If I wished to characterize in one word the peculiar bearing and ruling element of the Egyptian mind; however unsatisfactory in other respects such general designations may be--I should say that the intellectual eminence of that people was in its scientific profundity--in an understanding that penetrated or sought to penetrate by magic into all the depths and mysteries of nature, even into their most hidden abyss. So thoroughly scientific was the whole leaning and character of the Egyptian mind, that even the architecture of this people had an astronomical import, even far more than that of the other nations of early antiquity. I have already had occasion to speak of the deep and mysterious signification of their treatment of the dead. In all the natural sciences, in mathematics, astronomy, and even in medicine, they were the masters of the Greeks; and even the profoundest thinkers among the latter, the Pythagoreans, and afterwards the great Plato himself, derived from them the first elements of their doctrines, or caught at least the first outline of their mighty speculations. Here too, in the birth-place of hieroglyphics, was the chief seat of the Mysteries; and Egypt has at all times been the native country of many true, as well as of many false, secrets. These few remarks may here serve to characterize this people; we shall later have occasion to add many minuter traits to complete this brief sketch of the Egyptian intellect. Very different was the character of the ancient Hebrews, who, in science as well as in art, can sustain no comparison with those other nations we have spoken of, and to whom we must apply a very different criterion of excellence. The moral eminence of this people, or the part allotted to it in high historical destiny, lies rather in the sphere of will, and in a well-regulated conduct of the will. Moses himself was undoubtedly, as it is said of him, "versed in all the science of the Egyptians;" for he had received a completely Egyptian education, which, by the care of an Egyptian princess, was of the highest and politest kind, and consequently, as the customs of the country imply, extremely scientific. Even his name according to the credible testimony of several ancient writers, was originally Egyptian, and afterwards hebraized; for _Moyses_,[50] as he is called in the Greek version of the Seventy, signifies in Egyptian, _one saved out of the water_. But the Hebrew people were far from possessing that Egyptian science of which Moses was so great a master; on the contrary, the Jewish legislator seemed to consider the greater part of that foreign science, in which he himself was so well versed, as of little service to his object; and in many instances sought to withhold this knowledge from his nation. Many of the Mosaic precepts indeed, especially such as have a reference to external life, to subsistence, diet and health, and which are in part at least founded on reasons of climate, are entirely conformable to Egyptian