Part 22 (1/2)

L. I have asked you to hear that, children, because, from all that we have seen in the work and play of these past days, I would have you gain at least one grave and enduring thought. The seeming trouble,--the unquestionable degradation,--of the elements of the physical earth, must pa.s.sively wait the appointed time of their repose, or their restoration. It can only be brought about for them by the agency of external law. But if, indeed, there be a n.o.bler life in us than in these strangely moving atoms;--if, indeed, there is an eternal difference between the fire which inhabits 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 labor, for the time when the Dust of the generations of men shall be confirmed for foundations of the gates of the city of G.o.d. The human clay, now trampled and despised, will not be,--cannot be,-- knit into strength and light by accident or ordinances of una.s.sisted 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 a.s.suredly 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.

NOTES.

NOTE I.

Page 26.

”That third pyramid of hers.”

THROUGHOUT the dialogues, it must be observed that ”Sibyl” is addressed (when in play) as having once been the c.u.maean 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 fulfillment 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 pa.s.sage following in the text refers to an imaginary endeavor, 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 endeavor,--which ideally terminates as the Old Lecturer's real endeavors 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 ”Sidney Gray,” contains, in a pleasant form, as much information as young readers will usually need.

NOTE II.

Page 27.

”Pyramid of Asychis?”

THIS pyramid, in mythology, divides with the Tower of Babel the shame, or vain glory, of being presumptuously, and first among great edifices, built with ”brick for stone.” This was the inscription on it, according to Herodotus:

”Despise me not, in comparing me with the pyramids of stone; for I have the pre-eminence over them, as far as Jupiter has pre- eminence over the G.o.ds. For, striking with staves into the pool, men gathered the clay which fastened itself to the staff, and kneaded bricks out of it, and so made me.”

The word I have translated ”kneaded” is literally ”drew;” in the sense of drawing, for which the Latins used ”duco;” and thus gave us our ”ductile” in speaking of dead clay, and Duke, Doge, or leader, in speaking of living clay. As the a.s.serted pre-eminence of the edifice is made, in this inscription, to rest merely on the quant.i.ty of labor consumed in it, this pyramid is considered, in the text, as the type, at once, of the base building, and of the lost labor, of future ages, so far at least as the spirits of measured and mechanical effort deal with it; but Neith, exercising her power upon it, makes it a type of the work of wise and inspired builders.

NOTE III.

Page 29.

”The Greater Pthah.”

IT is impossible, as yet, to define with distinctness the personal agencies of the Egyptian deities. They are continually a.s.sociated in function, or hold derivative powers, or are related to each other in mysterious triads, uniting always symbolism of physical phenomena with real spiritual power. I have endeavored partly to explain this in the text of the tenth Lecture here, it is only necessary for the reader to know that the Greater Pthah more or less represents the formative power of order and measurement he always stands on a four-square pedestal, ”the Egyptian cubit, metaphorically used as the hieroglyphic for truth,” his limbs are bound together, to signify fixed stability, as of a pillar; he has a measuring-rod in his hand, and at Philas, is represented as holding an egg on a potter's wheel; but I do not know if this symbol occurs in older sculptures. His usual t.i.tle is the ”Lord of Truth”. Others, very beautiful ”King of the Two Worlds, of Gracious Countenance,” ”Superintendent of the Great Abode,” etc., are given by Mr. Birch in Arundale's ”Gallery of Antiquities,”

which I suppose is the book of best authority easily accessible.

For the full t.i.tles and utterances of the G.o.ds, Rosellini is as yet the only--and I believe, still a very questionable--authority, and Arundale's little book, excellent in the text, has this great defect, that its drawings give the statues invariably a ludicrous or ign.o.ble character Readers who have not access to the originals must be warned against this frequent fault in modern ill.u.s.tration (especially existing also in some of the painted casts of Gothic and Norman work at the Crystal Palace). It is not owing to any willful want of veracity: the plates in Arundale's book are laboriously faithful: but the expressions of both face and body in a figure depend merely on emphasis of touch, and, in barbaric art most draughtsmen emphasize what they plainly see--the barbarism, and miss conditions of n.o.bleness, which they must approach the monument in a different temper before they will discover and draw with great subtlety before they can express.