I see in this an indication of Egypt being a corn country; of bread being there literally the staff of life, and the manufacturing and dispensing of it an employment of considerable trust and consequence. So again I find, that in the fabric of the bricks of Egypt straw was a very essential element; and so abundant does the corn-crop seem to have been--so widely was it spread over the face of the country, that the task-masters of the Israelites could exact the usual tale of the bricks, though the people had to gather the stubble for themselves to supply the place of the straw, which was withheld.* Still I perceive in this an intimation of the agricultural fertility of Egypt,there could not have been the stubble-land here implied unless corn had been the staple crop of the country. Then when Moses * Exodus, v. 7.

H

threatens to plague the Egyptians with a Plague of Frogs, what are the places which at once present themselves as those which are likely to be defiled by their presence? "The river shall bring forth frogs abundantly, which shall go up and come into thine house, and into thy bed-chamber, and upon thy bed, and into the house of thy servants, and upon thy people, and into thine ovens, and into thy kneading-troughs."* And of these kneading-troughs we again read, as utensils possessed by all, and without which they could not think even of taking a journey-for on the delivery of the Israelites from Egypt, we find that "they took their dough before it was leavened, their kneading-troughs being bound up in their clothes upon their shoulders."+ Now it may be said, that we all know * Exodus, viii. 3. + Ibid. xii. 34.

Egypt to have been a great corn-countrythat the thing admits of no doubt and never did-I allow it to be so-and if such a fact had been asserted in the writings of Moses as a broad fact, I should have taken no notice of it, for it would then have afforded no ground for an argument like this; in such a case, Moses might have come at the knowledge as we ourselves may have done, by having visited the country himself, or by having received a report of it from others who had visited it, and so might have incorporated this amongst other incidents in his history; but I do not observe it asserted by him in round terms; it is not indeed asserted by him at all-it is intimated-intimated when he is manifestly not thinking about it, when his mind and his pen are quite intent upon other matters; intimated very often, very indirectly, in

very various ways. The fact itself of Egypt being a great corn-country was no doubt perfectly well known to Dr. Johnson, but though so much of the scene of Rasselas is laid in Egypt, I will venture to say, that there are in it no hints of the nature I am describing; such, I mean, as would serve to convince us that the author was relating a series of events which had happened under his own eye, and that the places with which he combines them were not ideal, but those wherein they actually came to pass.

Surely then it is very satisfactory to discover concurrence thus uniform, thus uncontrived, in particulars falling out at intervals in the course of an artless narrative which is not afraid to proclaim the Almighty as manifesting himself by signal miracles, and which connects those miracles too in

the closest union with the subordinate matters of which we have thus been able to ascertain the probable truth and accu

racy.

XI.

BEFORE We dismiss this question of the Corn in Egypt, we may remark another trifling instance or two of consistency without design, declaring themselves in this part of the narrative and tending to strengthen our belief in it. Joseph, it

* advised Pharaoh before the famine

began, to appoint officers over the land, that should" take up the fifth part of the land of Egypt in the seven plenteous years." After this we have several chapters occupied with the details of the history of Jacob and his sons-the journey of the latter to

* Genesis, xli. 34.