aroundworldortra00peebiala-1

302 AKOTJND THE WOELD.
build with sucli exactness upon principles geometrical and
astronomical ? And yet what grand results ! Those p}Tamids
are perpetual light-houses in the desert, speaking
histories of once marvelous civilizations ; mighty monuments,
serenely, proudly overlooking the fading ruins of nearlyforgotten
ages.
The learned Gliddon in his " Ancient Egypt " sensibly
asks,
" Can the theologian derive no light from the pure primeval faith that
glimmers from Egyptian heroglyphics, to illustrate the immortality of the
soul ? Will not the historian deign to notice the prioP origin of every
art and science in Egypt, a thousand years before the Pelasgians studded
the isles and capes of the Archipelago with their forts and temples ?
— long before Etruscan civilization had smiled imder Italian skies?
And shall not the ethnographer, versed in Egyptian lore, proclaim the
fact that the physiological, craniological, capillary, and cuticular distinctions
of the human race existed on the first distribution of mankind
throughout the earth ?
"Philologists, astronomers, chemists, painters, architects, physicians,
must return to Egypt to learn the origin of language and writing ; of
the calendar, and solar motion ; of the art of cutting granite with a copper
chisel, and of giving elasticity to a copper sword ; of making glass
with the variegated hues of the rainbow ; of moving single blocks of polished
syenite, nine hundred tons in weight, for any distance, by land and
w^ater; of building arches, round and pointed, with masonic precision
unsurpassed at the present day, and antecedent by two thousand years
t6 the Cloaca IMagna ' ' of Rome ; of sculpturing a Doric column one
thousand years before the Dorians are known in history ; of fresco painting
in imperishable colors; of practical knowledge in anatomy; and of
time-defying pyramid building.
" Every craftsman can behold, in Egyptian monuments, the progress of
his art four thousand years ago ;
and whether it be a wheelwright building
a chariot, a shoemaker drawing his twine, a leather-cutter using
the selfsame form of knife of old as is considered the best form now,
a weaver throwing the same hand-shuttle, a whitesmith using that
identical form of blowpipe but lately recognized to be the most effi-*
cient, the seal-engraver cutting, in hieroglyphics, such names as Shoop-
Ho's, above four thousand three hundred years ago, — all these, and many
more astounding evidences of Egyptian priority, now require but a
glance at the plates of Rosellini."