Our paffions are joy and grief, love and hatred, hope and fear. Of joy and grief the paft is the object, and the future of hope and fear; even love and hatred respect the paft, for the cause must have been before the effect.

"The present ftate of things is the confequence of the former, and it is natural to inquire what were the fources of the good that we enjoy, or the evil that we suffer. If we act only for ourfelves, to neglect the study of history is not prudent if we are intrufted with the care of others, it is not just. Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal; and he may properly be charged with evil who refufed to learn how he might prevent it.

"There is no part of history fo generally useful as that which relates the progrefs of the human mind, the gradual

1

dual improvement of reafon, the fucceffive advances of fcience, the viciffitudes. of learning and ignorance which are the light and darknefs of thinking beings, the extinction and refufcitation of arts, and the revolutions of the intellectual world. If accounts of battles and invafions are peculiarly the bufinefs of princes, the useful or elegant arts are not to be neglected; thofe who have kingdoms to govern, have understandings to cultivate.

"Example is always more efficacious than precept. A foldier is formed in war, and a painter muft copy pictures. In this, contemplative life has the advantage: great actions are seldom feen, but the labours of art are always at hand for those who defire to know what art has been able to perform.

"When

When the eye or the imagination is ftruck with any uncommon work, the next tranfition of an active mind is to the means by which it was performed. Here begins the true ufe of fuch contemplation; we enlarge our comprehenfion by new ideas, and perhaps recover fome art loft to mankind, or learn what is lefs perfectly known in our own country. At leaft we compare our own with former times, and either rejoice at our improvements, or, what is the first motion towards good, discover our defects."

"I am willing, faid the prince, to fee all that can deferve my fearch." "And I, faid the princefs, fhall rejoice to learn fomething of the manners of antiquity."

"The most pompous monument of Egyptian greatnefs, and one of the most

bulky

bulky works of manual industry, faid Imlac, are the Pyramids; fabricks raifed before the time of hiftory, and of which the earliest narratives afford us only uncertain traditions. Of these the greatest is ftill ftanding very little injured by time."

"Let us vifit them to-morrow, faid Nekayah. I have often heard of the Pyramids, and fhall not reft, till I have feen them within and without with my own eyes."

TH

CHAP. XXX.

THEY VISIT THE PYRAMIDS.

HE refolution being thus taken, they fet out the next day. They laid tents upon their camels, being refolved to stay among the Pyramids till their curiofity was fully fatisfied. They travelled gently, turned afide to every thing remarkable, stopped from time to time and converfed with the inhabitants, and obferved the various appearances of towns ruined and inhabited, of wild and cultivated nature.

When they came to the great pyramid, they were astonished at the extent of the base, and the height of the top. Imlac explained to them the principles upon which the pyramidal form was

chofen