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to fill up from the many excellent elementary treatises which are now brought within ready access to all those who may desire to consult them.

Of such I would especially recommend the History of Architecture, by Mr Fergusson, a work at once accurate and philosophical, and in which just criticism is based upon the fullest data derived from the labours of multitudes of earnest students in all countries.

Much has been said, and much has been written, about the "great Asian mystery" which seems to hang about the nursery of oriental civilization. This mystery you must not expect me to be able to pierce; and, in common with many other investigators, I can only record the entire failure of my studies to lead me to any source from whence I can conceive it possible that, at so early a date as 1700 years before Christ, the Egyptians could have acquired the artistic ability which enabled them at that period to create the monuments which still remain for our admiration.

It seems certainly wonderful that the two great Pyramids of Egypt should be at once the earliest and largest structures in the world, and, at the same time, destined apparently to outlive all others.

One of the chief features of interest in those structures, which I need scarcely tell you were intended for the tombs of Chofo, King of Memphis (known as Cheops, through the account of Herodotus), and of Nefchofo, his successor, is that in the small cells, which form as it were the hearts of these enormous structures, have been found sarcophagi, formed to hold the bodies of those kings, decorated with hieroglyphics, exhibiting an accurate knowledge of form, and power to carve it with great dexterity in the hardest materials. These wonderful structures also serve to demonstrate that even at this the earliest period of their architectural history, the Egyptians had attained the art of transporting the heaviest blocks of granite, which they carried in this case from Syene