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It would be wrong to pass—however want of time may urge us on—from the subject of Egyptian architecture without noting that in several of its monuments are to be found the primitive forms of the arch. Sir Gardiner Wilkinson, whose labours in the illustration of the arts of Egypt can never be alluded to with too mcuh respect, found at Thebes a tomb, the roof of which is vaulted with bricks, and inscribed with the cipher of Amenoph I., of the eighteenth dynasty.

Although in other monuments of very early date stone arches have been found in many cases in Egypt, there seems to be little doubt that the invention and construction of the arch were due to the necessity of spanning over considerable areas when other materials were not available for the purpose than rude bricks; such as those on the formation of which the children of Israel may have laboured in the age of Joseph.

Even in their earliest structures the Egyptians had advanced far upon their road to a correct conception of what architecture might achieve. That important principle may be found vindicated throughout their works, which assures us of their conviction that beauty was to be alone obtained by incorporating sculpture and painting with their architecture. It was only when, in the practice of those arts, they attempted to run close to nature and to copy form directly, that the fact of their being yet but in a state of infancy with respect to the theory of those arts was made apparent.

So long as their imitation was highly conventionalized it appeared to be fairly perfect, and no sense of deficiency was experienced. Nothing can exceed the beauty, both in form and colour, of some of the capitals of their columns, the enrichments of the columns themselves, and of the great hollows which usually serve as the crowning features of the propylons which form the gigantic masses through which the spectator passed on his way to and through multitudinous groves of columns. Beyond these new propylons and new