te of the national characteristics,--and I do not doubt that
his interpretations will hold good till the end of all history.

The student to whom Egypt is not a living reality is handicapped in his
labours more unfairly than is realised by him. Avoid Egypt, and though
your brains be of vast capacity, though your eyes be never raised from
your books, you will yet remain in many ways an ignoramus, liable to be
corrected by the merest tourist in the Nile valley. But come with me to
a Theban garden that I know, where, on some still evening, the dark
palms are reflected in the placid Nile, and the acacias are mellowed by
the last light of the sunset; where, in leafy bowers, the grapes cluster
overhead, and the fig-tree is burdened with fruit. Beyond the broad
sheet of the river rise those unchangeable hills which encompass the
Valley of the Tombs of the Kings; and at their foot, dimly seen in the
evening haze, sit the twin colossi, as they have sat since the days of
Amenhotep the Magnificent. The stars begin to be seen through the leaves
now that the daylight dies, and presently the Milky Way becomes
apparent, stretching across the vault of the night, as when it was
believed to be the Nile of the Heavens.

The owls hoot to one another through the garden; and at the edge of the
alabaster tank wherein the dusk is mirrored, a frog croaks unseen amidst
the lilies. Even so croaked he on this very ground in those days when,
typifying eternity, he seemed to utter the endless refrain, "I am the
resurrection, I am the resurrection," into the ears of men and maidens
beneath these self-same stars.

And now a boat floats past, on its way to Karnak, silhouetted against
the last-left light of the sky. There is music and song on board. The
sound of the pipes is carried over the water and pulses to the ears,
inflaming the imagination with the sorcery of its cadences and stirring
the blood by its bold rhythm. The gentle breeze brings the scent of many
flowers to the nostrils, and with these come drifting thoughts and
undefined fancies, so that presently the busy considerations of the day
are lulled and forgotten. The twilight seems to cloak the extent of the
years, and in the gathering darkness the procession of the centuries is
hidden. Yesterday and to-day are mingled together, and there is nothing
to distinguish to the eye the one age from the other. An immortal,
brought suddenly to the garden at this hour, could not say from direct
obse