Grand Cairo, notwithstanding the magnificence of its name, he found much inferior in extent to several European capitals, though as the inhabitants lived in a close and crowded manner, it was exceedingly populous. Its principal curiosities, in his estimation, were contained within the castle situated on Mount Mocattem, and consisted of a spacious hall, adorned with a double row of vast Thebaic columns, and a wall about two hundred and sixty feet in depth, with a winding staircase descending to the bottom, hewn out in the solid rock; both of which works are attributed by the Mohammedans to the patriarch Joseph. At the village of Ghizah, directly opposite Cairo, on the Libyan or western bank of the Nile, he supposed himself to have discovered the site of ancient Memphis, which Dr. Pococke, Bruce, and others place at Metraheny, several miles farther southward. From the discussion of this point, in which, whether right or wrong, our author displays a profusion of learning and very considerable ingenuity, he proceeds, through a series of equally learned dissertations, to the origin and destination of the pyramids. The magnitude, structure, and aspect of these prodigious edifices, which have withstood the united attacks of barbarism and the elements through a period of unknown duration, have frequently been described with picturesque and nervous eloquence, though it is probable that the impression which the actual contemplation of them produces upon the imagination is not susceptible of being represented by language. Satirical or calculating writers have stood at the foot of these ancient temples, for such, I think, they should be considered, and laughed at the ambition or folly, as they term it, which prompted their founders to rear them, because their names and purposes are now become an enigma. Yet it is probable, that from the day on which they were erected until the present, few persons have beheld them towering above the plain of the desert, reflecting back the burning sun of noon, or throwing their morning or evening shadows over the sand, without being smitten with a sense of the sublime, and experiencing in their hearts a secret pride at the boldness and elevation of their founders’ conception. And this feeling will be heightened into something of a religious character, if, rejecting, the vulgar notion of their being nothing but royal tombs, we suppose, what might, I think, be all but demonstrated, that they were originally temples dedicated to the passive generative power of nature, the Bhavani of the Hindoos, the Athor-Isis of the Egyptians, and the Aphrodite and Venus of the Greeks and Romans. To Dr. Shaw, however, this theory did not present itself. He was contented with the old idea, suggested by the etymology of the word, that they might, perhaps, have been fire-temples; but he observes that the mouth of the pyramids, as well as the end of the mystic chest in the interior, points to the north, the original _Kiblah_, or