Their road from the village of the chicken-batching ovens lay up along
the left bank of the Nile, through an immense grove of lofty palm-
trees, looking out from among which our visitors could ever and anon
see the heads of the two great Pyramids;--that is, such of them could
see it as felt any solicitude in the matter.
It is astonishing how such things lose their great charm as men find
themselves in their close neighbourhood. To one living in New York or
London, how ecstatic is the interest inspired by these huge structures.
One feels that no price would be too high to pay for seeing them as
long as time and distance, and the world's inexorable task-work, forbid
such a visit. How intense would be the delight of climbing over the
wondrous handiwork of those wondrous architects so long since dead; how
thrilling the awe with which one would penetrate down into their
interior caves--those caves in which lay buried the bones of ancient
kings, whose very names seem to have come to us almost from another
world!
But all these feelings become strangely dim, their acute edges
wonderfully worn, as the subjects which inspired them are brought near
to us.
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