[22] [The more extended our acquaintance with ancient monuments or ancient writings becomes, the more simple and human do we find their signification to be. It has been the case with Egypt, Assyria, with Mexico, and indeed with most of those monuments that occur in connexion with the ancient world, in the popular acceptation of the word. If mystery and types possess a home anywhere, it must be in India, for even in Yucatan, the hieroglyphics seem very simple and the reverse of mysterious, when properly examined, as I hope to prove one day, in an extended investigation into Mexican antiquities, upon which the labour of some years has been bestowed. Instead of seeking for such remote causes, the reader will do well to consider the simple opinion of Gliddon, in his _Otia_, Lecture VIII. Burke’s Ethnological Journal, No. IX. p. 395, regarding the origin of animal worship. I should not have been led to this lengthy note if I did not feel that, while the earliest tenets of worship were indeed veiled in types (the result, however, as much of accident as design), animal worship is too recent to conceal any such mysterious dogmas. I do not wish to place my notion in competition with that of Lepsius; this is a mere suggestion.--K. R. H. M.] [23] [See a lively description of this ceremony in Bayle St. John’s Village Life in Egypt.--K. R. H. M. 2nd edit.] [24] [News have just been received from Egypt that most enterprising excavations have been commenced at Mitrahinneh, partly under the direction of Mr. A. Harris, of Alexandria.--K. R. H. M. 2nd edit.] [25] See my essay “On the general employment of the Pointed Arch in Germany in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries,” as an Introduction to H. Gally Knight’s Progress of Architecture from the Tenth to the Fourteenth Century under the Normans, from the English; Leipsig, 1841; and my father’s treatise, “The Dome of Naumburg,” by C. P. Lepsius, Leipsig, 1840 (in Puttrich’s “Monuments of Architecture,” II. pt. 3, 4). [26] [In Catherwood’s beautiful work on Central America we find that at some of the cities a peculiar arch was employed. This consisted in an arch of which the point was destroyed by laying a beam across at the top. In the Polynesian islands we also find almost perfect approaches to the pointed arch.--K. R. H. M.] [27] [Indeed, we learn from Bayle St. John that the Fellahs are not only contented with this treatment, but proud of the number of times they have been thus used. It saves money, and that is quite enough reason.--K. R. H. M. 2nd edit.] [28] [From the labyrinth and the remains of lake Mœris.--K. R. H. M.] [29] [About two-pence halfpenny English.--K. R. H. M.] [30] Evening.