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146 MEMNON. Among the celebrated names which strike the attention of every one who has been led to stray in the twihght of mythical history, few perhaps rouse a livelier curiosity, or present a more enticing and perplexing problem, than that of Memnon. The oftener it occurs to us the more we feel inclined to ask : Who is this rosy son of the morning, whose imaffe towered above the banks of the Nile, but, while it saluted the beams of the rising sun, pointed toward Meroe and the Ethiopian ocean ? this founder of palaces and cita- dels in Susa and Ecbatana, whose home lay in Cerne, the farthest island of the East ? this conquering hero, who cut a road through the heart of Asia, to find his grave or to leave his monuments on the coast of Syria and the shores of the Propontis ? Without hoping to furnish a satisfactory answer to this question, I feel tempted to review the legends relating to this renowned person, for the purpose of inquiring in what manner they may be best connected and reconciled. The subject has already employed the pens of so many learned and ingenious men, that little, if anything, can remain to be done for the collection of materials : but it also pre- sents so many sides, that it may not be useless to consider it from one which, thovigh it has not been entirely overlooked, seems not to have been sufficiently noticed. The immediate object of the inquiry proposed is to trace the Greek tradition about Memnon to its source, or at least so far as to ascertain the nature, historical or imaginary, of the ground from which it sprang. It will therefore be ne- cessary to begin by mentioning the earliest form in which it appears to us among the Greeks, and the new features