recess in which he slept. The walls are covered with the names of persons who have visited the spot, and there are several albums also, in which strangers have inserted their signatures. The Emperor Alexander visited the hut in 1814, and ordered two tablets to be put up in the lower room; one bears the words Petro Magno, Alexander; the other may be thus translated,-"Nothing is too little for a great man.” SPLENDID APPEARANCE OF THIS beautiful isle, happily screened a distance from Point Morant, C 124 . The thernmost high land on the coast, picture is splendid; the Blue ountains appear above the stran of clouds which roll along their cipitous sides,-beneath, the rug1 hills are furrowed with ravines, 1 steep cliffs descend abruptly to sea; and on a nearer approach, ty forests are seen, and slopes of ght emerald green.-MARTIN'S itish Colonies. CAVERN TEMPLES AND IE long but narrow valley through ich the river Nile flows, consties the countries of Egypt and bia; the former extending from coast of the Mediterranean, rough seven and a half degrees of itude, or about 600 miles, to where e river, forcing its passage through e mountains, forms the cataracts Syene, near the island of Philæ, 24° N. This valley is upon an average ly nine miles in width as far as airo, but from thence, the mounins which bound it recede on ther side, and the river divides to several channels, forming the elta of the Nile. Lower Nubia is e continuation of this valley above, r. south of Philæ, and extends for bout two degrees of latitude: beond this the valley widens, and the ountry is elevated, forming what is ow termed Upper Nubia. The ast and barren sandy deserts which ie on both sides, beyond the mounain-chains, are the sources whence hose torrents of sand are brought by the periodical winds, which have nearly buried so many of the stupendous monuments of the earliest inhabitants of this ancient country. The magnificent edifices which adorn in almost uninterrupted successions, the banks, islands, and adjoining plains of the Nile, areformed of materials derived from these mountains, which consist of granite, sand-stone, and other rocks, best adapted for architectural purposes. The excavations made by quarrying for this purpose were enlarged, and appropriated to the reception of the bodies of their dead. Whether this appropriation was suggested by their existence, or whether the custom of preserving the corpse caused the necessity for such receptacles, cannot be perhaps determined; but it is certain, that catacombs are found in the neighbourhood of all the ancient cities on the Nile, some of which obviously have been originally formed by the removal of stone for building. Though a general similarity of style pervades the architecture of these structures, yet they are of very different dates, and are the works of very different people. Neither our limits nor our object will admit of our entering into any detailed account of the age or date of these wonders of Egypt, the subject being perhaps the most obscure and uncertain of any which has occupied the attention of historians; but it may be necessary to state to our readers, that in proportion as more knowledge of ancient Egyptian history is gained by investigation of the inscriptions and hieroglyphics, found so universally on the ruins, the extravagantly high antiquity attributed to some of these edifices is proved to be unfounded. The assertion of the historian Herodotus, who visited Egypt about four hundred and fifty years before the birth of Christ, that, even in his time, the date of the erection of the Pyramids, and of the city of Thebes", * A curious calculation, made from the rate of increase of deposition by the Mile,. corroborated by other evidence, shows that &c., was lost in antiquity, gave rise | stituted for the sacred symbol of to the belief that the same obscurity existed relative to every building in the country; and this erroneous opinion was confirmed by the incorrect interpretation of the astronomical tables sculptured on the ceilings of the temples at Dendera, &c. The French scientific men who accompanied Buonaparte in his expedition, carried away by their enmity to Christianity, were anxious to prove that some of these monuments were older than the Bible account of the creation of the world; but one of their own countryman subsequently proved, and the discoveries of the celebrated Champollion have given additional confirmation to the proof, that the temple at Dendera is not older than the age of the Roman emperors. Osiris or Isis. Long after came the lieutenants of the "false prophet,” and with still more unsparing and barbarous fanaticism, destroyed and defaced what they wanted sense and taste enough to admire; while the Greek Christians, sheltered, in other secret recesses, from the overwhelming storm of Mohsamedan invasion, to fit them for churches, plastered over the sculp tured stories of Ramses' conquests, and substituted a daubed painting of the holy apostles. And lastly, as a climax to these injuries, the Otteman conquest and its invariable results, misery, degradation, poverty, and oppression, came to complete the "tale of ruin;” and a degraded peasantry now shelter themselves in, and convert to the vilest of purposes, the temple which Sesestris had dedicated, or the magnificent tomb which contained the bones of a Pharaoh. These contradictory deductions are in a great measure explained, by recalling to mind the successive and permanent conquests of this country by very different nations, Added to these political causes of each of which was interested in re-injury and defacement, every recess cording its own occupation of it, of every catacomb has been so re and in obliterating as far as possible peatedly ransacked, in the hopes all record of the previous occupants. finding concealed treasure, or for the Let us suppose, for example, a gratification of curiosity, that splendid and perfect temple founded hidden tomb, the existence of which by Sesostris, existing in all its gran- might appear to have remained un deur and perfection. Passing over known from the time of its com less known and less important po- struction, can now be opened. litical convulsions, first came the without the most obvious prost conquests of the successors of presenting themselves of its having Alexander, who possibly erased and been violated at some remote period. altered some portion of the original sculptured inscriptions; next the Romans, with their stern sway, compelled the natives to dedicate anew their sacred fane to some profligate emperor, and the name of Maximian, Dioclesian*, and such men, was sub-glyphics so universally found city must have been founded 4760 years ago, or 2960 years before Christ. There are the ruins of a temple, bearing an inscription stating that it was founded by Osymandyas, who reigned, according to M. Champollion, 2270 B. C. ere than one temple built, to EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHICS As it is impossible to make mention of any Egyptian work of art, with out constant allusion to the hier them, it will be as well to give our readers a very succinct account of this kind of language. all appearance, in the most pure Fgyptian style, which is now found to have bett erected by Hadrian, in honour of Antinens |