This detail may have some interest, as we have a similar project before us. But the whole question is, whether the transport of the obelisk which remains in Egypt for us is worth the expense. We, without hesitation, say that it _is_. The French have shown that it is _practicable_, and it is a matter of _rational_ desire to show that we are not behind the French either in power, in ability, or in zeal, to adorn our cities. The obelisk transported to England would be a proud monument, without being an offensive one, of a great achievement of our armies; it would present to our eyes, and those of our children, a relic of the most civilised kingdom of the early ages; it would sustain the recollections of the scholar by its record, and might kindle the energy of the people by the sight of what had been accomplished by the prowess of Englishmen. If it be replied that such views are Utopian, may we not ask, what is the use of all antiquity, since we can eat and drink as well without it? But we cannot _feel_ as loftily without it; many a lesson of vigour, liberality, and virtue would be lost to us without it; we should lose the noblest examples of the arts, some of the finest displays of human genius in architecture, a large portion of the teaching of the public mind in all things great, and an equally large portion of the incentives to public virtue in all things self-denying. The labour, it is true, of conveying the obelisk would be serious, the expense considerable, and we might not see it erected before the gate of Buckingham Palace these ten years. But it would be erected at _last_. It would be a trophy--it would be an abiding memorial of the extraordinary country from which civilisation spread to the whole world. But the two grand fountains ought especially to stimulate our emulation. Those we can have without a voyage from Alexandria to Portsmouth, or a six years' delay.