only in transporting the obelisk to Alexandria, from whence his son and successor Constantius transferred it to Rome, and placed it on the Spina of the Great Circus.  So clumsily, however, was it erected in this place, that several deep holes had to be drilled in the upper part of it, in order that ropes for hauling it up might be put through them; a defect in engineering skill which has disfigured the obelisk, and contrasts strikingly with the resources of the ancient Egyptians, who were able to raise the stone to its position without such a device.  The obelisk is thus an enduring monument of three great rulers—­Thothmes, who first constructed it in Heliopolis; Constantine, who removed it to Rome; and Pope Sixtus V., who conveyed it from the Circus Maximus, and re-erected it where it now stands.

Next in point of height to the Lateran obelisk is the one that stands in the great square of St. Peter’s, between two beautiful fountains that are continually showering high in the air their radiant sunlit spray.  It is meant to serve as the gnomon of a gigantic dial, traced in lines of white marble in the pavement of the square.  Its rosy surface glistening in the rays of the sun, and its long shadow cast before it on the ground, make it a very impressive object.  Its origin is involved in mystery, for there is no inscription on it to tell who erected it, or where it came from.  This absence of hieroglyphics points to its having been an unfinished work—­something having prevented its constructor from recording on it the purpose of its erection, as was usually the case.  But as the vacant shadow of the dial and the blank empty lines of the spectrum are more suggestive than any sunlit spaces, so the blank unwritten sides of this obelisk give rise to more speculations than if they had been carved from head to foot with hieroglyphics.  On account of this peculiarity, some authors have not hesitated to consider it a mere imitation obelisk, constructed by the Romans at a comparatively late period.  This idea, however, is refuted by the evidence of Pliny, who regarded it as a genuine Egyptian relic, and tells us that it was cut from the quarry of Syene, and dedicated to the sun by the son of Sesores, in obedience to an oracle, after his recovery from blindness.  It is generally believed that it first stood before one of the temples of Heliopolis, was then removed to Alexandria, and finally transported to Rome by Caligula.  This emperor constructed a special vessel for the purpose, of greater dimensions than had ever been seen before; and after it had brought the obelisk to the banks of the Tiber, he commanded it to be filled with stones, and sunk as a caisson in the harbour of Ostia, which he was constructing at the time.  On arriving at Rome the obelisk was set up on the Spina of the Circus of Nero, which is now occupied by the sacristy of St. Peter’s Church.  For fifteen centuries the obelisk remained undisturbed on its site, the only one in the city that escaped