aroundworldortra00peebiala-1

310 AROUND THE WOELD.
ism was for the time triumphant. Sensations of sadness
thrilled my being's core, while walking over ashes and
ruins that were once ablaze with the literature of the East.
Never for a moment have I felt that " it was all for the
best," the burning of the Alexandrian Library.
Travelers visiting the present Alexandria naturally rush
to see Cleopatra's Needle, a solid block of reddish granite,
said to have been originally brought from Syene. This
granite needle is sixty feet high, having to the top three
columns of hieroglyphical inscriptions. Its twin column is
buried in the sand near by. Not far distant is Pompey's
Pillar, a single graceful column of pink granite, one hundred
and fourteen feet high, and twenty-seven feet in circumference.
During the reign of Tiberius, A. D. 14 to 37, these
"obelisks were brought from Heliopolis to Alexandria."
But how were they brought ? Ay, that's the question. It
would be absolutely impossible for moderns to do it.' The
method is among the " lost arts." Was not this pyramidal
stone estimated to weigh nine hundred tons ?
obelisks manufactured where they stand, historic
the contrary ?
Just at the dawn of,
were not these
opinion to
and after the initiation of the Christian
era, the history of Alexandria became singularly intermingled
with that of Jerusalem, Greece, and Rome, in
which th© Ptolemies and Csesars, Philo Judseus, Pompey,
Cleopatra, and St. Anthanasius, all play conspicuous parts.
Here I am reminded of Gen. Lytle's lines referring to Csesar,
Pompey, Antony, and Cleopatra :
—
«I am dying, Egypt, dying !
Ebbs the crimson life-tide fast,
And the dark Plutonian shadows
Gather on the evening blast.
Let thy arm, O queen ! support me,
Hush thy sobs, and bow thine ear,
Hearken to the great heart secrets.
Thou, and thou alone, must hear.