Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/134

Rh 122 P Y R P Y R chosen by parliament, that is to say, he combined the terrors of a vague threat of impending change with the entire absence of any security that those changes would be moderate. From that moment there were two parties in the state neither of which would give way to the other. Charles's attempt to arrest Pym and four other members on 4th January 1642 embittered but did not produce the conflict. For some months there was much fencing be- tween the two parties, and the Civil War was not begun till Charles raised his standard at Nottingham. During the remaining months of Pym's life he was the most prominent leader of the war party in the. House of Commons. Peace may be made in two ways, by one side capitulating to the other, or by the discovery of a com- promise which may give effect to the better aims of both sides. Pym was resolutely set against a capitulation, and he did not rise to the height of a mediator. His adver- saries of the peace party, led by Holies and Maynard, had as little idea of a compromise as he had, and they were foolish enough to suppose it possible to obtain the assent of Charles and his supporters to the establishment of a Puritan Church. Pym's policy was at least coherent with itself. In 1621, on his first prominent appearance in political life, he had advocated the formation of an association against popery. The protestation of 1641 was an attempt to carry this plan into practice and to make it at the same time available against Royalist intrigues. The Parliamentary covenant promulgated after the discovery of Waller's plot in June 1643 was an enlargement of the same project, and the Solemn League and Covenant in September 1643 embraced the three kingdoms. As long as he lived Pym was the soul of the Parliamentary resistance to the king, but it is in the covenants and associations which he brought into existence that his permanent contribution to English political development is to be found. Eliot hoped to rally parliament and the constituencies as a whole to the cause which he maintained to be just. Straff ord hoped to rouse the devotion of the nation as a whole to the king whose crown was supported by his own masterful intellect. Pym was the founder of party government in England. He recognized from the first that there were differences of religious opinion amongst his fellow-countrymen, and he hoped to rally round a common purpose those who on the whole felt as he did himself, with such liberty of opinion as was possible under such conditions. If the enterprise failed it was partly because he was assailed by intrigue as well as by fair opposition, and in his fierce struggle against intrigue learned to cling to doctrines which were not sufficiently expansive for the government of a nation, partly because the limitations of government itself and the insufficiency of force to solve a complicated religious and political problem were in his time very im- perfectly understood. At least Pym prepared the way for the immediate victory of his party by summoning the Scots and by the financial measures which made the campaigns of 1644 and 1645 possible. He did not, however, live to reap the harvest which was due to his efforts. Worn out by the strain of con- stant and agitating work, his health broke down, and on 8th December 1643 he died. His body was followed by both Houses when it was carried to be interred in West- minster Abbey. (s. R, o.) PYRAMID. This name for a class of buildings, though first taken from a part of the structure, 1 and mistakenly applied to the whole of it by the Greeks, has now so far 1 The vertical height was named by the Egyptians pir-em-us (see E. Revillout, Rev. Eg., 2d year, 305-309), hence the Greek form pyramis, pi. pyramides (Herod.), used unaltered in the English of Sandys (1615), from which the singular pyramid was formed. acquired a more definite meaning in its geometrical sense that it is desirable to employ it in that sense alone. A pyramid therefore should be understood as meaning a building bounded by a polygonal base and plane triangular sides which meet in an apex. Such a form of architecture is only known in Middle Egypt, and there only during the period from the IVth to the XHth Dynasty (before 2000 B.C.) having square bases and angles of about 50. In other countries various modifications of the tumulus, barrow, or burial -heap have arisen which have come near to this type ; but these when formed of earth are usually circular, or, if square, have a flat top, and when built of stone are always in steps or terraces. The imitations of the true Egyptian pyramid at Abydos, Meroe, and else- where are puny hybrids, being merely chambers with a pyramidal outside and porticos attached ; and the struc- tures found at Cenchreae, or the monument of Caius Sestius at Rome, are isolated and barren trials of a type which never could be revived : it had run its course in a country and a civilization to which alone it was suitable. In the earliest monuments of Egypt there are three types, which were ruled by the external shape. For the temples (such as those of the kings of the IVth Dynasty at Gizeh) varied in shape according to their arrangements; but the pyramid, the obelisk, and the mastaba 2 are designs whose importance was outward ; and these types, which started apparently at the same epoch (the earliest actually dated examples of each being all within the two reigns of Seneferu and Khufu), only lasted during the life of that archaic system to which they belonged. The pyramid type faded out in the middle kingdom (XHth Dynasty) ; the obelisk was adapted in later times to a different purpose, as a member of bilateral temple decoration, instead of a solitary monument complete in itself and surrounded by an enclosure, as it was in the old kingdom ; and the mastaba gave way to the rock-hewn chapel or the bastard pyramid. In considering the origin of the pyramid type there are three theories to be dealt with (1) that it is merely a higher and refined form of the tumulus ; (2) that it was derived from the mastaba ; (3) that it was a fresh idea, an invention de novo. The objection to the first view is that there is no graduated series of examples of lesser sizes before the large ones, possibly not any before the very largest, and that tumulus or mound burial is unknown in Egypt, ancient or modern ; and to accept this view we must suppose that all the earlier stages were wrought in another land, and that the pyramid-builders migrated into Egypt when at the height of their architec- tural power. But their history does not agree to this, and in no other land can we find their training-ground. The second view is strongly suggested by the facts before us in Egypt. The only buildings that have been reasonably supposed to be earlier than the great pyramid are the two so-called pyramids of Sakkara and Medum. These struc- tures are not and never were true pyramids; they are mastabas added to by successive accretions at various times, again and again finished off with a polished casing, only to be afresh enlarged by coats of rough masonry and another fine casing on the outside, until they have been extended upwards and around into a great stepped mass of masonry (Petrie, Pyramids, <c., p. 147), the successive faces of which rise at the characteristic mastaba angle of 75 (or 4 on 1). These buildings then present the outline of a pyramidal pile, broken by successive steps, and it is but one stage further to build in one smooth slope from base to top ; such a form would readily be designed when once it was intended to build a large mass complete at 2 An oblong building with sloping sides and flat top, which con- tained usually the funeral chapel and place of offerings, and covered over the mouth of the sepulchral pit.