In the meantime, it seems that no gracious ministries from Uxbridge, or elsewhere, can redeem this untoward generation of brickmakers. Like the navvies of Furness, (Letter XI., p. 5,) they are a fallen race, fit for nothing but to have dividends got out of them, and then be damned. My fine-lady friends resign themselves pacifically to that necessity, though greatly excited, I perceive, at present, concerning vivisection. In which warmth of feeling they are perfectly right, if they would only also remember that England is spending some thirty millions of pounds a year in making machines for the vivisection, not of dogs, but men; nor is this expenditure at all for anatomical purposes; but, in the real root of it, merely to maintain the gentlemanly profession of the Army, and the ingenious profession of Engineers. Oh, but we don’t want to live by soldiering, any more than by brickmaking; behold, we are intellectual persons, and wish to live by literature. Well, it is a slavish trade,—true Hamite; nevertheless, if we will learn our elements in true Egyptian bondage, some good may come of it. For observe, my literary friends, the essential function of the slavish Egyptian, in the arts of the world, is to lose the picture in the letter; as the essential function of the Eleutherian Goth is to illuminate the letter into the picture. The Egyptian is therefore the scribe of scribes,—the supremely literary person of earth. The banks of Nile give him his rock volume: the reeds of Nile his paper roll. With cleaving chisel, and cloven reed, he writes thereon, exemplarily: the ark which his princess found among the paper reeds, is the true beginning of libraries,—Alexandrian, and all other. What you call Scripture, in special, coming out of it; the first portion written in Egyptian manner, (it is said,) with the finger of God. Scribe and lawyer alike have too long forgotten the lesson,—come now and learn it again, of Theuth, with the ibis beak. [26] When next you are in London on a sunny morning, take leisure to walk into the old Egyptian gallery of the British Museum, after traversing which for a third of its length, you will find yourself in the midst of a group of four massy sarcophagi,—two on your left, two on your right. Assume that they are represented by the letters below, and that you are walking in the direction of the arrow, so that you have the sarcophagi A and B on your left, and the sarcophagi C and D on your right. In my new Elements of Drawing, I always letter the corners of a square all round thus, so that A C is always the diagonal, A B the upright side on the left, and A D the base. B ^ C | | | A | D The sarcophagus A is a king’s; B, a scribe’s; C, a queen’s; and D, a priest’s.