being overthrown.  At last its foundation giving way, so that it leaned dangerously towards the old Basilica of St. Peter’s, Sixtus V. formed the design of removing it to where it now stands, a very short distance from the original spot.  The record of its re-erection, the first in papal Rome, by Fontana—­a work of extreme difficulty and imposing ceremonial magnificence, which was richly rewarded by the grateful Pope—­is exceedingly interesting.  A curious legend is usually related in connection with it.  A papal edict was proclaimed threatening death to any one who should utter a loud word while the operation of lifting and settling the obelisk was going on.  As the “huge crystallisation of Egyptian sweat” rose on its basis there was a sudden stoppage, the hempen cables refused to do their work, and the hanging mass of stone threatened to fall and destroy itself.  Suddenly from out the breathless crowd rose a loud, clear voice, “Wet the ropes.”  There was inspiration in the suggestion; the architect acted upon it, and the obelisk at once took its stand on its base, where it has firmly remained ever since.  Not only was the sailor Bresca pardoned for transgressing the papal command, but he was rewarded, and the district of Bordighera, from which he came, received the privilege of supplying the palm leaves for the use of Rome on Palm Sunday—­a privilege which it still possesses, and which forms the principal trade of the place.

To me the most familiar and interesting of all the Roman obelisks is that which stands in the centre of the Piazza del Popolo, the finest and largest square in Rome.  It is about eighty feet high, carved with hieroglyphics, with four marble Egyptian lions, one at each corner of the platform on which it stands, pouring from their mouths copious streams of water into large basins, with a refreshing sound.  Lions in Egypt were regarded as symbols of the sun when passing through the zodiacal sign of Leo, the time when the annual inundation of the Nile occurred.  They had thus a deep significance in connection with water.  The obelisk was originally erected in front of the Temple of the Sun at Heliopolis, by the great Rameses, the Sesostris of the Greeks, whose personal character and wide conquests fill a larger space in the history of ancient Egypt than those of any other monarch.  From Heliopolis it was removed to Rome, after the battle of Actium, by Augustus, and placed on the Spina of the Circus Maximus, the sports of which were under the special protection of Apollo, the sun-god, by whose favour it was supposed that the Egyptian victory had been achieved.  For four hundred years it acted as a gnomon, regulating by the length and direction of its shadow the hours of the public games of the circus; and then it was overturned during those troublous days in which the empire was rent asunder.  Twelve centuries of decay and wreck had buried it from the eyes of men, until it was dug up and placed where it now stands, in 1587,