aiety, upon the quay of the
new town amid the uproar of the stall-keepers, the donkey drivers
and the cosmopolitan passengers, casts here a sullen, impassive and
consuming fire. And meanwhile the shadows shorten--and just as they do
every day, beneath this sky which is never overcast, just as they have
done for five and thirty centuries, these columns, these friezes
and this temple itself, like a mysterious and solemn sundial, record
patiently on the ground the slow passing of the hours. Verily for us,
the ephemerae of thought, this unbroken continuity of the sun of Egypt
has more of melancholy even than the changing, overcast skies of our
climate.

And now, at last, the temple is restored to solitude and all noise in
the neighbourhood has ceased.

An avenue bordered by very high columns, of which the capitals are in
the form of the full-blown flowers of the papyrus, leads me to a place
shut in and almost terrible, where is massed an assembly of colossi.
Two, who, if they were standing, would be quite ten yards in height, are
seated on thrones on either side of the entrance. The others, ranged on
the three sides of the courtyard, stand upright behind colonnades, but
look as if they were about to issue thence and to stride rapidly towards
me. Some broken and battered, have lost their faces and preserve only
their intimidating attitude. Those that remain intact--white faces
beneath their Sphinx's headgear--open their eyes wide and smile.

This was formerly the principal entrance, and the office of these
colossi was to welcome the multitudes. But now the gates of honour
flanked by obelisks of red granite, are obstructed by a litter of
enormous ruins. And the courtyard has become a place voluntarily closed,
where nothing of the outside world is any longer to be seen. In moments
of silence, one can abstract oneself from all the neighbouring modern
things, and forget the hour, the day, the century even, in the midst
of these gigantic figures, whose smile disdains the flight of ages. The
granites within which we are immured--and in such terrible company--shut
out everything save the point of an old neighbouring minaret which shows
now against the blue of the sky: a humble graft of Islam which grew
here amongst the ruins some centuries ago, when the ruins themselves had
already subsisted for three thousand years--a little mosque built on a
mass of debris, which it new protects with its inviolability. How many
treasures and r