exhibits one thing to the car or eye, and another to the understanding and reflection, is to be found likewise in other species of writings, as well as those commonly called classics: the Arabian Tales for instance, beneath that charming exterior, with which readers of all ages and countries are so much delighted, contain the like sort of knowledge, disguised in the like manner, and are subject to the like sort of explication as the Greek and Latin authors.

The same may be said of heraldry, and ornamental architecture, whether considered separately or together. As to the first, not one of its principles is at this day understood in any other sense than such as might interest mere children; yet, if we reflect a little, it never can be thought probable that our ancestors, when they covered their halls of justice, palaces, and cathedrals, with coats of arms in stone, intended by those symbols nothing but an idle unmeaning ornament,

* It is presumed that the three first volumes of this undertaking have given sufficient proof of this.

any more than it can can be deemed probable, (to speak of one of our orders of knighthood, all of which lie within the province of heraldry,) that a trait of love-gallantry could have been the foundation of the Order of the Garter, worn, as it has been, by the great men of this country for so many ages. Of the second (and to speak of the Gothic as well as Grecian architecture, and not solely as to the general plans of the vast remains of that art, but to the minor decorations executed upon their surfaces,) it may be asserted, that it is only by a reference to the latent mysteries of its emblems, that its principles can be at all explained; whereas, by the aid of such a reference, not only would the forms and style of the Gothic structures become intelligible, but Balbec, Palmyra, Persepolis, and the rest, though in one view they become far greater wonders than before, yet in another, would cease to surprize and perplex observers as they have so long done.

To make the like declaration in regard to the Egyptian hieroglyphics must be altogether super

fluous, since there is nobody who is not willing to admit that they disguise certain latent meanings, of which it is to be regretted that the cluc is wanting; it was not difficult, however, after a little time devoted to them, to discover considerable analogy between the gods of the Greeks and Romans, and some of those of the Egyptians taken individually, and some analogy also between the method of the hieroglyphic engravers and the Greek and Roman statuaries, even in their groupes; due allowance being made for the plain simple, unadorned, and even uncouth style, of the former, when compared with the high-wrought elegance of the latter; but just as I was beginning to despair of making any further progress than what tended to establish those analogies, I happened to be drawn by accident to the consideration of the Pillar of Pompey, the Sphinx, and the Pyramids, under a new point of view; namely this, that, independently of any emblematical marks which they may have about them, they are each of them, individually and en masse, disguises of secret meanings, and that they are

therefore hieroglyphics, as it were, in themselves ; and finding on a trial of other great masses of architecture by the same test, that they also might be considered as symbolical, without reference to the smaller sculptures with which they are so profusely covered, I was led to conclude that (while the smaller hieroglyphics might have been intended, by their numbers and beauty of their execution, only to deter an uninformed posterity from destroying the buildings on which they are found,) the general forms of those buildings concentrated in themselves, independently of their sculptures, the genuine proper objects for our study and research and thus, by a summary process, I for some time thought that I had discovered the meaning of the Egyptian hieroglyphics, or rather, that by being as it were merely a mantle intended to veil the secret designs of the architect, they had in themselves next to no meaning at all.

I would not, indeed, undertake to say even now, that the conjecture above stated, in respect to the hieroglyphics engraved in such astonishing num

bers on the Egyptian temples, is wholly unfounded; namely, that they may have no other meaning than to excite attention and bespeak a veneration for the objects on which they are inscribed, such objects being themselves, by their figure or mode of construction, the true symbols of what is intended to be concealed, yet (speaking of my acquaintance with the hieroglyphics only as to the humble point it has attained,) I cannot doubt that those which are found in smaller numbers, as on mummies, on Cleopatra's needle, and the like, have in fact a particular and appropriate meaning, capable of being unravelled individually, without reference to so concise and little satisfactory an explanation as the one above imagined.*

On the whole, it appears to me that an endeavour to discover a clue to the hieroglyphics is not altogether hopeless; and, by way of encourage-,

* The contents of the preceding Treatise on the Twelve Signs of the Zodiac, furnish some evidence of the probą, bility of this.