My heart sunk at the thought; and, for the moment, I yielded to that desolate feeling, which overspreads the soul that hath no light from the future. But again the buoyancy of my nature prevailed, and again, the willing dupe of vain dreams, I deluded myself into the belief of all that I most wished, with that happy facility which makes imagination stand in place of happiness. “Yes,” I cried, “immortality _must_ be within man’s reach; and, as wisdom alone is worthy of such a blessing, to the wise alone must the secret have been revealed. Deep, it is said, under yonder pyramid, has for ages lain concealed the Table of Emerald, on which the Thrice‐Great Hermes engraved, before the flood, the secret of Alchemy, that gives gold at will. Why may not the mightier, the more god‐like secret, that gives life at will, be recorded there also? It was by the power of gold, of endless gold, that the kings, who repose in those massy structures, scooped earth to the centre, and raised quarries into the air, to provide themselves with tombs that might outstand the world. Who can tell but that the gift of immortality was also theirs? who knows but that they themselves, triumphant over decay, still live—those mansions, which we call tombs, being rich and everlasting palaces, within whose depths, concealed from this withering world, they still wander, with the few who are sharers of their gift, through a sunless, but illuminated, elysium of their own? Else, wherefore those structures? wherefore that subterraneous realm, by which the whole valley of Egypt is undermined? Why, else, those labyrinths, which none of earth hath ever beheld—which none of heaven, except that God, with the finger on his hushed lip, hath trodden!” While I indulged in these dreams, the sun, half sunk beneath the horizon, was taking, calmly and gloriously, his leave of the Pyramids,—as he had done, evening after evening, for ages, till they had become familiar to him as the earth itself. On the side turned to his ray they now presented a front of dazzling whiteness, while, on the other, their great shadows, lengthening to the eastward, looked like the first steps of Night, hastening to envelope the hills of Araby in her shade. No sooner had the last gleam of the sun disappeared, than, on every house‐ top in Memphis, gay, gilded banners were seen waving aloft, to proclaim his setting,—while a full burst of harmony pealed from all the temples along the shores. Startled from my musing by these sounds, I at once recollected, that, on that very evening, the great festival of the Moon was to be celebrated. On a little island, half‐way over between the gardens of Memphis and the eastern shore, stood the temple of that goddess,