--ED.
CHAP. XXXII.
THEY ENTER THE PYRAMID.
Pekuah descended to the tents, and the rest entered the pyramid: they
passed through the galleries, surveyed the vaults of marble, and
examined the chest, in which the body of the founder is supposed to have
been reposited. They then sat down in one of the most spacious chambers,
to rest awhile before they attempted to return.
"We have now," said Imlac, "gratified our minds with an exact view of
the greatest work of man, except the wall of China.
"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 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
habitations of peaceful commerce, as vultures descend upon domestick
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.
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