beginnings of a world metropolis there-its culmination in monuments of art-its lingering decay and desolation until its billowy, tumultuous life is again smoothed into a flowery prairie. With what yearning wonder would the modern who saw it turn to us, lost in antiquity. Then step eastward and behold Thebes.

The Memnonium is not the remains of the temple before which Memnon sat. It was a temple-palace of Ramses the Great. It is a group of columns now with fallen and falling pylons, a few hundred rods from Memnon. You will find it one of the pleasantest ruins, for the rude, historical sculptures are well nigh erased. There are no dark chambers, no intricacy of elaborate construction to consider, and the lotus-capitaled columns are the most graceful I saw.

We must be tolerant of these Egyptian historical sculptures upon pylons and temple walls for the sake of history and science. But the devotee of art and beauty will confess a secret comfort in the Memnonium, where the details are fast crumbling, and the grandeur of the architecture stands unencumbered. Here is an architecture perfect in its grand style in any age. Yet on the truly rounded columns, palm-like below and opening in a lotus cup to bear the architrave, are sculptures of a ludicrous infancy of art. It is hard to feel that both were

done by the same people. Had they then no feeling of symmetry and propriety? It is as if the Chinese had sculptured the walls of St. Peter's or the Vatican.

In the midst of the Memnonium, lies the shattered

Colossus of Ramses-a mass of granite equal to that of Memnon. How it was overthrown and how broken will never be known. It is comfortable to be certain of one thing in the bewildering wilderness of ruin and conjecture, even if it be only ignorance. Cambyses, the unlucky Persian, is here the scapegoat, as he is of Memnon's misfortune and of Theban ruin in general. "Cambyses or an earthquake,” insists untiring antiquarian speculation, clearly wishing it may be Cambyses. An earthquake, then, and Oh! pax!

This Colossus sat at the temple gate. His hands lay upon his knees and his eyes looked eastward. And even the tumbled mass is yet serene and dignified. Is art so near to nature that the statue of greatness can no more lose its character than greatness itself?

Behind the statue was a court surrounded with Osiride columns, and a few shattered ones remain. I fancy the repose of that court in a Theban sunset, the windless stillness of the air and cloudlessness of the sky. The King enters, thoughtfully pacing by the calm-browed statue, that seems the sentinel of heaven. In the presence of the majestic columns humanly carved, their hands sedately folded upon their breasts-his weary soul is bathed with peace, as a weary body with living water.

Ramses' battles and victories are sculptured upon the walls—his offerings to the Gods and their reception of him. There is an amusing discrepancy between the decay and disappearance of these, and the descriptions in Sir Gardiner. Spirited word-paintings of battle-scenes, and scenes celestial, or even animated descriptions of them, are ludicrously

criticized by their subjects. That, too, is pleasant to the Howadji, who discovers very rapidly what his work in the Memnonium is; and stretched in the shadow of the most graceful column, while Nerp silently pencils its flower-a formed capital in her sketch-book, he looks down the vistas and beyond them, to Memnon, who for three thousand years and more has sat almost near enough to throw his shadow upon this temple, yet has never turned to see it.

There sat the Howadji many still hours, looking now southward to Memnon, now eastward to gray Karnak over the distant palms. Perchance in that corridor of columns, Memnon and the setting sun their teachers, the moments were no more lost than by young Greek immortals in the porch of the philosophers. Yet here can be slight record of those hours. The flowers of sunset dreams are too frail for the Herbarium.

There dozed the donkeys, too, dreaming of pastures incredible, whither hectoring Howadji come no more. Donkeys! are there no wise asses among you, to bid you beware of dreaming? For we come down upon your backs, like stern realities upon young Poets, and urge you across the plain to Medeenet Haboo.

Ah! had you and the young poets but heeded the wise asses!

XLII.

Medeeuet Baboo.

WONDERFUL are the sculptures of Medeenet Haboo-a palace-temple of Ramses III. They are cut three or four inches deep into the solid stone, and gazing at them, and in a little square tower called the pavilion, trying to find on the walls what Sir Gardiner and Poet Harriet say is there, you stumble on over sand heaps and ruin, and enter at length the great court.

The grave grandeur of this court is unsurpassed in architecture-open to the sky above, a double range of massive columns supported the massive pediment. The columns upon the court were Osiride-huge, square masses with the figures with the folded hands carved in bold relief upon their faces, and carved all over with hieroglyphs. The rear row was of circular columns, with papyrus or lotus capitals. The walls, dim seen behind the double colonnade, are all carved with history, and the figures upon them, with those of the architraves, variously colored.

It is solemn and sublime.-The mosaic, finical effect of so much carving and coloring is neutralized by the grandeur and mass of the columns. In its prime, when

the tints were fresh, although the edges of the sculptures could never have been sharper than now, the priests of Medeenet Haboo were lodged as are no modern monarchs.

Time and Cambyses have been here too, and, alas! the Christians, the Coptic Christians, who have defiled many of the noblest Egyptian remains, plastering their paintings, building miserable mud cabins of churches in their courts, with no more feeling and veneration than the popes who surmount obelisks with the cross. I grant the ruined temples offered material too valuable to be left through regard to modern sentiment, and curiosity of Egyptian history and art. It is true, also, that the Christian plastering did preserve many of the pagan paintings. But you will grant that man, and especially the Howadji species, has a right to rail at all defiling and defilers of beauty and grandeur. Has not the name Goth passed into a proverb? Yet were the Goths a vigorous, manly race, with a whole modern world in their loins, who came and crushed an effete people.

But enough for the Copts.

They erected a church in the great court of Medeenet Haboo, piercing the architrave all round for their rafters, instead of roofing the court itself. Nor let the faithful complain of the presence of pagan symbols. For the Copts and early Egyptian Christians had often the pagan images and pictures over their altars. Nay, does not Catholic Christendom kiss to-day the great toe of Jupiter Olympans, with religious refreshment?

Now the Coptic columns of red sandstone encumber.