No More Learning

"

Here, in general, the company shrugged their shoulders, and one or
two of us touched our foreheads with a very significant air. Mr. Silk
Buckingham, first glancing slightly at the occiput and then at the
sinciput of Allamistakeo, spoke as follows:

"The long duration of human life in your time, together with
the occasional practice of passing it, as you have explained, in
installments, must have had, indeed, a strong tendency to the general
development and conglomeration of knowledge. I presume, therefore, that
we are to attribute the marked inferiority of the old Egyptians in
all particulars of science, when compared with the moderns, and more
especially with the Yankees, altogether to the superior solidity of the
Egyptian skull. "

"I confess again," replied the Count, with much suavity, "that I am
somewhat at a loss to comprehend you; pray, to what particulars of
science do you allude? "

Here our whole party, joining voices, detailed, at great length, the
assumptions of phrenology and the marvels of animal magnetism.

Having heard us to an end, the Count proceeded to relate a few
anecdotes, which rendered it evident that prototypes of Gall and
Spurzheim had flourished and faded in Egypt so long ago as to have been
nearly forgotten, and that the manoeuvres of Mesmer were really very
contemptible tricks when put in collation with the positive miracles
of the Theban savans, who created lice and a great many other similar
things.

I here asked the Count if his people were able to calculate eclipses. He
smiled rather contemptuously, and said they were.

This put me a little out, but I began to make other inquiries in regard
to his astronomical knowledge, when a member of the company, who had
never as yet opened his mouth, whispered in my ear, that for information
on this head, I had better consult Ptolemy (whoever Ptolemy is), as well
as one Plutarch de facie lunae.

I then questioned the Mummy about burning-glasses and lenses, and, in
general, about the manufacture of glass; but I had not made an end of my
queries before the silent member again touched me quietly on the elbow,
and begged me for God's sake to take a peep at Diodorus Siculus. As
for the Count, he merely asked me, in the way of reply, if we moderns
possessed any such microscopes as would enable us to cut cameos in the
style of the Egyptians. While I was thinking how I should answer
this question, little Doctor Ponnonner committed himself in a very
extraordinary way.

"Look at our architecture! " he exclaimed, greatly to the indignation of
both the travellers, who pinched him black and blue to no purpose.
"Look," he cried with enthusiasm, "at the Bowling-Green Fountain in New
York! or if this be too vast a contemplation, regard for a moment the
Capitol at Washington, D. C. ! "--and the good little medical man went
on to detail very minutely, the proportions of the fabric to which he
referred. He explained that the portico alone was adorned with no less
than four and twenty columns, five feet in diameter, and ten feet apart.

The Count said that he regretted not being able to remember, just
at that moment, the precise dimensions of any one of the principal
buildings of the city of Aznac, whose foundations were laid in the night
of Time, but the ruins of which were still standing, at the epoch of
his entombment, in a vast plain of sand to the westward of Thebes. He
recollected, however, (talking of the porticoes,) that one affixed to
an inferior palace in a kind of suburb called Carnac, consisted of a
hundred and forty-four columns, thirty-seven feet in circumference, and
twenty-five feet apart. The approach to this portico, from the Nile,
was through an avenue two miles long, composed of sphynxes, statues, and
obelisks, twenty, sixty, and a hundred feet in height. The palace itself
(as well as he could remember) was, in one direction, two miles long,
and might have been altogether about seven in circuit. Its walls were
richly painted all over, within and without, with hieroglyphics. He
would not pretend to assert that even fifty or sixty of the Doctor's
Capitols might have been built within these walls, but he was by
no means sure that two or three hundred of them might not have
been squeezed in with some trouble. That palace at Carnac was an
insignificant little building after all. He (the Count), however, could
not conscientiously refuse to admit the ingenuity, magnificence, and
superiority of the Fountain at the Bowling Green, as described by the
Doctor. Nothing like it, he was forced to allow, had ever been seen in
Egypt or elsewhere.

I here asked the Count what he had to say to our railroads.