THEBES, _February_ 10 [1850].... The Valley of the Kings seems, though within a mile of Thebes, as if one had arrived at the mountains of Kaf, beyond which are only "creatures unknown to any but God,"--so deep are the ravines, so high and blue the sky, so absolutely solitary and unearthly, so utterly uninhabitable the place. One look at that valley would give you more idea of the supernatural, the gate of Hades, than all the descriptions, sacred or profane. What a moment it is, the entering that valley, where in those rocky caverns, the vastness and the gloomy darkness of which are equally awful, the kings of the earth lie, each in his huge sarcophagus, with the bodies of his chiefs, each in their chamber, about him; and where, about this time, they are to return, to find their bodies and resume their abode on earth,--if purified by their three thousand years of probation, in a higher and better state; if degraded, in a lower. I thought I met them at every turn in those long subterraneous galleries,--saw their shades rising from their shattered sarcophagi, and advancing once more towards the light of day, which shone like a star, so distant and so faint, at the end of that opening; the dead were stirred up, the chief ones of the earth.... Well, these Pharaohs are perhaps now here, again in the body, their three thousand years having just elapsed to some of them,--that is, if they have philosophized sincerely, or, together with philosophy, have "loved beautiful forms." ... And if I were a Pharaoh now, I would choose the Arab form, and come back to help these poor people; and I am going to-morrow to a tomb of Rameses, B.C. 1150, to meet him and tell him so....