The reason generally given for this, in every case, utter ruin, and in most cases complete disappearance of the monuments of antiquity throughout the Delta is, that the climate being rendered comparatively moist by the contiguity of the sea, has not been so favourable to their preservation as the drier climate of Upper Egypt has proved to the monuments of that district. The difference in the hygrometrical condition of the air, and the rain that falls occasionally in the Delta, will not account, I think, for the effect that has been produced. The climate of Gizeh is not very different from that of the actual Delta, and here five or six thousand years have not in the least affected the original casing at the top of the Second Pyramid. The obelisk that had been standing for very nearly two thousand years on the very beach at Alexandria, and which for the previous two thousand years had stood at the apex of the Delta, has not been affected to such an extent as would contribute, in any appreciable degree, I will not say to the overthrow, but to the injury, of any building ever raised by an Egyptian architect. And yet at Alexandria these supposed disintegrating influences are at their maximum, and are aided by the salt-impregnated drift from the sea in the case of this obelisk, which has, notwithstanding, outlived for so long a period every temple and palace throughout the Delta, after having witnessed the erection of every one of them. If it had a tongue, it would, I think, tell us that it was not the climate that had been the destroyer, but man. The decree which the Emperor Theodosius issued at the instance of the Archbishop and Christians of Alexandria, to authorize the destruction of the great temple of Serapis in that city, shows what was probably the cause of the first overthrow of the temples of the Delta. As long as they stood, it was thought there would be priests to minister in them, and worshippers to frequent them. And in those days of religious faction-fights, we know that they were frequently used as fortresses. We might say that the way to meet these difficulties was to trust to the imperishableness of truth, and to the sure decay of falsehood; but whatever we might do, we certainly should not destroy the historic monuments of a glorious antiquity. They, however, had not our ideas on these subjects; and, moreover, were blinded by the dust and smoke of the battle that was raging around them; and so they acted on the principle that was afterwards formulated to the north of the Tweed, that the way to get rid of the rooks is to pull down the nests.