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On one side of the town were the royal docks, on the other the Hippodrome, and on appropriate sites the Necropolis, the market-places, the gymnasium, its stoa being a stadium long; the amphitheatre, groves, gardens, fountains, obelisks, and countless public buildings with gilded roofs glittering in the sun.
The town itself is about nineteen miles in circumference; and as it is on all sides surrounded with lofty cypresses, its general appearance is that of a city arising out of a stately wood of these magnificent trees, partly shrouding the pinnacles, obelisks, and minarets, which then marked the site of many noble Christian temples; but now, generally speaking, intimate the position of as many Mahomedan mosques.
And, really, when we consider the way in which, in the course of a century, all the old landmarks on the antiquarian map have been broken up, and the monuments of antiquity made to change hands; how Nibbi supersedes Winckelman, only to be superseded in turn; how a temple is converted into a senate-house; one man's villa into another; how Caracalla is driven from his circus to make way for Romulus; how Peace resigns her claim to a Pagan temple to make way for a Christian basilica of Constantine; how statues, arches, gardens, baths, forums, obelisks, or columns, are in a constant state of transition, so far as regards their nomenclature; and, to borrow the conceit of Quevedo, nothing about Rome remains permanent save that which was fugitive namely, old Tiber himself; we rather feel grateful to the tourist who is content to take up the last theory without further discussion, and to spare us the grounds on which the last change of title has been adopted.
The thousand little cupolas of saints of Islam are crumbling side by side with the Christian obelisks of the first centuries; and, underneath, the Pharaonic hypogea.
The pyramids, which Herhor said were an image of our state, are built on the model of mountain summits. And our temples, too, with their pylons and obelisks, with their gloom and coolness, do they not recall caves and mountains, extending along the Nile valley? How many times in hunting have I not gone astray among eastern ridges!
"Stuff! It means terror! This!" "Imbecility!" "Fool! It is smothered ferocity! Now this!" "Joy!" "Oh, perdition! Any ass can see it means insanity!" Expression! People coolly pretend to read it who would think themselves presumptuous if they pretended to interpret the hieroglyphics on the obelisks of Luxor yet they are fully as competent to do the one thing as the other.
Leu's windows on the Arno, the author and his family saw the display of gala-boats decked with thousands of colored-paper lanterns. They enjoyed the chariot races in the wide Piazza Santa Maria Novella, where the small obelisks point the start and finish of the races. These were followed by the corso dei barberi barbed horse-races without riders down the longest street of the town.
The obelisks of Karnak are mostly hidden amid the central courts; and those of Queen Hatshepsut were imbedded for seventeen feet of their height in masses of masonry which concealed their bases. These are accidental circumstances, and easy of explanation.
They were great destroyers of the queen city, were these same Persian soldiers. To break up the obelisks and the colossal statues they conceived the plan of scorching them by lighting bonfires around them, and then, when they saw them burning hot, they deluged them with cold water. And the granites cracked from top to base.
Billings is not on. He don't appreciate progress and obelisks and ethics, and things of that sort. Old Billings is simply a blink when it comes to such things. The lady is out and out above his class. Now, lawyer, don't it look like a fair equalization of rights and wrongs that a woman like that should be allowed to throw down Billings and take the man that can appreciate her?
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