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Show ORIGIN OF SOCIETY. CAN'l'O I. 8 O'er many a league the ponderous domes extend, And deep in earth the ribbed vaults descend; 70 A thousand jasper steps with circling sweep Lead the slow votary up the winding steep; Ten thousand piers, now join'd and now aloof, Bear on their branching arms the fretted roof. Unnumber'd ailes connect unnumber'd ·halls, And sacred symbols crowd the pictur' d walls; With pencil rude forgotten days design, And arts, or ernpires, live in every line. J?ictur'd walls, l 76. The· application of mankind, in the early ages of society, to the imitative arts of painting, carving, statuary, and the casting of figures in metals, seems to have preceaed the discovery of letters; and to have been used as a written lanO'uaO'e to . ll" 0 b co~vey mte. tgence to their distant friends, or to transmit to pos-tenty the h1story of themselves, or of their discoveries. Hence the origin of the hieroglyphic figures which crowded the walls of' the temples of antiquity; many of which may be seen in the tablet of Isis in the works of Montfaucon; and some of them are still used in the sciences of chemistry and astronomy, as the characters for the metals and planets, and the -figures of animals on the celestial globe. CANTO I. PRODUCTION OF LIFE. 9 While chain'd reluctant on the marble ground, Indignant TIME reclines, by Sculpture bound; And sternly bending o'er a scroll unroll' d, Inscribes the future w.ith his style of gold. -So erst, when PRoTEus on the briny shore, New forms assum'd of eagle, pard, or boar; The wise ATRIDES bound in sea-weed thongs The changeful god amid his scaly throngs; 80 Till in deep tones his opening lips at last Reluctant told the future and the past. HERE o'er piazza'd courts, and long arcades, The bowers of PLEASURE root their waving shades; Shed o'er the pansied moss a checker'd gloom, Bend with new fruits, with flow'rs successive bloom. go So erst, ·when Proteus, I. 83. It seems probable that Proteus was the name of a hieroglyphic figure representing Ti~e · whose form was per_petually cha~ging, and who could discover the ~ast events of the wodd, and predict the future. Herodotus does not doubt but that P.rot~us was an Egyptian king or deity; and Orpheus calls him the pnnctple of all things, and the most ancient of the o·ods · and ad.ds, that he keeps. the keys of Nature, Danet's Diet. ~11 ,~hich mtght well accord With a figure representing Time. c |