se and personal caprice; and kings, fatigued with gratification,
abandoned themselves to all the extravagancies of factitious and
depraved taste.* They must have gardens mounted on arcades, rivers
raised over mountains, fertile fields converted into haunts for wild
beasts; lakes scooped in dry lands, rocks erected in lakes, palaces
built of marble and porphyry, furniture of gold and diamonds. Under
the cloak of religion, their pride founded temples, endowed indolent
priests, built, for vain skeletons, extravagant tombs, mausoleums and
pyramids;** millions of hands were employed in sterile labors; and the
luxury of princes, imitated by their parasites, and transmitted
from grade to grade to the lowest ranks, became a general source of
corruption and impoverishment.

* It is equally worthy of remark, that the conduct and
manners of princes and kings of every country and every age,
are found to be precisely the same at similar periods,
whether of the formation or dissolution of empires. History
every where presents the same pictures of luxury and folly;
of parks, gardens, lakes, rocks, palaces, furniture, excess
of the table, wine, women, concluding with brutality.

The absurd rock in the garden of Versailles has alone cost
three millions. I have sometimes calculated what might have
been done with the expense of the three pyramids of Gizah,
and I have found that it would easily have constructed from
the Red Sea to Alexandria, a canal one hundred and fifty
feet wide and thirty deep, completely covered in with cut
stones and a parapet, together with a fortified and
commercial town, consisting of four hundred houses,
furnished with cisterns. What a difference in point of
utility between such a canal and these pyramids!

** The learned Dupuis could not be persuaded that the
pyramids were tombs; but besides the positive testimony of
historians, read what Diodorus says of the religious and
superstitious importance every Egyptian attached to building
his dwelling eternal, b. 1.

During twenty years, says Herodotus, a hundred thousand men
labored every day to build the pyramid of the Egyptian
Cheops. Supposing only three hundred days a year, on
account of the sabbath, there will be 30 millions of days'
work in a year, and 600 millions in twenty years; at 15 sous
a day, this makes 450