f^Qj, on taste in architecture. 267 



sions about the generality of an art, are grofsly de- 

 cei ed." It is certain that Egypt was to the Greeks, 

 what Greece afterwards became to the Romans, the 

 pattern of imitation ; the nursery of legislators, phi- 

 losophers, and artists. The language, manners, and 

 customs of the Greeks, sufficiently fhow that they 

 were a Scythian or eastern people ; and nothing but 

 vague hypothesis can invite the belief that the con- 

 quering emigrants brought any thing along with- 

 them but their language, their superstition and. cus- 

 toms, han;>2r and their arras, into Europe, then 

 peopled by wandering hordes of savages and covered 

 with marfhes and forests. How many centuries elap- 

 sed from the settlement of the first colonies of tha 

 Hellenic Greeks, until the first dawn of history, 

 it is impofsible with any degree of accuracy even to 

 conjecture ; but we know with certainty, that, while 

 the Greeks were barbarous, the arts flouriflied in the 

 cii.y of Thebes, and that they were of immemorial 

 antiquity in Egypt. 



The fable of the Troglodytes and a subterranean 

 nation, appears evidently to be founded on the pri- 

 maeval custom of man's flieltering himself from, dan- 

 ger and the inclemencies, of the weather, in caves and 

 dens of the earth. 



Man, endowed with reason and progrefsive powers 

 of improvement, which is denied to erery other ani- 

 mal, would, when roused from his sluggifh nature, 

 go to the wild beast of the field and consider his ways 

 and be wise ; he would first fhelter himself in natural 

 cavities of the earth, and afterwards make excayations 

 for himself. Many of these primaeval dwellings are 



