Note 12 — LETTER IV.
Reading edition
[As a further illustration of this scene, but briefly passed over by the originator of it, the following observations of Mr. Gliddon will be found very interesting. “Mr. Gliddon hoped, that besides the day view, the Prussians would add their night scene of New Year’s Eve, 1842, when the blaze of bonfires, lighted on the top of each of the three pyramids, cast a lurid glare on every side, bringing out the craggy peaks of the long desecrated mausolea of Memphite Pharoahs, tinting that drear wilderness of tombs with a light, emblematical of Lepsius’ vindication of their inmates’ memories, and leaving the shadows of funereal gloom to symbolize the fifty centuries of historic night, now broken by the hierologists:—
“‘Dark has been thy night, Oh Egypt, but the flame Of new-born science gilds thine ancient name.’”
—Gliddon’s Otia Egyptiaca; Lecture II. Burke’s Ethnological Journal, No. VI. p. 265.—K. R. H. M.]