rs of
criticism than there is by actions committed under the influence of
other forms of immoderation. We are agreed that it is a sad spectacle
which is to be observed in the Old Kent Road on a Saturday night, when
the legs of half the pedestrians appear to have lost their cunning. We
say in disgust that these people are intoxicated. What, then, have we to
say regarding those persons whose brains are unbalanced by immoderate
habits of thought, who are suffering from that primary kind of
intoxication which the dictionary tells us is simply a condition of the
mind wherein clear judgment is obscured? There is sometimes a debauchery
in the reasoning faculties of the polite which sends their opinions
rollicking on their way just as drink will send a man staggering up the
highroad. Temperance and sobriety are virtues which in their relation to
thought have a greater value than they possess in any other regard; and
we stand in more urgent need of missionaries to preach to us sobriety of
opinion, a sort of critical teetotalism, than ever a drunkard stood in
want of a pledge.

This case of Philae and the Lower Nubian temples illustrates my meaning.
On the one hand there are those who tell us that the island temple, far
from being damaged by its flooding, is benefited thereby; and on the
other hand there are persons who urge that the engineers concerned in
the making of the reservoir should be tarred and feathered to a man.
Both these views are distorted and intemperate. Let us endeavour to
straighten up our opinions, to walk them soberly and decorously before
us in an atmosphere of propriety.

It will be agreed by all those who know Egypt that a great dam was
necessary, and it will be admitted that no reach of the Nile below Wady
Halfa could be converted into a reservoir with so little detriment to
_modern_ interests as that of Lower Nubia. Here there were very few
cultivated fields to be inundated and a very small number of people to
be dislodged. There were, however, these important ruins which would be
flooded by such a reservoir, and the engineers therefore made a most
serious attempt to find some other site for the building. A careful
study of the Nile valley showed that the present site of the dam was the
only spot at which a building of this kind could be set up without
immensely increasing the cost of erection and greatly adding to the
general difficulties and the possible dangers of the undertaking. The
engineers had,