252 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book II. 



Siculus *, that they were a moft happy people, enjoying all thofe 

 advantages from nature, which I have mentioned, of air, earth, and 

 water; likewife a form of government, which, I think, 1 have fhown 

 to be the beft that ever was pradtlfed or even Imagined ; and befides 

 all thefe, the arts and fclences they invented, by which they made 

 the civil life compleat. 



Let us now compare the prefent ftate of Egypt with Its antient 

 ftate, as I have defcrlbed it ; and the change for the worfe will ap- 

 pear wonderful; — greater, as I have fald, than Is to be found In any 

 other country on earth. Egypt was once, as I have fhown, the 

 moft populous country in the world ; and now It may be faid to be a 

 defert compared with what It was formerly. It is inhabited at prefent 

 by Turks and Arabs, and a mongrel race of people, they call Copts, 

 who have a mixture, it Is faid, of the antient Egyptian blood. But 

 black, woolly-haired men, fuch as the antient Egyptians were, but 

 with features very different from thofe of the negroes, are not now 

 to be found In Egypt ; and, according to my information, are only 

 to be feen In the Ifland of Meroe, formed by the Nile in iEthiopIa, 

 but who probably are Ethiopians; fo that the whole Egyptian na- 

 tion may be faid to be extlndl. Inftead of being the beft governed 

 country, as It formerly was, I believe there Is no country at prefent 

 worfe governed. 



There was a Scotch fhip from Aberdeen, which, a year or two 

 ago, went to the Levant, and was employed to carry corn from dif- 

 ferent parts of Africa to Alexandria. And, though there had been 

 a great many ftiips, before this Aberdeen fhip, employed in the 

 fame way, yet, when fhe came to Alexandria with her cargo of 

 corn, there were people dying every day of hunger. This informa- 

 tion I had from one of the failors; who told me that the fcarcity vv-as 



not 



♦ Lib. I. cap. 6^. 



