The physical features, and peculiarities of a country are one of the starting-points in the history of its people. If we do not provide ourselves with a knowledge of these matters before we commence our investigation of what the people were, and did, the character of the people, and of the events is sure very soon to make us feel the want of it. It is so in a higher degree with the history of the Egyptians, than with that of any other people. They were, emphatically, a people that stood alone; and the peculiarities of the people were the direct result of the peculiarities of the country. Its environment by the desert gave it that security, which alone in early days could have enabled nascent civilization to germinate and grow. It possessed also a soil and climate which allowed its inhabitants to devote themselves to some variety of employments and pursuits, and so prevented their being all tied down to the single task of producing food. The absence of these two great natural advantages elsewhere placed insurmountable difficulties in the way of advancement in other parts of the world, so long as the arts by which man battles with nature were few, and feeble; and the organization of society in consequence only rudimentary. So was it, for instance, in Europe, at the time when Egypt was at the zenith of its greatness; where, too, for long centuries afterwards, nothing could have been done without the aid of slavery, which alone made mental culture possible for the few at the cost of the degradation and misery of the many. Egypt was differently circumstanced. There one man might produce food sufficient for many. The rest, therefore, could devote themselves to other employments, which might tend, in different ways, to relieve man’s estate, and embellish life. In this matter the river and the climate were their helpers. The river manured with an annual warp, irrigated, cleaned, and softened the land; and the climate, working harmoniously with the river, made the operations of agriculture easy, speedy, certain, and very productive. What in other countries, and in later times, the slow advances in arts, and knowledge, and in social organization, as the successive steps became possible, brought about for their respective inhabitants, Nature did, in a great measure at once, and from the first, for the Egyptians.