A pilgrimage to the temples and tombs of Egypt, Nubia, and ...

314 REFLECTIONS.
" These people, who look upon the duration of
life as a period of brief unimportance, contem-
plate, on the contrary, with the most serious
attention the long memory which survives a vir-
tuous career. It is for this reason that they de-
signate the abodes of the living as inns, where
they are lodged only as temporary passengers,
while they bestow the name of eternal asylums
upon the tombs of the dead, which are entered
to be quitted no more. Thus, their kings have
shown themselves indifferent, as it were, to the
construction of their palaces, while they have
exhausted all the resources at their command in
the construction of their sepulchres."
And thus it is that the traveller, wandering
over the plain of Thebes in quest of some tangi-
ble trace of its ancient population, finds nothing
but their temples and their tombs !
But, even
had their frail habitations not vanished from the
face of the earth,— had they remained perfect
and entire as the houses of Pompeii,—has not the
most eloquent of living writers '"'
said :
tombeau chez un peuple qui n'est plus ?"
^ Chateaubriand.
" Tout est