"But," said Enid, "this is bewildering! Let me repeat my question. Are these statues, at all events, the beginning of History?"

"Of History, perhaps, or of such History as has left any trace (the mysterious Sphinx always excepted), but certainly not of Art; for you have here the same difficulty which meets you in your researches into Nature. You know that the tree comes from the seed; you may be able, perhaps, to give a scientific explanation of the process of transformation; but go as low as you will, you are baffled at last when you seek to explain the origin of life itself. So it is with Egyptian Art. Here is your mummy, your hieroglyph, your statue, and, finally, your Sphinx; you trace back through the 7000 years, but the mystery is always increasing; for the more you recede, the more perfect you find the work. You are working, in fact, up a stream of decadence in Art, and when you reach the most remote date, you reach also the most consummate Art. Now, perfect work implies previous study and time for development. Art did not spring into the world ready-made, like Athene from the brain of Zeus. We know roughly the ages it took for the rude Cyclopean masonry to develop into Greek Art. In Egyptian Art we may or may not have reached the summit. There may yet be lying hid treasures more ancient and more perfect than the Sphinx; but what is certain is, that there must have been a long period through which Egyptian Art struggled to the perfection at which we already find it 7000 years ago."

Statue of Princess.

They had seated themselves on the little stone balcony that overlooks the river. The Nile rolled past them with its swift torrent, breaking with dangerous force against the very walls of the little Museum; below lay the little port of Boolak, with its busy lateen-sailed craft; to the left, the great Kasr el Nil bridge; beyond, the island of Rhoda, with its Nilometer; and on the other side of the river, the ever-present Pyramids in the setting sun. "Who was it," asked Enid, "who called them petrified prayers? The expression is perfect."

"Some one with more talent for alliteration than observation, I suspect," replied the Scribbler. "Call it poetical if you will, but not perfect, because inappropriate. The Pyramids are not prayer, but the negation of it; 'petrified presumption' would be as alliterative, and more appropriate."

"Surely," said Iris, "you are not going to rail against the Pyramids, after the enthusiasm you have shown to-day?"

"I confess the Pyramids inspire me less than any monument in Egypt,"

said the Scribbler. "Pure antiquity, as such, has no charms for me; and vulgar piles of stones, erected at the cost of intense physical suffering to thousands, and which have served no other purpose than that of exciting the ingenious curiosity of a few mad theorists, are vulgar still, though old."

"Is the idea so vulgar after all," said Enid? "It seems to me that the man who took such pains over his tomb had some instinct of immortality in him; that he recognised death not so much the end as the beginning of life; that he built a more durable palace for his last home than he had thought it worth while to build as his earthly one."

"But even admitting that," said the Scribbler, "and Chateaubriand himself could not have put it more poetically, is not his idea of immortality a vulgar one? Fancy an immortality which wants a stone house to live in!"

"It's something," said the girl, "to have had an idea of immortality at all 6000 years ago."

"Besides," interrupted the Sketcher, "why should you persist in looking at it simply as a tomb? I am not going to ask you to accept it as a yard-measure or an inverted bushel; but unless you deny the value of all monuments, and of all desire to leave a memento to history, surely one valuable quality in a monument is that it should last ; and if one has devoted one's life to such a monut; ment, surely it is not mere vulgarity to wish to be associated with it, and to be buried in it."

"A power of endurance," said the Scribbler, "may be one valuable quality in a monument, but surely you will not argue that it is the only, or even the most important one. What is the value of them, however ancient, if, as old Fuller has it, 'They dote with age, forgetting the names of their own founders'? Did they exhibit a single hieroglyph of value, or had they saved a papyrus, I would forgive them. As it is, they make a good background for a picture, but that is all you can say for them; they have added little or nothing to our knowledge of man.”

"And what have we gained from the hieroglyphs or the papyri?" asked Iris. "History, Poetry, and Romance. You will admit, at least, that the two last are worth something, even though you despise the first."

"Do you mean Poetry that you can read and understand?'

"That," said the Scribbler, "must depend on what you call Poetry, and what you call understanding it; but I saw the Sketcher last night struggling to get a hieroglyph into verse, and the result is probably as intelligible as Browning."

"I am afraid," said the Sketcher, laughing, "my efforts over a hieroglyph would result in poetry compared to which Sordello itself would be intelligible.

The papyrus was a sheet of foolscap, and I made a rhyme out of some verses of a translation of a hymn to Amen Ra. I will read it if you like, but please remember I am only responsible for the doggerel; the sentiments belong to the Nineteenth Dynasty, and the words are almost identical with those of Goodwin's literal translation :

"Hail to Amen Ra the Bull!

The chief of all great gods in An;
The good god beloved, whose rule
Gives life both to cattle and man.

Hail, Lord of the thrones of the Earth!

Amen Ra, the Sun-god of Thebes,
Who, with feet in the land of his birth,
Rules heathen in Araby's East;

The ancient of Heaven, the oldest of Earth,
Sustainer of all things that owe thee their birth.

"One in thy works, and one in high Heaven,
Beautiful Bull of the Cycle Divine;
Chief of all gods, and maker of all men,
Creator of beasts, and feeder of kine.

Lord of existences, herbs, and of trees;
Sun-king, Truth-speaker, and chief of the Earth;
Maker of all things, the light and the breeze,

The gods give thee honour, and own to thy worth.
Begotten of Ptah, youth fair and beloved,
That sailest in Heaven, peaceful, unmoved.

"Thou deliverest the meek from the mighty;
Thou judgest the poor and oppressed;
Lord of wisdom, whose precepts shine brightly,
At whose pleasure the Nile gives its best.
Lord of Mercy, of Love, Light, and Life,
Great giver of rays to each star;

Men live, and gods joy in thy sight,

When they see thee approach from afar."

"Do you mean," said Iris, "that all that was written 3000 years ago?" "All that, and some seventeen verses more; but you must make allowance for it as an adaptation."

"And what about Romance?" asked Enid.

"Well, I can, give you a romance of a slightly earlier period, if you will; but I warn you it has one great defect."

"Which is?"

"That will become apparent, if you allow me to read it. Listen! this is the tale of the Doomed Prince, word for word, from the Harris Papyrus:"There was once a king who had no sons; he prayed for an heir, and the gods listened to his request. When his son was born, the Fates came to greet