Seven hundred miles up the Nile beyond Cairo, on the frontiers of Nubia, is the town of Syene or Assouan. In the neighbourhood are the renowned quarries of red granite called Syenite or Syenitic stone. The place is under the tropic of Cancer, and was the spot fixed upon through which the ancients drew the chief parallel of latitude, and therefore Syene was an important place in the early days of astronomy. The sun was of course vertical to Syene at the summer solstice, and a deep well existed there in which the reflection of the sun was seen at noon on midsummer-day. About fifteen centuries before the Christian era, in the reign of Thothmes III., by royal command, the London Obelisk, together with its companion column, was quarried at Syene, and thence in a huge raft was floated down the Nile to the sacred city of Heliopolis, a distance of seven hundred miles. Heliopolis, called in the Bible On, and by the ancient Egyptians An, was a city of temples dedicated to the worship of the sun. It is a place of high antiquity, and was one of the towns of the land of Goshen. Probably the patriarch Abraham sought refuge here when driven by famine out of the land of Canaan. Heliopolis is inseparably connected with the life of Joseph, who, after being sold to Potiphar as a slave, and after suffering imprisonment on a false accusation, was by Pharaoh promoted to great honour, and by royal command received "to wife Asenath, the daughter of Poti-pherah, priest of On" (Gen. xli. 45). Heliopolis was probably the scene of the affecting meeting of Joseph and his aged father Jacob. The place was not only a sacred city, but it was also a celebrated seat of learning, and the chief university of the ancient world. "Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians," and his wisdom he acquired in the sacred college of Heliopolis. Pythagoras and Plato, and many other Greek philosophers, were students at this Egyptian seat of learning. On arriving at Heliopolis, the two obelisks now called Cleopatra's Needles were set up in front of the great temple of the sun. There they stood for fourteen centuries, during which period many dynasties reigned and passed away; Greek dominion in Egypt rose and flourished, until the Ptolemies were vanquished by the Cæsars, and Egypt became a province of imperial Rome. Possibly Jacob and Joseph, certainly Moses and Aaron, Pythagoras and Plato, have gazed upon these two obelisks; and therefore the English nation should look at the hoary monolith on the Thames Embankment with feelings of profound veneration. [Illustration: CLEOPATRA'S NEEDLE, AT ALEXANDRIA.]