Sketches of Persia - From the Journals of a Traveller in the East #260744

The uninformed natives of these countries, whose condition is much to be deplored, are not aware that the great Samuel Johnson has said, that Whatever raises the past, the distant, and the future, above the present, exaltsx us in the dignity 'of human beings which is an unanswerably good reason for the. Preference given to mummies over every living object, however fascinating.