The temple of Sais could not have been inferior, in extent, or in costliness, to those either of Tanis, or of Bubastis. It was built partly of limestone and partly of granite. Here were buried all the kings of the Saite Dynasty. Herodotus dwells upon its magnificence. Its propylæa exceeded all others in dimensions. It, too, had its lake, on which were celebrated the mysteries of the sufferings of the martyred Osiris. Like the temple of Tanis, it had its obelisks, and, besides, several colossi and androsphinxes. The margin of its sacred lake was cased with stone; but its chief ornament was a shrine composed of a single block of granite, in the transport of which, from Elephantiné to Sais, two thousand boatmen had been employed for three years. This shrine was 31 feet long, 22 broad, and 12 high. The lake, but without the stone casing of its margin, and the site of the temple remain, but every other trace of all this magnificence has almost entirely disappeared. The last Capital of Egypt, in which the wealth, culture, and glory of the old Pharaohnic Empire were completely revived, and exhibited to the world, was Sais. This revival took place under the XXVIth Dynasty; and, fortunately for us, was witnessed and described by the Greeks. Absolutely, and in itself, the country, probably, was then quite as great in all the elements of power as it ever had been in the palmiest days of the famous times of old; but, relatively, the sceptre had departed from Egypt. The arts which minister to and maintain civilization, and endow it with the ability to organize, wield, and support large armies, had travelled to the banks of the Euphrates, and from thence were spreading over the highlands of Media and Persia. By a law of nature civilization first germinated, and bore its precious fruit, in the teeming South, but by a right of nature Empire belongs to the enduring and thoughtful North. History contains the oft-repeated narrative of the fashion in which those, who have successively received the gift, have successively repaid it by subjugating the donors. The Assyrians had already, taking advantage of the disturbed state of the country during the XXVth Dynasty, looted all the great cities of Egypt, from Migdol to Syené. But where prosperity does not depend on the use and profits of accumulated capital, but on the annual bounty of Nature, recovery is very rapid. And to this bounty, which was larger and more varied in Egypt than anywhere else in the world, by reason of its winter as well as summer harvest, there had now been superadded the unbought gains resulting from her having been allowed to become what nature had intended her to be, that is, the centre for the interchange of the commodities of Asia, including India, of Africa, and of Europe.