upon the visitor. But it is almost impossible for us to imagine
its magnificence when its temples and obelisks were in their full
perfection, and the great Rameses was carried on the shoulders of his
officers through the ranks of adoring slaves to behold the completion
of the works which had been designed to perpetuate his glory. The
ancient city, divided in the middle by the Nile, as London is by the
Thames or Glasgow by the Clyde, covered the vast plain, with great
houses in the outskirts standing in richly cultivated gardens, each
temple surrounded by its own little sacred lake, over which the bodies
of the dead were carried by the priests before burial, and the
beautiful Mokattam Hills bounding the view, wearing the soft lilac hue
of distance. Only two or three places on earth can rival the
overwhelming interest which the city possesses. But the colossal
associated temples of Karnac and Luxor are absolutely unique. There is
nothing on earth to equal them. They are man's greatest achievements
in religious architecture. Long rows of stupendous pillars, covered
from base to top with coloured pictures and hieroglyphics, containing
a whole library of actually written and pictured history and
religion, look "like a Brobdingnagian forest turned into stone," in
the midst of which the visitor feels himself an insignificant insect.
A sense of superhuman awfulness, of personal nothingness and
irresistible power, is what these stupendous structures inspire in
even the most callous spectator. A confused mass of broken columns and
heaps of huge sculptured stones present an appearance as if the old
giants had been at war on the spot, hurling rocks at each other.
Between Luxor and Karnac extended an avenue of sphinxes, two miles
long, numbering more than four thousand pieces of sculpture, now
represented by mutilated formless blocks of stone. We see in these
vast temples, which were raised by a people inspired with the
sentiment that they were the greatest of all nations, to be the chief
shrines of the religion of the country, the fruits of the plunder and
the tribute of Asia and Africa. The funds necessary to build them had
been procured by robbing other nations; and most of the work was done
by captives taken in war. Many a fair province had been desolated of
its inhabitants, many a splendid city spoiled of its riches, in order
to construct these awful halls. Unfortunately, the annual overflow of
the inundation of the Nile covers