in party-walls to one-third the extent of the main walls—­and the result will be a building containing four thousand cubic feet of masonry.  Let there be a town of eighteen thousand such houses, suited to be the abode of a hundred thousand inhabitants—­then pull these houses to pieces, and pile them up into a heap to a height exceeding that of the spire of the Cathedral of Vienna, and you will have a rough representation of the “Second Pyramid of Ghizeh.”  Or lay down the contents of the structure in a line a foot in breadth and depth—­the line would be above 13,500 miles long, and would reach more than half-way round the earth at the equator.  Again, suppose that a single man can quarry a ton of stone in a week, then it would have required above twenty thousand to be employed constantly for five years in order to obtain the material for the pyramid; and if the blocks were required to be large, the number employed and the time occupied would have had to be greater.

The internal construction of the “Second Pyramid” is less elaborate than that of the Third, but not very different.  Two passages lead from the outer air to a sepulchral chamber almost exactly under the apex of the pyramid, and exactly at its base, one of them commencing about fifty feet from the base midway in the north side, and the other commencing a little outside the base, in the pavement at the foot of the pyramid.  The first passage was carried through the substance of the pyramid for a distance of a hundred and ten feet at a descending angle of 25 deg. 55’, after which it became horizontal, and was tunnelled through the native rock on which the pyramid was built.  The second passage was wholly in the rock.  It began with a descent at an angle of 21 deg. 40’, which continued for a hundred feet; it was then horizontal for fifty feet; after which it ascended gently for ninety-six feet, and joined the first passage about midway between the sepulchral chamber and the outer air.  The sepulchral chamber was carved mainly out of the solid rock below the pyramid, but was roofed in by some of the basement stones, which were sloped at an angle.  The chamber measured forty-six feet in length and sixteen feet in breadth; its height in the centre was twenty-two feet.  It contained a plain granite sarcophagus, without inscription of any kind, eight feet and a half in length, three feet and a half in breadth, and in depth three feet.  There was no coffin in the sarcophagus at the time of its discovery, and no inscription on any part of the pyramid or of its contents.  The tradition, however, which ascribed it to the immediate predecessor of Men-kau-ra, may be accepted as sufficient evidence of its author.

[Illustration:  SARCOPHAGUS OF MYCERINUS.]

[Illustration:  SECTION OF THE SECOND PYRAMID.]