proof of the people’s patience, and the prince’s generosity, restore for ever back to Egypt its ancient fertility!” Pliny’s reproach to the Egyptians, for their vain and foolish pride with regard to the inundations of the Nile, points out one of their most peculiar characteristics, and recalls to my mind a fine passage of Ezekiel, where God thus speaks to Pharaoh, one of their kings, “Behold I am against thee, Pharaoh, king of Egypt, the great Dragon that lieth in the midst of his rivers, which hath said, My river is my own, and I have made it for myself.”(398) God perceived an insupportable pride in the heart of this prince: a sense of security and confidence in the inundations of the Nile, independent entirely on the influences of heaven; as though the happy effects of this inundation had been owing to nothing but his own care and labour, or those of his predecessors: “the river is mine, and I have made it.” Before I conclude this second part, which treats of the manners of the Egyptians, I think it incumbent on me to bespeak the attention of my readers to different passages scattered in the history of Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses, which confirm and illustrate part of what we meet with in profane authors upon this subject. They will there observe the perfect polity which reigned in Egypt, both in the court and the rest of the kingdom; the vigilance of the prince, who was informed of all transactions, had a regular council, a chosen number of ministers, armies ever well maintained and disciplined, both of horse, foot, and armed chariots; intendants in all the provinces; overseers or guardians of the public granaries; wise and exact dispensers of the corn lodged in them; a court composed of great officers of the crown, a captain of his guards, a chief cup-bearer, a master of his pantry; in a word, all things that compose a prince’s household, and constitute a magnificent court. But above all these, the readers will admire the fear in which the threatenings of God were held, the inspector of all actions, and the judge of kings themselves; and the horror the Egyptians had for adultery, which was acknowledged to be a crime of so heinous a nature, that it alone was capable of bringing destruction on a nation.(399) Part The Third. The History of the Kings of Egypt. No part of ancient history is more obscure or uncertain, than that of the first kings of Egypt. This proud nation, fondly conceited of its antiquity and nobility, thought it glorious to lose itself in an abyss of infinite ages, which seemed to carry its pretensions backward to eternity. According to its own historians,(400) first, gods, and afterwards demigods or heroes, governed it successively, through a series of more than twenty thousand years. But the absurdity of this vain and fabulous claim is easily discovered.