in front of the Temple of the Sun
at Heliopolis, by the great Rameses, the Sesostris of the Greeks,
whose personal character and wide conquests fill a larger space in the
history of ancient Egypt than those of any other monarch. From
Heliopolis it was removed to Rome, after the battle of Actium, by
Augustus, and placed on the Spina of the Circus Maximus, the sports of
which were under the special protection of Apollo, the sun-god, by
whose favour it was supposed that the Egyptian victory had been
achieved. For four hundred years it acted as a gnomon, regulating by
the length and direction of its shadow the hours of the public games
of the circus; and then it was overturned during those troublous days
in which the empire was rent asunder. Twelve centuries of decay and
wreck had buried it from the eyes of men, until it was dug up and
placed where it now stands, in 1587, by Pope Sixtus V., to whom modern
Rome is indebted for the restoration of many of her ancient monuments,
and the construction of many of her public buildings and streets. With
the cross planted on its summit, this noble monument was long the
first object which met the traveller's eye as he entered Rome from the
north by the old Flaminian way. Brought to commemorate the overthrow
of the land from whence it came, it has witnessed the overthrow of the
conquerors in turn; and now re-erected in the modern capital, it will
endure when its glory too has passed away. And out of the ruins of the
city of the Popes, as out of the ruins of the city of the Caesars, some
future architect will dig it up to grace the triumph of a brighter and
freer resuscitation of the Eternal City than the world has yet seen.

The association of fountains at its base with this obelisk seems at
first sight as incongruous as the crowning of its apex with a metal
cross, for the Christian emblem can never alter the nature of the
pagan monument. There is no natural harmony in the association, for
there are no fountains or streams of running water in the desert. The
obelisk belongs essentially to the dry and parched east; the fountain
is the birth of the happier west, bright with the sparkle and musical
with the sound of many waters. The obelisk relieves the monotony of
immeasurable plains over which a sky of serene unstained blue arches
itself in infinite altitude, the image of eternal purity, and the sun
rises day after day with the same unsullied brilliance, and sets with
the same unmitigab