the Caesars, as it had done the primitive Egyptians under the oldest Pharaohs.  It extended over a space of more than three thousand years.  During all that long period the obelisk was “the emblem at once of the vivifying power of the sun and of the divine nature of the king, a witness for the divine claim of the sun to be worshipped, and of the right divine of the king to rule.”  Where is there in all the world, in its most ancient cities, in its loneliest deserts, any class of objects which has been held continuously sacred for so long a time?  The description of the sun itself by Ossian applies almost equally well to his worship as thus represented.

Obelisks as symbols of the sun and of the creative power of nature, were not confined to Egypt.  They belonged to the mythology of all ancient nations.  There are modifications of them in India, in prehistoric America, and among the archaeological remains of our own country.  They were common objects in connection with the Assyrian, Persian and Phoenician religions.  And it has been conjectured with much plausibility that the image of gold, whose height was threescore cubits, and the breadth six, the usual proportions of an obelisk, which Nebuchadnezzar set up in the plain of Dura, in the province of Babylon, and commanded Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego to adore, was in reality an obelisk after the Egyptian pattern.  Such an obelisk was often gilded, and was associated with the worship of the king as its material purpose, and with the creation and origin of life as its symbolic meaning.  And if this was the case, there was an unusual aggravation in this idolatry; for the Egyptian obelisks themselves were never worshipped, but were always regarded as the signs of the higher powers whose glory they expressed.

The question is naturally asked, Where were the obelisks originally placed?  At the present day we find those of them that remain in Egypt, solitary objects without anything near them, and those that have been carried to other lands have been set up in great open squares, or on river embankments in the heart of the largest cities.  Fortunately, there is no doubt at all on this point.  They stood in pairs at the doors of the great temples, one on each side, where they served the same purpose which the campanile of the Italian church or the spire of a cathedral serves at the present day.  Indeed, architects are of opinion that church towers and steeples are mere survivals of the old Egyptian obelisks, which furnished the original conception.  The tower corresponded to the shaft of the obelisk, and the steeple to the sharp pyramidal part in which the summit of the obelisk terminated.  And though there is usually only one spire or tower now in connection with our churches, there used to be two, as many old examples still extant testify, one standing on each side of the principal entrance after the manner of the Egyptian obelisks.  The slender round towers of Brechin and Abernethy, and