h a profusion of elaborate ornamentation. Covering nearly as
much ground as the greatest of the pyramids, and containing equally
enormous blocks of stone, the Theban palace-temples unite a wealth of
varied ornamentation almost unparalleled among the edifices erected by
man. Here are long avenues of sphinxes and colossi, leading to tall,
tapering obelisks which shoot upwards like the pinnacles, towers, and
spires of a modern cathedral, while beyond the obelisks are vistas of
gateways and courts, of colonnades and pillared halls, that impress the
beholder with a deep sense of the constructive imagination of the
architect who could design them, no less than with admiration of the
ruler whose resources were sufficient to make them realities.

Truly the Egyptians were, as Mr. Fergusson enthusiastically asserts,
"the most essentially a building people of all those we are acquainted
with, and the most generally successful in all that they attempted in
this way. The Greeks, it is true, surpassed them in refinement and
beauty of detail, and in the class of sculpture with which they
ornamented their buildings, while the Gothic architects far excelled
them in constructive cleverness; but with these exceptions, no other
styles can be put into competition with them. At the same time, neither
Grecian nor Gothic architects understood more perfectly all the
gradations of art, and the exact character that should be given to every
form and every detail.... They understood also better than any other
nation, how to use sculpture In combination with architecture, and to
make their colossi and avenues of sphinxes group themselves into parts
of one great design, and at the same time to use historical paintings,
fading by insensible degrees into hieroglyphics on the one hand, and
into sculpture on the other, linking the whole together with the highest
class of phonetic utterance. With the most brilliant colouring, they
thus harmonized all these arts Into one great whole, unsurpassed by
anything the world has seen during the thirty centuries of struggle and
aspiration that have elapsed since the brilliant days of the great
kingdom of the Pharaohs."

Not only did architecture and the glyphic art reach such perfection
during this period, but the arts of life made considerable progress. The
royal costumes became suddenly most elaborate; brilliant colours, costly
armlets and bracelets, many-hued collars, complicated head-dresses,
elegant sandals,