ARCHITECTURE AND MBCHANICAL SCIENCES. 4&9 



The other pyramids of Egypt, in their largeness and solidity, so 

 far surpass whatever we know of edifices, that we should be ready 

 to doubt of the reality of their having ever existed, did they 

 not still subsist to this day. Mr. de Chezele, of the Academy 

 of Sciences, who travelled into Egypt to measure them, assigns 

 to one of the sides of the base of the highest pyramid, a length 

 of six hundred and sixty feet, which reduced to its perpendicu. 

 lar altitude, makes four hundred sixty and six feet. The free- 

 stones, of which it is composed, are each of them thirty feet long; 

 so that we cannot imagine how the Egyptians found means to rear 

 such heavy masses to so prodigious a height. 



The Colossus of Rhodes was another of the marvellous produc- 

 tions of the ancients. To give an idea of its excessive bigness, it 

 need only be observed, that the fingers of it were as large as sta- 

 tues, and very few were able, with outstretched arms, to encom- 

 pass the thumb*. 



In short, what shall we say of the other structures of the anci- 

 ents, which still remain to be spoken of? Of their cement, which 

 in hardness equalled even marble itself ; of the firmness of their 

 highways, some of which were paved with large blocks of black 

 marble ; and of their bridges, some of which still subsist irrefra. 

 gable monuments of the greatness of their conceptions ? The bridge 

 at Gard, three leagues from Nimes, is one of them. It serves at 

 once as a bridge and an aqueduct. It goes across the river Gar- 

 don, and joins together the two mountains, between which it Is 

 inclosed. It comprehends three stories ; the third is the aqueduct, 

 which conveys the waters of the Eure into a great reservoir, which 



* Plin. book 34, chap. 7, and Diodorus Siculus, book 2, relate that Seraira- 

 mis made the mountain Bagistan, between Babylon and Media, be cut out into 

 a statue of herself, which was seventeen stadcs high; that is, above half a 

 French league ; and around it were an hundred other statues, of proportion- 

 able size, though less large. And Plutarch, vol. 2, p. SS5, speaks of a very 

 great undertaking which one Stesicrates proposed to Alexander; viz. to make 

 a statue of him out of Mount Athos, which would have been an hundred and 

 fifty miles in circumference, and about ten in height. His design was to make 

 him bold in his left hand a city, large enough to contain ten thousand inhabit- 

 ants ; and in the other an urn, out of which should flow a river, poured by him 

 into the sea. See also the same, Plutarch, vol. 1, p. 705, in the Life of Alex- 

 ander. Vitruvius, in the preface to bis L 2d Book, gives to this statuary the 

 name of Dinocrates. Strabo, lib. 14, p. 641, calls him Chiromocrates. Tzetzes, 

 Chiliad. 8, 199. 



2u3 



