At the earliest period at which Chinese history opens upon us, we find the same amount of civilisation maintaining itself utterly unprogressively to the present day. The same peaceful industry and agricultural wealth accompanied by the same outwardly pleasing domestic relations and apparent content. The same exceptional mode of writing. The same want of power to assimilate with surrounding nations. Both hating war, but reverencing their kings, and counting their chronology by dynasties exactly as the Egyptians have always done. Their religions seem wonderfully alike, and both are characterised by the same fearlessness of death, and the same calm enjoyment in the contemplation of its advent.[28] In fact there is no peculiarity in the old kingdom of Egypt that has not its counterpart in China at the present day, though more or less modified, perhaps, by local circumstances; and there is nothing in the older system which we cannot understand by using proper illustrations, derived from what we see passing under our immediate observation in the far East. The great lesson we learn from the study of the history of China as bearing on that of Egypt is, that all idea of the impossibility of the recorded events in the latter country is taken away by reference to the other. Neither the duration of the Egyptian dynasties, nor the early perfection of her civilisation, or its strange persistency, can be objected to as improbable. What we know has happened in Asia in modern times may certainly have taken place in Africa, though at an earlier period. CHAPTER II. THE PYRAMIDS AND CONTEMPORARY MONUMENTS. Leaving these speculations to be developed more fully in the sequel, let us now turn to the pyramids—the oldest, largest, and most mysterious of all the monuments of man’s art now existing. All those in Egypt are situated on the left bank of the Nile, just beyond the cultivated ground, and on the edge of the desert, and all the principal examples within what may fairly be called the Necropolis of Memphis. Sixty or seventy of these have been discovered and explored, all which appear to be royal sepulchres. This alone, if true would suffice to justify us in assigning a duration of 1000 years at least to the dynasties of the pyramid builders, and this is about the date we acquire from other sources.