there traces, and nearer, to the right, Rameses III. had made a temple, surely for the birds, so fond they are of it, so pertinaciously they haunt it.  Rameses II., mutilated and immense, stood on guard before the terrific hall of Seti I.; and between him and my platform in the air rose the solitary lotus column that prepares you for the wonder of Seti’s hall, which otherwise might almost overwhelm you—­unless you are a Scotch lady in a helmet.  And Khuns had his temple here by the Sphinx of the twelfth Rameses, and Ptah, who created “the sun egg and the moon egg,” and who was said—­only said, alas!—­to have established on earth the “everlasting justice,” had his, and still their stones receive the silver moon-rays and wake the wonder of men.  Thothmes III., Thothmes I., Shishak, who smote the kneeling prisoners and vanquished Jeroboam, Medamut and Mut, Amenhotep I., and Amenhotep II.—­all have left their records or been celebrated at Karnak.  Purposely I mingled them in my mind—­did not attempt to put them in their proper order, or even to disentangle gods and goddesses from conquerors and kings.  In the warm and seductive night Khuns whispered to me:  “As long ago at Bekhten I exorcised the demon from the suffering Princess, so now I exorcise from these ruins all spirits but my own.  To-night these ruins shall suggest nothing but majesty, tranquillity, and beauty.  Their records are for Ra, and must be studied by his rays.  In mine they shall speak not to the intellectual, but only to the emotions and the soul.”

And presently I went down, and yielding a complete and happy obedience to Khuns, I wandered along through the stupendous vestiges of past eras, dead ambitions, vanished glory, and long-outworn belief, and I ignored eras, ambitions, glory, and belief, and thought only of form, and height, of the miracle of blackness against silver, and of the pathos of statues whose ever-open eyes at night, when one is near them, suggest the working of some evil spell, perpetual watchfulness, combined with eternal inactivity, the unslumbering mind caged in the body that is paralysed.

There is a temple at Karnak that I love, and I scarcely know why I care for it so much.  It is on the right of the solitary lotus column before you come to the terrific hall of Seti.  Some people pass it by, having but little time, and being hypnotized, it seems, by the more astounding ruin that lies beyond it.  And perhaps it would be well, on a first visit, to enter it last; to let its influence be the final one to rest upon your spirit.  This is the temple of Rameses III., a brown place of calm and retirement, an ineffable place of peace.  Yes, though the birds love it and fill it often with their voices, it is a sanctuary of peace.  Upon the floor the soft sand lies, placing silence beneath your footsteps.  The pale brown of walls and columns, almost yellow in the sunshine, is delicate and soothing, and inclines the heart to calm.  Delicious, suggestive