majesty, though certainly not in beauty. Their massive walls, Cyclopean
columns, dim porticos, gloomy chambers, produce even now all the
terrific impressions they could have desired. Perhaps the crumbling
ruins which encumber the roof, the wretched remains of Christian
buildings once erected on this temple as on a rock for security, rather
heighten than diminish its effect. We walked round a vast wall still in
perfect preservation, which encircles the windowless parallelogram
formed by the temple, and reaches about half its height, leaving a
narrow court like a moat all round; and we felt that these religious
edifices had been fortresses likewise, and that temporal as well as
spiritual terrors had of yore surrounded them. When shall we be able to
wring forth the secret of that ancient time? When will its history cease
to be a myth, its kings become real personages, its civilisation
something better than a romance? As yet, nothing has been discovered
except a string of disjointed facts, which scholars arrange each after
his own fashion, and which no more resemble any other known series of
human actions than the accidental combination of the kaleidoscope does
this living and breathing world. We want a key, and a key has not been
found. So men go stumbling on through the inextricable labyrinth, and
exhaust more ingenuity in vain speculations than would suffice to bring
a variety of modern sciences to perfection.

It was perfectly safe to indulge in these thoughts, because even if any
mighty antiquary had been at hand, he would have been obliged to confess
that although some truth may have been brought to light, it is
impossible to put one's finger upon it. For almost all men who have
studied Egyptian antiquities differ entirely in their conclusions--all
arrange dynasties in a different manner, and find more mistakes than
discoveries in their predecessors. Well, thought we, let us leave them
to their researches: if they do not find the pot of gold, they may