"Ye men of Athens!"

The Great Pyramid and the Sphinx! Herodotus saw them a little fresher,
but of unknown antiquity,--far more unknown to him than to us. The
Colossi of the Plain! Mighty monuments of an ancient and proud
civilization standing alone in a desert now.

My name is Osymandyas, King of Kings;
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!

But nothing equals these vast serene faces of the Pharaohs on the
great rock-temple of Abou Simbel (Ipsambul) (No. 1, F. 307). It Is the
sublimest of stereographs, as the temple of Kardasay, this loveliest of
views on glass, is the most poetical. But here is the crocodile lying in
wait for us on the sandy bank of the Nile, and we must leave Egypt for
Syria.

Damascus makes but a poor show, with its squalid houses, and glaring
clayed roofs. We always wanted to invest in real estate there in Abraham
Street or Noah Place, or some of its well-established thoroughfares, but
are discouraged since we have had these views of the old town. Baalbec
does better. See the great stones built into the wall there,--the
biggest 64 x 13 x 13! What do you think of that?--a single stone bigger
than both your parlors thrown into one, and this one of three almost
alike, built into a wall as if just because they happened to be lying
round, handy! So, then, we pass on to Bethlehem, looking like a fortress
more than a town, all stone and very little window,--to Nazareth, with
its brick oven-like houses, its tall minaret, its cypresses, and the
black-mouthed, open tombs, with masses of cactus growing at their
edge,--to Jerusalem,--to the Jordan, every drop of whose waters seems
to carry a baptismal blessing,--to the Dead Sea,--and to the Cedars of
Lebanon. Almost everything may have changed in these hallowed places,
except the face of the stream and the lake, and the outlines of hill and
valley. But as we look across the city to the Mount of Olives, we know
that these lines which run in graceful curves along the horizon are the
same that He looked upon as he turned his eyes sadly over Jerusalem. We
know that these long declivities, beyond Nazareth, were pictured in the
eyes of Mary's growing boy just as they are now in ours sitting here by
our own firesides.

This is no _toy_, which thus carries us into the very presence of all
that is most inspiring to the soul in the scenes which the world's
heroes and martyrs, and more than heroes, more than martyrs, have
hallowed and solemnized by looking