And, in proportion to their edifices and labours of this durable sort,
was their unwearied application to all the learning that was then
known. Geometry is said to have owed its existence to the necessity
under which they were placed of every man recognising his own property
in land, as soon as the overflowings of the Nile had ceased. They were
not less assiduous in their application to astronomy. The hieroglyphics
of Egypt are of universal notoriety. Their mythology was of the most
complicated nature. Their Gods were infinitely varied in their kind;
and the modes of their worship not less endlessly diversified. All
these particulars still contributed to the abstraction of their
studies, and the loftiness of their pretensions to knowledge. They
perpetually conversed with the invisible world, and laid claim to the
faculty of revealing things hidden, of foretelling future events, and
displaying wonders that exceeded human power to produce.

A striking illustration of the state of Egypt in that respect in early
times, occurs incidentally in the history of Joseph in the Bible. Jacob
had twelve sons, among whom his partiality for Joseph was so notorious,
that his brethren out of envy sold him as a slave to the wandering
Midianites. Thus it was his fortune to be placed in Egypt, where in
the process of events he became the second man in the country, and
chief minister of the king. A severe famine having visited these
climates, Jacob sent his sons into Egypt to buy corn, where only it
was to be found. As soon as Joseph saw them, he knew them, though they
knew not him in his exalted situation; and he set himself to devise
expedients to settle them permanently in the country in which he
ruled. Among the rest he caused a precious cup from his stores to be
privily conveyed into the corn-sack of Benjamin, his only brother by
the same mother. The brothers were no sooner departed, than Joseph
sent in pursuit of them; and the messengers accosted them with the