covered in Egypt. The sight of the pyramids,
obelisks, colossal statues, and ruined temples, would fill them with
such astonishment, that for a time they would be as men
spell-bound--wholly incapable of reasoning with sobriety. They might
incline at first to refer the construction of such stupendous works to
some superhuman powers of a primeval world. A system might be invented
resembling that so gravely advanced by Manetho, who relates that a
dynasty of gods originally ruled in Egypt, of whom Vulcan, the first
monarch, reigned nine thousand years; after whom came Hercules and other
demigods, who were at last succeeded by human kings.

When some fanciful speculations of this kind had amused their
imaginations for a time, some vast repository of mummies would be
discovered, and would immediately undeceive those antiquaries who
enjoyed an opportunity of personally examining them; but the prejudices
of others at a distance, who were not eye-witnesses of the whole
phenomena, would not be so easily overcome. The concurrent report of
many travellers would, indeed, render it necessary for them to
accommodate ancient theories to some of the new facts, and much wit and
ingenuity would be required to modify and defend their old positions.
Each new invention would violate a greater number of known analogies;
for if a theory be required to embrace some false principle, it becomes
more visionary in proportion as facts are multiplied, as would be the
case if geometers were now required to form an astronomical system on
the assumption of the immobility of the earth.

Amongst other fanciful conjectures concerning the history of Egypt, we
may suppose some of the following to be started. "As the banks of the
Nile have been so recently colonized for the first time, the curious
substances called mummies could never in reality have belonged to men.
They may have been generated by some _plastic virtue_ residing in the
interior of the earth, or they may be abortions of Nature produced by
her incipient efforts in the work of creation. For if deformed beings
are sometimes born even now, when the scheme of the universe is fully
developed, many more may have been 'sent before their time, scarce half
made up,' when the planet itself was in the embryo state. But if these
notions appear to derogate from the perfection of the Divine attributes,
and if these mummies be in all their parts true representations of the
human form, may we not refer them t