When the overthrow of a temple had been once effected, we may be quite sure that all the limestone that could be found in it would be very soon sent to the kiln. A great deal of lime is used in Egypt for walls, and for plastering; and everywhere throughout the country, even in places where the stone might be had for the quarrying, the Arab has preferred the stones of old tombs and temples to the somewhat more costly process of cutting what he wanted from the living rock. Mehemet Ali, while constructing his paltry nitre-works at Karnak, although the mountain on the opposite bank was of limestone, to get what of this material was requisite for his purpose, destroyed one of the historic propylons within the sacred enclosure. In the pyramid district, often with the limestone under their feet and all around them, it has been the common practice to calcine the, to us, precious sculptured and painted stones from the tombs. And in this the modern Arab is only following the example of the old Egyptian, and of all other people who wanted the materials of unused buildings close at hand. We may, therefore, be sure that, a few centuries after the overthrow of these temples of the Delta, all the limestone that could be picked out of their ruins was consumed in this way. We have seen, however, that the chief material employed in the construction of the grandest of them was not limestone, but granite. This was utterly indestructible by the climate; and yet, in some places, it has entirely vanished as completely as the limestone; and has in the rest been much diminished. The same cause, I believe, has brought about the disappearance of both. As was done with the limestone, so has it happened to the granite: it has been used for whatever purposes it was adapted. The smaller pieces, as may frequently be seen, have been carried off for building material; and the larger pieces have been turned to account in the way in which we find that fragments of the granite colossus of Rameses the Great at Thebes have been employed, that is to say, as millstones for grinding, and mortars for pounding corn. In the alluvial Delta the old buildings were the only quarries. All the phenomena of the case are thus accounted for. Every one must wish that these imposing historic monuments of a great past had been preserved to our times. We feel as if those who threw them down, and those who afterwards employed their displaced, but still sacred, stones for their own petty purposes, had done to ourselves, and to the civilized world, an irreparable wrong. It may, however, mitigate our indignation, to remember that the former acted under a misapprehension of the nature and requirements of their cause; and that we ought not to be hard upon the poor Arab for having done what popes and cardinals did, when, to build palaces for themselves, they pulled down, with sacrilegious hands, the monuments of old Rome.