Lepsius also adhered firmly to this rule when he entered upon that department of his science towards which at Rome he was impelled, not only by the influence of the Archaeological Institute to which he belonged, but by the tendency of his whole life. He there turned his attention to the art of the ancient Egyptians, and chiefly to their architecture. In his parents’ house at Naumburg he had seen the preference with which his father cultivated this branch of art; on all his journeys he filled his note-book with observations on the remarkable buildings which he encountered, and accompanied them with little drawings. We know how eagerly, particularly at Göttingen, he had followed the progress of the archaeology of art, which was greatly promoted at that time by the influence of Winckelmann. The air of Rome, too, was as thoroughly permeated with art then as it is now, and with even more enthusiastic artistic interests. There all conversation between aspiring friends so easily took, as it still takes, the form of a conversation on art. So that Lepsius, as well as Bunsen, who a few years later was to publish his celebrated work on Christian basilicas, felt the liveliest interest in these subjects and was forced by an inherent necessity to give special attention to the remarkable art of that people to whose resurrection he had pledged the best powers of his life. In 1838, then, there appeared Lepsius’ dissertation on the columns of the ancient Egyptians, and their connection with the Grecian columns.[36] When we designate this work also, which lay outside of the master’s special field of research, as original, and unsurpassed of its kind, in so doing we are in no wise “burning incense to our dead” but simply judging it as it deserves to be rated. Here, as elsewhere, Lepsius applies the law quoted above, by dividing chronologically the material which he has first thoroughly collected, and pointing out how the Egyptian columns arose from their original beginnings and developed themselves independently, here in cave-building, and there in open-air edifices;--he scrupulously maintains the division between the two. This classification alone is a real achievement, and any one who follows the progress of cave-building step by step with him, will see the Doric column with all its component parts develop organically before him. Even he who, out of regard for the omnipotence of the genius of Hellenic art, is averse to considering the Doric column as an architectural constituent borrowed by the Greeks from the Egyptians, will not be able to deny that the transformation of the pillar in the so-called proto-Doric column of the Egyptian cave-architecture (first and chiefly in the vaults of Beni Hassan), can be proved to be natural and necessary, while the Greek-Doric column, even in the oldest temples of the Doric order, makes its first appearance as a thing complete, and as fallen from heaven. It indeed forms from the beginning an organic and