breadth, nine and a half in length, varied not much from this proportion. The funeral bed of King Cheops, in the greater pyramid, which holds seven in length, and four feet in breadth, had no great difformity from this measure; and whatsoever were the breadth, the length could hardly be less, of the tyrannical bed of Procrustes, since in a shorter measure he had not been fitted with persons for his cruelty of extension. But the old sepulchral bed, or Amazonian tomb[A 1] in the market place of Megara, was in the form of a lozenge, readily made out by the composure of the body; for the arms not lying fasciated or wrapt up after the Grecian manner, but in a middle distension, the including lines will strictly make out that figure.
CHAPTER III.
Now although this elegant ordination of vegetables hath found coincidence or imitation in sundry works of art, yet is it not also destitute of natural examples; and, though overlooked by all, was elegantly observable, in several works of nature.
Could we satisfy ourselves in the position of the lights above, or discover the wisdom of that order so invariably maintained in the fixed stars of heaven; could we have any light, why the stellary part of the first mass separated into this order, that the girdle of Orion should ever maintain its line, and the two stars in Charles' wain never leave pointing at the pole star; we might abate the Pythagorical musick of the spheres, the sevenfold pipe of Pan, and the strange cryptography of Gaffarel in his starry book of heaven.
But, not to look so high as heaven, or the single quincunx of the Hyades upon the head of Taurus, the triangle, and remarkable crusero about the foot of the Centaur,—observable rudiments there are hereof in subterraneous concretions, and bodies in the earth; in the gypsum or taleum rhomboides,
- ↑ Plut. in vit. Thes.
