The Coliseum is a part of Roman history. Its magnitude and its purpose are history. It tells us that Cæsar could issue a decree that all the world should be taxed; that Cæsar found it necessary to dazzle and amuse the populace; that the amusements of the populace were brutal; that amusement, not religion, was the order of the day. So in the stones of Karnak we see the plunder and the tribute of Asia and Ethiopia. Many a city had been made a desolate heap, and many a fair region had been ravaged, and the silver and the gold collected, and the surviving inhabitants swept into the Egyptian net, and carried away captive into Egypt, to assist in building the grand hypostyle Court of Karnak, the grandest hall ever constructed by man. In the direction of the axis of the connected series of temples this hall is 170 ft. long. Its width is 329 ft. It is supported by one hundred and thirty-four columns. The central twelve are 62 ft. high in the shaft, and 36 ft. in circumference. The remaining one hundred and twenty-two columns are 42 ft. in height, and 28 ft. in circumference. The lintel stone of the great doorway is within 2 in. of 41 ft. in length. Every part of the walls, the pillars, and the roof is covered with coloured sculptures cut by the chisel of history, and of religion, which, however, as far as we are concerned, belongs to history. The purpose of this hall was to provide a fitting place for the great religious diets of the nation. It must have appeared to the thoughts of those times that the gods had assisted the king—who was already becoming their associate—in designing and erecting such a structure. We, however, are aware that no people can imagine, or undertake such structures, unless they are inspired with the sentiment that they are the greatest among the nations, and at the head of the world. Great things—it is more true of literature than of architecture, but it is true of everything—are not done by imitation but by inspiration, and nothing inspires great things but greatness itself.