us blocks in the interior of the Great Pyramid
alone are the marvel of the foremost stone-workers of our century.

As regards architecture, we find not only the pyramids, which date from
the very earliest period of Egyptian history, and which are to this hour
the wonder of the world for size, for boldness, for exactness, and for
skilful contrivance, but also the temples, with long ranges of
colossal columns wrought in polished granite, with wonderful beauty of
ornamentation, with architraves and roofs vast in size and exquisite in
adjustment, which by their proportions tax the imagination, and lead the
beholder to ask whether all this can be real.

As to sculpture, we have not only the great Sphinx of Gizeh, so
marvellous in its boldness and dignity, dating from the very first
period of Egyptian history, but we have ranges of sphinxes, heroic
statues, and bas-reliefs, showing that even in the early ages this
branch of art had reached an amazing development.

As regards the perfection of these, Lubke, the most eminent German
authority on plastic art, referring to the early works in the tombs
about Memphis, declares that, "as monuments of the period of the fourth
dynasty, they are an evidence of the high perfection to which the
sculpture of the Egyptians had attained." Brugsch declares that "every
artistic production of those early days, whether picture, writing, or
sculpture, bears the stamp of the highest perfection in art." Maspero,
the most eminent French authority in this field, while expressing his
belief that the Sphinx was sculptured even before the time of Mena,
declares that "the art which conceived and carved this prodigious statue
was a finished art--an art which had attained self-mastery and was sure
of its effects"; while, among the more eminent English authorities,
Sayce tells us that "art is at its best in the age of the
pyramid-builders," and Sir James Fergusson declares, "We are startled to
find Egyptian art nearly as perfect in the oldest periods as in any of
the later."

The evidence as to the high development of Egyptian sculpture in the
earlier dynasties becomes every day more overwhelming. What exquisite
genius the early Egyptian sculptors showed in their lesser statues is
known to all who have seen those most precious specimens in the museum
at Cairo, which were wrought before the conventional type was adopted in
obedience to religious considerations.

In decorative and especially in ceramic a