them, and that which animates us,--it must be shown, by
each of us in his appointed place, not merely in the patience, but in
the activity of our hope; not merely by our desire, but our labour, for
the time when the Dust of the generations of men shall be confirmed for
foundations of the gates of the city of God. The human clay, now
trampled and despised, will not be,--cannot be,--knit into strength and
light by accident or ordinances of unassisted fate. By human cruelty and
iniquity it has been afflicted;--by human mercy and justice it must be
raised: and, in all fear or questioning of what is or is not, the real
message of creation, or of revelation, you may assuredly find perfect
peace, if you are resolved to do that which your Lord has plainly
required,--and content that He should indeed require no more of
you,--than to do Justice, to love Mercy, and to walk humbly with Him.

FOOTNOTES:

[153] Note vi.

NOTES.

NOTE I.

Page 24.

_'That third pyramid of hers.'_

Throughout the dialogues, it must be observed that 'Sibyl' is addressed
(when in play) as having once been the Cumaean Sibyl; and 'Egypt' as
having been queen Nitocris,--the Cinderella, and 'the greatest heroine
and beauty' of Egyptian story. The Egyptians called her 'Neith the
Victorious' (Nitocris), and the Greeks 'Face of the Rose' (Rhodope).
Chaucer's beautiful conception of Cleopatra in the 'Legend of Good
Women,' is much more founded on the traditions of her than on those of
Cleopatra; and, especially in its close, modified by Herodotus's
terrible story of the death of Nitocris, which, however, is
mythologically nothing more than a part of the deep monotonous ancient
dirge for the fulfilment of the earthly destiny of Beauty; 'She cast
herself into a chamber full of ashes.'

I believe this Queen is now sufficiently ascertained to have either
built, or increased to double its former size, the third pyramid of
Gizeh: and the passage following in the text refers to an imaginary
endeavour, by the Old Lecturer and the children together, to make out
the description of that pyramid in the 167th page of the second volume
of Bunsen's 'Egypt's Place in Universal History'--ideal
endeavour,--which ideally terminates as the Old Lecturer's real
endeavours to the same end always have terminated. There are, however,
valuable notes respecting Nitocris at page 210 of the same volume: but
the 'Early Egyptian History for the Young,' by the author of Sid