Nothing is more fitted to reconcile us to the destiny which has decreed that we should live in the drab and unpicturesque twentieth century than the contemplation of the inconveniences with which the kings and great folk of the bygone ages had to put up in the midst of the glittering splendours which dazzle our imagination. One of these is hinted at by the presence in the tomb of the candlesticks which bore the light of Tutankhamen’s days. They are small bronze articles, shaped in the form of the Ankh, and carrying fastened to them linen wicks, which were, no doubt, soaked in oil. As small pieces of decorative workmanship, they are pretty enough; but it is impossible to imagine anything much less satisfactory in the way of lighting than they would seem to be. No doubt there were other and bigger candlesticks than these, and we cannot imagine that a luxurious court like that of Thebes would not have something corresponding to the great stone standard lamps which flared and sputtered in the halls and corridors of the contemporary palace of Minos at Knossos; but even so, the lighting of an Egyptian palace must have been what we should think miserably inefficient, and Pharaoh must have been sorely put to it to find occupation for his evenings, when all the glitter of his gorgeousness grew dim and shabby in the light of the miserable smoking and flickering lamps which at best can have done little more than to make darkness visible. A prominent feature among the heaps of wonderful things in the tomb was the group of elaborately carved alabaster vases which has been so often figured and so much be-praised since the discovery was made. Of the interest attaching to these extraordinary vases there can be no question; but when we are told that they are “the most beautiful alabaster vases in the world,” it is time to enter a protest. They are nothing of the sort. As specimens of workmanship they are wonderful enough; as specimens of art they are flagrantly bad,--characteristic types of an art which has passed its maturity and is on the downgrade. The over-elaboration and the far too complicated character of their decoration are sufficient to condemn them, and they are not to be compared for one moment, from the point of artistic value, with the simple and graceful forms of earlier work. Indeed, even in Tutankhamen’s tomb, and in the same chamber with these over-praised and overdone pieces of pretentiousness, there were vases far more worthy of praise for their artistic quality than the ones whose noisy ornamentation has singled them out for a notice which they do not deserve.