Sesostris, King of Egypt, erected by him before the great temple of
Thebes more than three thousand years ago, or fifteen hundred and fifty
years before Christ. This enormous stone, all of one piece, seventy-two
feet high, seven feet and a half square at the base, of red granite,
and covered with hieroglyphic inscriptions, was given to the French
government by the Viceroy of Egypt, in consideration of an armed and
naval establishment which that government had helped him to form at
Alexandria. Eight hundred men struggled for three months in Egypt, in
the midst of all manner of hardships, building a road and constructing
machinery to drag the obelisk, completely cased in wood, down to the
Nile. It cost two millions of francs to place this monument where it
now stands. This was done with great pomp and ceremony in October,
1836, the royal family and about a hundred and fifty thousand other
people looking on.

Now try to place yourself in imagination at the foot of this great
Obelisk of Luxor, mounted up as it is upon a single block of gray
granite of France, covered all over with gilded engraving of the
machinery used in placing the great thing where it is. The Place de la
Concorde itself, which surrounds you, is eight sided; and if the
excavations around it were filled with water, it would be an island,
seven hundred feet or so across, and connected with the main land by
four elegant little bridges. But instead of water, these "diggings" are
beautifully filled with flower gardens. At the eight corners of the
island are eight pavilions, as they are called; or great watch houses,
of elegant architecture, occupied by the military or the police, as
occasion requires. Each of these forms the base of a gigantic statue,
representing one of the principal cities of France. It is as if the
whole eight were sitting in friendly council for the good of Paris. How
beautiful they are, with their grand expressionless faces, and their
graceful attitudes, and their simple antique drapery. They are all
sitting in their mural crowns,--the fortified cities on cannons, the
commercial ones on bales of goods. Strasburg alone seems full of life.
She has her arm akimbo, as if braving Germany, to which she once
belonged. Look, north from the Obelisk, up the Rue de la Concorde, and
the splendid church of the Madeleine bounds your sight. On your right
are the Gardens of the Tuilleries; on your left are the Champs Elysees;
behind you is the Chamber o