was built on a rock, having a square base, cut on the outside of so many steps, and decreasing gradually quite to the summit. It was built with stones of a prodigious size, the least of which were thirty feet, wrought with wonderful art, and covered with hieroglyphics. According to several ancient authors, each side was eight hundred feet broad and as many high. The summit of the pyramids, which to those who viewed it from below, seemed a point, was a fine platform, composed of ten or twelve massy stones, and each side of that platform sixteen or eighteen feet long.

M. de Chazelles, of the Academy of Sciences, who went purposely on the spot in 1693, gives us the following dimensions.

The side of the square base,

110 fathoms. 12,100 square

The fronts are equilateral triangles, and
therefore the superficies of the base is fathoms.
The perpendicular height,

The solid contents,

77 3-6 fathoms. 313,590 cubical fathoms.

An hundred thousand men were constantly employed about this work, and were relieved every three months by the same number. Ten complete years were spent in hewing out the stones, either in Arabia or Ethiopia, and in conveying them to Egypt; and twenty years more in building this immense edifice, the inside of which contained numberless rooms and apartments. There was expressed on the pyramid, in Egyptian characters, the sums it cost only in garlic, leeks, onions, and the like, for the workmen; and the whole amounted to sixteen hundred talents of silver, (about £25,000 sterling,) that is, four millions five hundred thousand French livres; from whence it was easy to conjecture what a vast sum the whole must have amounted to.

Pliny gives us, in a few words, a just idea of these pyramids, when he calls them a foolish and useless ostentation of the wealth of the Egyptian kings; Regum pecuniæ otiosa ab stulta ostentio; and adds, that by a just punishment, their memory is buried in oblivion; the historians not agreeing among themselves about the names of those who first raised those vain monuments. Inter eos non constant a quibus factæ sint, justissimo casu obliteratis tantæ vanitatis auctoribus. In a word, accord

ing to the judicious remark of Diodorus, the industry of the architects of those pyramids is no less valuable and praiseworthy, than the design of the Egyptian kings contemptible and ridiculous.

But what we should most admire in these ancient monuments, is, the true and standing evidence they give of the skill of the Egyptians in astronomy; that is, in a science which seems incapable of being brought to perfection, but by a long series of years, and a great number of observations. M. de Chazelles, when he measured the great pyramid in question, found that the four sides of it were turned exactly to the four quarters of the world, and consequently showed the true meridian of that place. Now, as so exact a situation was in all probability purposely pitched upon by those who piled up this huge mass of stones, above three thousand years ago, it follows, that during so long a space of time, there has been no alteration in the heavens in that respect, or (which amounts to the same thing) in the poles of the earth or the meridians. This is M. de Fontenelle's remark in his eulogium of M. de Chazelles.

What has been said concerning the judgment we ought to form of the pyramids, may also be applied to the Labyrinth, which Herodotus, who saw it, assures us was still more surprising than the pyramids. It was built at the most southern part of the lake of Moris, whereof mention will be made presently, near the town of Crocodiles, the same with Arsinoe. It was not so much one single palace, as a magnificent pile composed of twelve palaces, regularly disposed, which had a communication with each other. Fifteen hundred rooms, interspersed with terraces, were ranged round twelve halls, and discovered no outlet to such as went to see them. There were the like number of buildings under ground. These subterraneous structures were designed as the burying place of the kings, and (who can speak this without confusion and without deploring the blindness of man!) for keeping the sacred crocodiles, which a nation, so wise in other respects, worshipped as gods.

In order to visit the rooms and halls of the labyrinth, it was necessary, as the reader will naturally suppose, for people to take the same precaution as Ariadne made

Theseus use, when he was obliged to go and fight the Minotaur in the labyrinth of Crete. Virgil describes it in this manner:

And as the Cretan labyrinth of old,

With wand'ring ways, and many a winding fold,
Involved the weary way without redress,

In a round error, which denied recess;

Not far from thence he grav'd the wond'rous maze,
A thousand doors, a thousand winding ways.

These Pyramids are among the most stupendous works of man. They are the most ancient, too, having been built before any accounts were written; beyond the knowledge of history. Some regard them as the work of the children of Israel when in bondage in Egypt. Their purpose, too, is equally obscure: whether as sepulchres for their kings, or as places for worship at the top, a high place, as was the custom with many nations; or as a cavern inside, which was the mode preferred by others. Their shape and solidity render them very durable. Those who built them thought to render themselves famous to posterity, but we do not now even know their names.

The village of Gizeh, near Cairo, has those most eminent. Four of these are placed near together; the largest of which covers eleven acres of ground. Its height is 500 feet. The only room discovered in it is about the middle, thirty-four feet long and seventeen broad, which has nothing in it but a large stone chest, without a lid, large enough for the body of a man; but whether one was ever in it we cannot tell.

The Pyramids were inseparably associated with the name of Egypt; they were formerly reckoned among the seven wonders of the world, and they are now justly ranked among the most remarkable monuments which have ever been erected by the hand of man. It was generally supposed that there were only three Pyramids, this being the number at Gizeh, usually visited by travellers; but within fifty miles of that place were one hundred others, and it was supposed that upwards of two hundred of these singular burial places were scattered over Egypt and Nubia. We shall, however, confine

ourself to a description of the pyramids at Gizeh, and a description of one will serve for all the rest.

When a person first visited the Pyramids, he was struck with the vastness of their size, and the wonderful perfection of their structure; although of great antiquity, they exhibit no signs of decay. The extraordinary durability he conceived to arise from three causes, viz., the solidity of their foundation, a solid rock-the peculiarity of their form, being best calculated for duration - and the dryness of the climate, there not being alternate seasons of moisture and heat, which tended to produce mineral decomposition. The Pyramids were situated outside the boundaries of Egypt proper, being about three miles from the spot where terminates the inundation of the Nile. They were doubtless built there in conformity with an Egyptian law, mentioned by Plutarch, prohibiting the burial of any person on a spot of land capable of giving sustenance to the living. Thus the Pyramids and Catacombs, those immense sepulchres above and below the surface of the earth, were built outside of the territories which were overflowed by the waters of the Nile.

Of the origin of the Pyramids nothing positively was known. Of all the monuments of ancient greatness, the origin of none is involved in so great obscurity. Tradition has only preserved the names of the kings by whom they were supposed to have been built. They contain neither within them nor about them any pictorial or hieroglyphic emblems-from which an inference is drawn that the Pyramids were erected before this kind of writing was discovered. All the other Egyptian monuments were covered with hieroglyphics.

The size of the Pyramids was so great that it was almost impossible to conceive of their magnitude. Much discrepancy existed in the various estimates of their size made by travellers - they varying in their measurements from 564 to 800 feet. This discrepancy could be accounted for, from the fact that the Pyramids were expos ed to the winds of the desert and were sometimes half buried in the sand. But when the wind blew in an opposite direction, the sand was carried away, and the Pyramids appeared in their proper dimensions. The state

ments of Herodotus were probably to be relied on; he found the base of the Pyramid of Cheops to measure 800 feet square-the perpendicular height 686 feetand the slope from the outer part of the base to the top, 720 feet. By these measurements their size might be estimated. A French savant who accompanied Bonaparte to Egypt, in 1800, had made an estimate, that if the solid contents of the Pyramid of Cheops were turned into a quarry, and cut up for building, it would furnish materials for constructing a wall around the whole kingdom of France, six feet high, and one foot thick! Mr. Lyell, the celebrated English geologist, has calculated this Pyramid contained a mass of stone weighing six millions of tons! Now the shipping of the United States amounted to 1,800,000 tons; but supposing it to amount to 2,000,000, it would require all the vessels of every description in America, to make three voyages to Egypt, before they could bring away all the materials of which the Pyramid of Cheops was built. One of the other Pyramids at Gizeh was equal to it in size; the third was somewhat smaller. The various Pyramids scattered through Egypt and Nubia might average about half their size.

The base of the largest Pyramid covers 11 acres. The stones are above thirty feet in length, and the layers are 208; 360,000 men were employed in its erection.

CATACOMBS.-The Catacombs of Egypt were vast excavations in the solid rock, intended for the reception of the embalmed bodies of the people of Egypt. Those Catacombs were of various sizes, averaging half a furlong in width and a furlong in length. It was the custom when an individual died, to cause his body to be embalmed. It was then taken to the burial place and placed upon its feet. Rows of the dead were thus formed- some attention being paid to uniformity of size

-and the whole surface of the Catacomb would be thus closely covered; insomuch that at this day some of these burial places appear to be paved with human skulls. Another layer of bodies was placed on top, and then another, until the excavation could contain no more. Some of these burial places contained 100,000 bodies, and probably none less than 10,000. It was estimated