"Of the wall it is very easy to assign the motive. It secured a
wealthy and timorous nation from the incursions of barbarians,
whose unskilfulness in the arts made it easier for them to supply
their wants by rapine than by industry, and who from time to time
poured in upon the inhabitants of peaceful commerce as vultures
descend upon domestic fowl. Their celerity and fierceness made the
wall necessary, and their ignorance made it efficacious.

"But for the Pyramids, no reason has ever been given adequate to
the cost and labour of the work. The narrowness of the chambers
proves that it could afford no retreat from enemies, and treasures
might have been reposited at far less expense with equal security.
It seems to have been erected only in compliance with that hunger
of imagination which preys incessantly upon life, and must be
always appeased by some employment. Those who have already all
that they can enjoy must enlarge their desires. He that has built
for use till use is supplied must begin to build for vanity, and
extend his plan to the utmost power of human performance that he
may not be soon reduced to form another wish.

"I consider this mighty structure as a monument of the
insufficiency of human enjoyments. A king whose power is
unlimited, and whose treasures surmount all real and imaginary
wants, is compelled to solace, by the erection of a pyramid, the
satiety of dominion and tastelessness of pleasures, and to amuse
the tediousness of declining life by seeing thousands labouring
without end, and one stone, for no purpose, laid upon another.
Whoever thou art that, not content with a moderate condition,
imaginest happiness in royal magnificence, and dreamest that