THEY ENTER THE PYRAMID
Pekuah descended to the tents, and the rest entered the Pyramid: they
passed through the galleries, surveyed the vaults of marble, and
examined the chest in which the body of the founder is supposed to have
been reposited. They then sat down in one of the most spacious chambers
to rest awhile before they attempted to return.
"We have now," said Imlac, "gratified our minds with an exact view of
the greatest work of man, except the wall of China.
"Of the wall it is very easy to assign the motive. It secured a wealthy
and timorous nation from the incursions of barbarians, whose
unskilfulness in arts made it easier for them to supply their wants by
rapine than by industry, and who from time to time poured in upon the
habitations of peaceful commerce, as vultures descend upon domestic
fowl. Their celerity and fierceness made the wall necessary, and their
ignorance made it efficacious.
"But for the Pyramids no reason has ever been given adequate to the cost
and labour of the work. The narrowness of the chambers proves that it
could afford no retreat from enemies, and treasures might have been
reposited at far less expense with equal security. It seems to have been
erected only in compliance with that hunger of imagination which preys
incessantly upon life, and must be always appeased by some employment.
Those who have already all that they can enjoy must enlarge their
desires. He that has built for use, till use is supplied, must begin to
build for vanity, and extend his plan to the utmost power of human
performance, that he may not be soon reduced to form another wish.
"I consider this mighty structure as a monument of the insufficiency of
human enjoyments. A king whose power is unlimited, and whose treasures
surmount all real and imaginary wants, is compelled to solace, by the
erection of a Pyramid, the satiety of dominion and tastelessness of
pleasures, and to amuse the tediousness of declining life, by seeing
thousands labouring without end, and one stone, for no purpose, laid
upon another. Whoever thou art that, not content with a moderate
condition, imaginest happiness in royal magnificence, and dreamest that
command or riches can feed the appetite of novelty with perpetual
gratifications, survey the Pyramids, and confess thy folly!"