[Footnote AG:  The ornaments of the ark and tabernacle exhibit much improvement in the arts of engraving, carving, &c.  Nor did it seem to cost Aaron any trouble to make a cast of Apis in the Wilderness for the Israelites’ amusement, 1491 years before Christ; while the dog Anubis was probably another figure with which Moses was not unacquainted, and that was certainly composite:  a cynopephalus I believe.]

A modern traveller has however, with much ingenuity of conjecture, given us an excellent reason why the Sphinx was peculiar to Egypt, as the Nile was observed to overflow when the sun was in those signs of the Zodiack: 

    The lion virgin Sphinx, which shows
    What time the rich Nile overflows.

And sure I think, as people lived longer then than they do now; as Moses was contemporary with Cecrops, so that monarchy and a settled form of government had begun to obtain footing in Greece, and apparently migrated a little westward even then; that this column might have employed the artists of those days, without any such exceeding stretch of probability as our modern Aristotelians study to make out, from their zeal to establish his doctrine of the world’s eternity.  While, if conjecture were once as liberally permitted to believers as it is generously afforded to scepticks, I know not whether a hint concerning Sphinx’s original might not be deduced from old Israel’s last blessing to his sons; The lion of Judah, with the head of a virgin, in whose offspring that lion was one day to sink and be lost, except his hinder parts; might naturally enough grow into a favourite emblem among the inhabitants of a nation who owed their existence to one of the family; and who would be still more inclined to commemorate the mystical blessing, if they observed the fructifying inundation to happen regularly, as Mr. Savary says, when the Sun left Leo for Virgo.

The broken pillar has however carried me too far perhaps, though every day passed in the Pope’s Musaeum confirms my belief, nay certainty, that they did mingle the veneration of Joseph with that of their own gods:  The bushel or measure of corn on the Egyptian Jupiter’s head is a proof of it, and the name Serapis, a further corroboration:  the dream which he explained for Pharaoh relative to the event that fixed his favour in that country, was expressed by cattle; and for apis, the ox’s head, was perfectly applicable to him for every reason.

But we will quit mythology for the Corso.  This is the first town in Italy I have arrived at yet, where the ladies fairly drive up and down a long street by way of shewing their dress, equipages, &c. without even a pretence of taking fresh air.  At Turin the view from the place destined to this amusement, would tempt one out merely for its own sake; and at Milan they drive along a planted walk, at least a stone’s throw beyond the gates.  Bologna calls its serious inhabitants to a little rising ground, whence the