THE RUINS OF EGYPT. ' 495 



■with prodigious wealth ; these forests of masts, these 

 dark buildings, turning refuse into gold, and giving 

 bread to many thousand mouths ; these harnessed 

 elements which whirl us along beneath the ground, 

 and which soon will convey us through the air ; these 

 spacious halls, adorned with all that can exalt the 

 imagination or fascinate the sense ; these temples of 

 melody ; these galleries, exhibiting excavated worlds ; 

 these walls covered with books in which dwell the 

 souls of the immortal dead, which, when they are 

 opened, transport us by a magic spell to lands which 

 are vanished and passed away, or to spheres created 

 by the poet's art ; which make us walk with Plato 

 beneath the plane trees, or descend with Dante into 

 the dolorous abyss ; — to whom do we owe all these ? 

 First, to the poor savages, forgotten and despised, 

 who, by rubbing sticks together, discovered fire, who 

 first tamed the timid fawn, and first made the experi- 

 ment of putting seeds into the ground. And, secondly, 

 we owe them to those enterprising warriors who 

 established Nationality, and to those priests who de- 

 voted their life-time to the culture of their minds. 

 There is a land where the air is always tranquil, 

 where nature wears always the same bright yet lifeless 

 smile ; and there, as in a vast museum, are preserved 

 the colossal achievements of the past. Let us enter 

 the sad and silent river; let us wander on its dusky 

 shores. Buried cities are beneath our feet ; the 

 ground on which we tread is the pavement of a tomb. 

 See the Pyramids towering to the sky, with men, like 

 insects, crawling round their base ; and the Sphinx, 

 couched in vast repose, with a ruined temple between 

 its paws. Since those great monuments were raised, 

 the very heavens have been changed. When the 



