Such were the famous Egyptian pyramids, which by their figure, as well as size, have triumphed over the injuries of time and the Barbarians. But what efforts soever men may make, their nothingness will always appear. These pyramids were tombs; and there is still to be seen, in the middle of the largest, an empty sepulchre, cut out of one entire stone, about three feet deep and broad, and a little above six feet long.(274) Thus all this bustle, all this expense, and all the labours of so many thousand men for so many years, ended in procuring for a prince, in this vast and almost boundless pile of building, a little vault six feet in length. Besides, the kings who built these pyramids, had it not in their power to be buried in them; and so did not enjoy the sepulchre they had built. The public hatred which they incurred, by reason of their unheard-of cruelties to their subjects, in laying such heavy tasks upon them, occasioned their being interred in some obscure place, to prevent their bodies from being exposed to the fury and vengeance of the populace. This last circumstance, which historians have taken particular notice of, teaches us what judgment we ought to pass on these edifices, so much boasted of by the ancients.(275) It is but just to remark and esteem the noble genius which the Egyptians had for architecture; a genius that prompted them from the earliest times, and before they could have any models to imitate, to aim in all things at the grand and magnificent; and to be intent on real beauties, without deviating in the least from a noble simplicity, in which the highest perfection of the art consists. But what idea ought we to form of those princes, who considered as something grand, the raising by a multitude of hands, and by the help of money, immense structures, with the sole view of rendering their names immortal; and who did not scruple to destroy thousands of their subjects to satisfy their vain glory! They differed very much from the Romans, who sought to immortalize themselves by works of a magnificent kind, but, at the same time, of public utility. Pliny gives us, in few words,(276) a just idea of these pyramids, when he calls them a foolish and useless ostentation of the wealth of the Egyptian kings; _Regum pecuniæ otiosa ac stulta ostentatio._ And adds, that by a just punishment their memory is buried in oblivion; the historians not agreeing among themselves about the names of those who first raised those vain monuments: _Inter eos non constat à quibus factæ sint, justissimo casu obliteratis tantæ vanitatis auctoribus._ In a word, according to the judicious remark of Diodorus, the industry of the architects of those pyramids is no less valuable and praiseworthy, than the design of the Egyptian kings is contemptible and ridiculous.