I judge that she may have been very
beautiful in her day,--whenever that was. One or two of the poor thing's
toes (her feet were wonderfully small and delicate) protruded from the
linen, and, perhaps, not having been so perfectly embalmed, the flesh had
fallen away, leaving only some little bones. I don't think this young
woman has gained much by not turning to dust in the time of the Pharaohs.
We also saw some bones of a king that had been taken out of a pyramid; a
very fragmentary skeleton. Among the classic marbles I peeped into an
urn that once contained the ashes of dead people, and the bottom still
had an ashy hue. I like this mode of disposing of dead bodies; but it
would be still better to burn them and scatter the ashes, instead of
hoarding them up,--to scatter them over wheat-fields or flowerbeds.
Besides these antique halls, we wandered through saloons of antediluvian
animals, some set up in skeletons, others imprisoned in solid stone; also
specimens of still extant animals, birds, reptiles, shells, minerals,--
the whole circle of human knowledge and guess-work,--till I wished that
the whole Past might be swept away, and each generation compelled to bury
and destroy whatever it had produced, before being permitted to leave the
stage. When we quit a house, we are expected to make it clean for the
next occupant; why ought we not to leave a clean world for the next
generation? We did not see the library of above half a million of
volumes; else I suppose I should have found full occasion to wish that
burnt and buried likewise.
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