The movement is but in the embryo stage. All this is the result of a single effort, and it is still young. Time is of the essence of art culture, and the United States offers ample verge and scope enough for a wonderful work in the future. The field for invention in decorative art is boundless, because genius may touch every item and phase of home and carry into the innermost life of the whole people the refining influence of Beauty.
Professor George Ebers, the distinguished Egyptologist, strange to say, is known in America more by his novels than by his scientific attainments. He had a severe attack of rheumatism, or something similar, which confined him to his bed for a long time, but did not prevent him from using his mind, and during this tedious suffering he undertook, as I think he himself relates, in the preface of his first novel, to put into story facts and history with which his mind was so richly stored. The work grew and fascinated him, and now I dare say it has not only become remunerative but beguiling. Since the death of Prof. Lepsius, the distinguished scholar of Egyptian history, George Ebers will doubtless stand in his stead as the next best informed man in Germany, on Egypt. The deceased Lepsius thought highly of one of our countrymen, Dr. Joseph P. Thompson, as a successful student under him, and here we pay a tribute of respect to this generous man who never failed to escort party after party of Americans through the Egyptian department of the Berlin Museum, explaining the tombs and reading the inscriptions. “The Egyptian King’s Daughter” is the title of Ebers’s most elaborate novel, and if one is disposed to read it carefully and observe all the foot-notes, there is quite a chance for the reader to feel delighted with himself for all he can acquire in this way about Egypt, and to have an inexpressible longing for more. And what a power of enchanting one these Egyptians have, with their gloomy and mystified learning, and their frequent contemplation of death. To give the reader an idea of Ebers’s style, in romance writing and subject matter, we quote what accurate pictures he gives of all the state of affairs in Egypt. Speaking of the schools or universities, in his novel entitled “Uarda,” he says: “The lower school was open to every son of a free citizen, and was often frequented by several hundred boys, who also found night quarters there. The parents were, of course, required either to pay for their maintenance or to send due supplies of provision for the keep of their children at school. This university, or school, was connected with the House of Seti, or one of the sanctuaries of the Necropolis, founded by Rameses I, and carried on by his son Seti. High festivals were held there in honor of the god of the gods of the under world. This extensive building was intended to be equal to the great original foundations of priestly learning at Heliopolis and Memphis; they were regulated on the same pattern, and with the object of raising the royal residence of Upper Egypt, namely, Thebes, above the capitals of Lower Egypt, in regard to philosophical distinction.” “Many proficient in the healing art,” he tells us, “were brought up in the house of Seti, but few need to remain after passing the examination of the degree of Scribe. The most gifted were sent to Heliopolis, where flourished in the great “Hall of the Ancients,” the most celebrated medical faculty of the whole country, whence they returned to Thebes, endowed with the highest honors in surgery, in ocular treatment, or in any other branch of their profession, and became physicians to the king, or made a living by imparting their learning, and by being called in to consult on serious cases.” From this short extract from Ebers any one can see that he treats his situations, although lying so remote in history, in the most simple and natural manner. Egypt, with her enormous architecture, her ponderous institutions, peculiar beliefs and somber, heated atmosphere, is not to him the dark “sorceress of the Nile,” but a real, breathing and tangible thing—he has so seriously studied her that he writes of her as he would of a familiar friend in whom he is intensely interested.