e 25.344 inch length not
yet travelled beyond the region of the Ordnance maps,--but the
Government has been recently much urged by, and has partly yielded to, a
few ill-advised but active men, who want these invaluable hereditary
measures (preserved almost miraculously to this nation from primeval
times, for apparently a Divine purpose) to be instantly abolished _in
toto_,--and the recently atheistically-conceived measures of France to
be adopted in their stead. In which case England would have to descend
from her present noble pre-eminence in the metrological scale of
nations, and occupy a place almost the very last in the list; or next to
Turkey, and in company with some petty princedoms following France, and
blessed with little history and less nationality. 'How art thou fallen
from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!' might be then, indeed,
addressed to England with melancholy truth. Or more plainly (Professor
Smyth adds), and in words seemingly almost intended for such a case, and
uttered with depressing grief of heart, 'O Israel, thou hast destroyed
thyself!'" (Professor Smyth's _Life and Work at the Great Pyramid_,
1867, vol. iii. p. 598.)

In his previous work in 1864, Professor Smyth denounced also, in equally
strong terms, the French decimal system of metrology, considering it
as--to use his own words--"precisely one of the most hearty aids which
Satan, and traitors to their country, ever had to their hands." (_Our
Inheritance in the Great Pyramid_, p. 185, etc.)

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 274: Shelley himself is now interred in the same cemetery,
near the pyramid of Cestius, and a little above the grave of Keats.]

[Footnote 275: In vol. i. p. 365, this "raised ornament" is described as
"a very curious, and, for the Pyramid, perfectly unique adornment, of a
semicircular form, raised about one inch above the general surface, and
bevelled off on either side and above," etc.]

[Footnote 276: The whole sentence runs thus, and is punctuated
thus:--"It may be remarked that the Arabian authors have given the same
accounts of the pyramids with little or no variation, for above a
thousand years; and that they appear to have repeated the traditions of
the ancient Egyptians, mixed up with fabulous stories and incidents,
certainly not of Mahometan invention." Vol. iii. p. 328.]

END OF VOL. I.

_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh._

End of Project Gutenberg's Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1, by James Y