The foregoing were the last obelisks erected in Rome by the emperors. After them no more were constructed either in the imperial city or in their native land of Egypt. The language inscribed upon them had come to be superseded by the universal use of the Greek tongue; there was no use therefore in making monuments for the reception of hieroglyphic records which nobody could understand or interpret. The sudden craze for the Egyptian idolatry passed away as suddenly as it sprang up, and Christianity established itself as the religion of the civilised world. The temples in Egypt and Rome were closed, the altars overthrown, and the objects connected with the material symbolism of paganism were destroyed, and objects connected with the spiritual symbolism of Christianity set up in their place. And thus the obelisk, the oldest of all religious symbols, which was constructed at the very dawn of human existence, to mark the worship of the material luminary, fell into disuse and oblivion, when "the Sun of Righteousness" rose above the horizon of the world, with healing in His wings, dispelling all the mists and delusions of error. The art of constructing obelisks followed the usual stages in the history of all human art. Its best period was that which indicated the greatest faith; its worst that which marked the decay of faith. The oldest specimens are invariably the most perfect and beautiful; the most recent exhibit too marked signs of the decrepitude of skill that had come over their makers. Between the oldest specimens and their surroundings there was a harmony and an appropriateness which solemnised the scene and excited feelings of adoration and awe. Between the latest specimens and their surroundings there was an incongruity which proved them to be aliens and strangers on the scene, and was fatal to all reverence; an incongruity which the modern Romans have only intensified by raising them on pedestals of most uncongenial forms, and crowning them with hideous masses of metal, representing the insignia of popes or other objects equally unsuitable. We see in the oldest obelisks a wonderful ease and an exquisite finish of execution, a maturity of thought and skill which none of the later obelisks reached, and which indicate the high-water mark of man's achievement in that line. There is also "a bloom of youth and of the earth's morning" about them which is quite indescribable, and which doubtless came to them because of the power and reality of faith. They were the fresh natural originals in which a deep primitive spontaneous adoration that dominated the whole nature of man expressed itself; while the specimens that were executed afterwards were slavish imitations, expressing a worship and a creed which had become fixed and formal.