There is another argument which is, perhaps, even more conclusive than that from the silence of the texts. How can we believe that the kings of such a pleasure-loving and light-hearted race as the ancient Egyptians took up their residence in quarters so dark and so rigidly inclosed. Their dispositions cannot have differed very greatly from those of their subjects, and no phrase is more often repeated in the texts than this: _to live a happy day_. The palace must have been a pleasant dwelling, a place of repose; and nothing could be better fitted for such a purpose than the light and spacious edifices which lay outside the city, in the midst of large and shady gardens, upon the banks of the Nile itself, or of one of those canals which carried its waters to the borders of the desert. From their high balconies, galleries, or covered terraces, the eye could roam freely over the neighbouring plantations, over the course of the river and the fields which it irrigated, and out to the mountains which shut in the horizon. The windows were large, and movable blinds, which may be distinguished in some of the paintings, allowed the chambers to be either thrown open to the breeze or darkened from the noonday sun, as occasion arose. That shelter which is so grateful in all hot climates was also to be found outside, in the broad shadows cast by the sycamores and planes which grew around artificial basins garnished with the brilliant flowers of the lotus, in the shadows of the spring foliage hanging upon the trellised fruit-trees, or in the open kiosques which were reared here and there upon the banks of the lakes. There, behind the shelter of walls and hedges, and among his wives and children, the king could taste some of the joys of domesticity. In such a retreat a Thothmes or a Rameses could abandon himself to the simple joy of living, and might forget for a time both the fatigues of yesterday and the cares of to-morrow; as the modern Egyptians would say, he could enjoy his _kief_.