from the natural
into the artificial, from the living and the divine into the
mechanical and commonplace." The Egyptian obelisk is thus but a type
of a great law of nature. In this simplest and most primitive specimen
of architecture we have an illustration of the principle which gives
its expressiveness to the human face, beauty to the flowers of the
field, and grandeur to the highest triumphs of human art.

The obelisks that remain to be described are the two which to us are
the most interesting; the pair of "Cleopatra's Needles" which so long
stood side by side at Alexandria, and are now separated by the
Atlantic Ocean; one standing on the Thames Embankment in London, and
the other in Central Park, New York. They were both set up in front of
the great temple of the Sun at Heliopolis, about fifteen centuries
before Christ, by Thothmes III., and engraved by Rameses II., the two
mightiest of the kings of Egypt. After standing on their original site
for fourteen centuries, witnessing the rise and fall of many native
dynasties, and the establishment of the Greek dominion under the
Ptolemies, they were, when Egypt became a province of Imperial Rome,
transferred by Caesar Augustus to Alexandria. There they adorned the
Caesareum or palace of the Caesars, which stood by the side of the
harbour, was surrounded with a sacred grove, and was the greatest
building in the city. What Thebes and Heliopolis were in the time of
the Pharaohs, Alexandria became in the time of the Ptolemies. And
though, being a parasitical growth, it could not originate works of
genius, like its ancient prototypes, it could appropriate those which
Heliopolis and Thebes had created. The tragic death of Cleopatra, the
last of the dynasty of the Ptolemies, had taken place seven years
before the setting up of these obelisks at Alexandria; so that she had
in reality nothing to do with them personally. For about fifteen
centuries the two obelisks stood in their new position before the
Caesareum. They saw the gradual overthrow, by time's resistless hand,
of the magnificent palace which they adorned; and they themselves felt
the slow undermining of the sea as it encroached upon the land, until
at last one of them fell to the ground about three hundred years ago,
and got partially covered over with sand, leaving the other to stand
alone. Then came the French invasion of Egypt, and the victories of
Nelson and Abercromby, when Mahomet Ali, the ruler of the land,
o