After we had passed a few squares through the thronged and handsome street, which was exclusively filled with beautiful and tasteful abodes of priests, adorned with gardens and corridors, we came to a large open space in the city, where was a great fountain, surrounded by lions sculptured in gray porphyry stone. On one side of this square was a lake, bordered with trees; on another, a grove sacred to certain mysteries; on a third, a temple dedicated to all the sacred animals of Egypt,--images of which surrounded a vast portico in front. An enumeration of them will exhibit to you, how the first departure, in ancient days, from the worship of the One Deity, by personating His attributes in animal forms, has converted religion into a gross and sensual superstition. It is not enough that they have fanciful emblems in all their temples, and on all their sculptured monuments, of Life, Goodness, Power, Purity, Majesty, and Dominion (as in the crook and flail of Osiris), of Authority, of Royalty, of Stability; but they elevate into representatives of the gods, the ape, sacred to Thoth; the monkey; the fox, dog, wolf, and jackal, all four sacred to Anubis; the ichneumon and cat, which last is superstitiously reverenced, and when dead embalmed with divine rites. The ibex, which I once believed to be sacred, is regarded only as an emblem; and so with the horse, ass, panther, and leopard, which are not sacred, but merely used in sculptures as emblems. The hippopotamus is sacred, and also an emblem of Typhon, dedicated to the god of war. The cow is held eminently sacred by the Egyptians, and is dedicated to the deity Athor. There are four sacred bulls in Egypt,--not only sacred, but deified. In Middle Egypt, Onuphis and Basis are worshipped in superb temples; and at On, Mnevis, sacred to the Sun. Here in Memphis is Apis, not only sacred but a god, and type of Osiris, who, in his turn, is the type of the Sun, which is the type of the Infinite Invisible; at least this is the formula, so far as I have learned its mysteries. How much purer the religion, dear mother, which, passing by or overleaping all these intermediate types and incarnations, prostrates the soul before the footstool of the Lord of the Sun Himself, the One Spiritual God of gods! Of all the sacred animals above named, I beheld images in stone upon the dromos which bordered the portico. There were also figures of the sacred birds,--as the ibis, sacred to the god Thoth; the vulture, the falcon-hawk, sacred to Re, and honored in the city of On, and the egret, sacred to Osiris. Besides these sacred figures which decorated this pantheonic portico, at each of the four gates was one of the four deified bulls in stone, larger than life-size. There are also to be found, all over Egypt, sculptured sphinxes,--a sort of fabulous monster, represented either with the head of a man, a hawk, or a ram; to these may be added a vulture with a serpent's head, and a tortoise-headed god.