and villas and works of art.  Alexandria was a city of schools, of libraries and museums, of temples and of palaces, as well as a mart of commerce.  Its famous library was the largest in the world, and was the pride of the age and of the empire.  Learned men from all countries came to this capital to study science, philosophy, and art.  It was virtually a Grecian city, and the language of the leading people was Greek.  It was rivalled in provincial magnificence only by Antioch, the seat of the old Syrian civilization, also a Greek capital, so far as the governing classes could make it one.  Greece, politically ruined, still sent forth those influences which made her civilization potent in every land.

Cleopatra, the last of the line of Grecian sovereigns in Egypt, was essentially Greek in her features, her language, and her manners.  There was nothing African about her, as we understand the term African, except that her complexion may have been darkened by the intermarriage of the Ptolemies; and I have often wondered why so learned and classical a man as Story should have given to this queen, in his famous statue, such thick lips and African features, which no more marked her than Indian features mark the family of the Braganzas on the throne of Brazil.  She was not even Coptic, like Athanasius and Saint Augustine.  On the ancient coins and medals her features are severely classical.

Nor is it probable that any of the peculiarities of the ancient Egyptian kings marked the dynasty of the Ptolemies.  No purely Egyptian customs lingered in the palaces of Alexandria.  The old deities of Isis and Osiris gave place to the worship of Jupiter, Minerva, and Venus.  The wonders of pristine Egypt were confined to Memphis and Thebes and the dilapidated cities of the Nile.  The mysteries of the antique Egyptian temples were no more known to the learned and mercantile citizen of Alexandria than they are to us.  The pyramids were as much a wonder then as now.  The priests and jugglers alike mingled in the crowd of Jews, Syrians, Romans, Greeks, Parthians, Arabs, who congregated in this learned and mercantile city.

So we have a right to presume that Cleopatra, when she first appeared upon the stage of history as a girl of fourteen, was simply a very beautiful and accomplished Greek princess, who could speak several languages with fluency, as precocious as Elizabeth of England, skilled in music, conversant with history, and surrounded with eminent masters.  She was only twenty-one when she was an object of attraction to Caesar, then in the midst of his triumphs.  How remarkable must have been her fascinations if at that age she could have diverted, even for a time, the great captain from his conquests, and chained him to her side!  That refined, intellectual old veteran of fifty, with the whole world at his feet, loaded down with the cares of government, as temperate as he was ambitious, and bent on new conquests, would not have been chained and enthralled by a girl of