“And they have grown marvellously, as if creative Nature had doubled her powers in their behalf,” Hermon added eagerly.  “But man has also wrought amazing miracles here.  Industrious hands reared an actual mountain.  A winding path leads to the top, and when you stand upon the summit and look northward you at first feel like the sailor who steps on shore and hears the people speak a language which is new to him.  It seems like a jumble of meaningless sounds until he learns, not only to understand the words, but also to distinguish the sentences.  Temples and palaces, statues and columns appear everywhere in motley confusion.  Each one, if you separate it from the whole and give it a careful examination, is worthy of inspection, nay, of admiration.  Here are light, graceful creations of Hellenic, yonder heavy, sombre ones of Egyptian art, and in the background the exquisite azure of the eternal sea, which the marvellous structure of the heptastadium unites to the land; while on the island of Pharos the lighthouse of Sostratus towers aloft almost to the sky, and with a flood of light points out the way to mariners who approach the great harbour at night.  Countless vessels are also at anchor in the Eunostus.  The riches of the whole earth flow into both havens.  And the life and movement there and in the inland harbour on Lake Mareotis, where the Nile boats land!  From early until late, what a busy throng, what an abundance of wares—­and how many of the most valuable goods are made in our own city! for whatever useful, fine, and costly articles industrial art produces are manufactured here.  The roof has not yet been put on many a factory in which busy workers are already making beautiful things.  Here the weaver’s shuttle flies, yonder gold is spun around slender threads of sheep guts, elsewhere costly materials are embroidered by women’s nimble fingers with the prepared gold thread.  There glass is blown, or weapons and iron utensils are forged.  Finely polished knives split the pith of the papyrus, and long rows of workmen and workwomen gum the strips together.  No hand, no head is permitted to rest.  In the Museum the brains of the great thinkers and investigators are toiling.  Here, too, reality asserts its rights.  The time for chimeras and wretched polemics is over.  Now it is observing, fathoming, turning to account, nothing more!”

“Gently, my young friend,” Proclus interrupted the artist.  “I know that you, too, sat at the feet of some of the philosophers in the Museum, and still uphold the teachings of Straton, which your fellow-pupil, King Ptolemy, outgrew long ago.  Yet he, also, recognised in philosophy, first of all, the bond which unites the widely sundered acquisitions of the intellect, the vital breath which pervades them, the touchstone which proves each true or false.  If the praise of Alexandria is to be sung, we must not forget the library to which the most precious treasures of knowledge of the East and West are flowing, and