The question may be propounded—Why was there given to these structures that particular form which from them has been called the pyramidal? Mathematics and astronomy have been summoned to answer the question; and lately the Astronomer Royal for Scotland has, in a large and learned work, endeavoured to prove that the Great Pyramid of Gizeh was intended to perpetuate for ever a knowledge of scientifically-ascertained natural standards of weight, measure, and capacity. If this was the purpose of the Great Pyramid, will he allow an old friend to ask him—what, then, was the purpose of each one of those scores of other Pyramids that were constructed before and after it? No two, probably, of the whole series were precisely of the same dimensions, except, perhaps, accidentally. All suppositions of this kind have their origin in the unhistorical, or rather anti-historical practice of attributing to early ages the ideas of our own times. The first requirement for enabling one to answer this question rightly is the power of, in some degree, thinking with the thoughts of the men who themselves built the Pyramids. Though, of course, there is no more reason for doubting that every Pyramid in Egypt was intended for a tomb and sepulchral monument, just for that and for nothing else, than there is for doubting that the Coliseum was built for the spectacles of the amphitheatre, and London Bridge for enabling people to cross the Thames. Sir John Mandeville, the greatest English traveller of the Middle Ages, and who, during his thirty-three years of wandering in the East, had served in the armies both of the Sultan of Egypt and of the Emperor of China, writing between 1360-70, of what he had seen about twenty-five years previously, tells us the Pyramids were the granaries Joseph built for the storage of the corn of the years of plenty. This is instructive: it shows how readily in ages of ignorance—the same cause still has, where it remains, the same effect—men connect old traditions, particularly if there be anything of religion about them, with existing objects: being prompted to do this by a craving to give distinctness, and a local habitation, to such traditions. He anticipates and bars the objection that neither he, nor anyone else, had inspected the interior of the Pyramids, for the purpose of ascertaining whether they were adapted for granaries, by telling us that they were full of serpents. This is set down apparently without any other design than that of recording a curious fact, which it would be as well to mention. And, doubtless, as far as the knight knew himself, he had no other object. But in matters of this kind, experience teaches us that such people do not know themselves.