8 ORIGIN OF SOCIETY. CANTO i. 



O'er many a league the ponderous domes extend, 

 And deep in earth the ribbed vaults descend; JO 



A thousand jasper steps with circling sweep 

 Lead the slow votary up the winding steep; 

 Ten thousand piers, now join'd and now aloof, 

 Bear on their branching arms the fretted roof. 



Unnumber'd aiies connect unnumber'd halls, 

 And sacred symbols crowd the pictur'd walls; 



With pencil rude forgotten days design, 







And arts, or empires, live in every line. 



Pictured watts, 1. 76. The application of mankind, in the early 

 ages of society, to the imitative arts of painting, carving, statuary, 

 and the casting of figures in metals, seems to have preceded the 

 discovery of letters; and to have been used as a written language to 

 convey intelligence to their distant friends, or to transmit to pos- 

 terity the history of themselves, or of their discoveries. Hence the 

 origin of the hieroglyphic figures which crowded the walls of the 

 temples of antiquity; many of which may be seen in the tablet of 

 Isis in the works of Montfaucon; and some of them are still used 

 in the -sciences of chemistry and astronomy, as the characters for 

 the metals and planets, and the figures of animals on the celestial 

 globe. 



