In the last decade of the second century, about the time when the pagan virtues of Marcus Aurelius had left the Roman empire to the worse than pagan vices of his son Commodus, Egypt, to the learned and wealthy, meant Alexandria. What Tyre had been in the time of Solomon, what Sidon was in the days of which Homer wrote, that was Alexandria from the reign of Ptolemy Soter to the days of Mahomet. In external aspect it was in every way worthy to bear the name of him who drew its plans with his own hands. Its magnificent double harbor, of which the Great Port had a quay-side six miles in length, was the common rendezvous for merchant ships from every part of Syria, Greece, Italy, and Spain; and its communications with the Red Sea and the Nile brought to the warehouses that overlooked its quay the riches of Arabia and India, and the corn and flax of the country of which it was the capital. The modern traveller, who finds Alexandria a prosperous commercial town, with an appearance half European, half Turkish, learns with wonder that its 60,000 inhabitants find room on what was little more than the mole that divided the Great Port from the Eunostos. But it should be borne in mind that old Alexandria numbered 300,000 free citizens. The mosques, the warehouses, and the private dwellings of the present town are built of the fragments of the grand city of Alexander. The great conqueror designed to make Alexandria the capital of the world. He chose a situation the advantages of which a glance at the map will show; and if any other proof were needed, it may be found in the fact that, since 1801, the population of the modern town has increased at the rate of one thousand a year. He planned his city on such vast proportions as might be looked for from the conqueror of Darius. Parallel streets crossed other streets, and divided the city into square blocks. Right through its whole length, from East to West--that is, parallel with the sea-front--one magnificent street, two hundred feet wide and four miles in length, ran from the Canopic gate to the Necropolis. A similar street, shorter, but of equal breadth, crossed this at right angles, and came out upon the great quay directly opposite the mole that joined the city with the island of Pharos. This was the famous Heptastadion, or Street of the Seven Stadia, and at its South end was the Sun-gate; at its North, where it opened on the harbor, the gate of the Moon. To the right, as you passed through the Moon-gate on to the broad quay, was the exchange, where merchants from all lands met each other, in sight of the white Pharos and the crowded shipping of the Great Port. A little back from the gate, in the Heptastadion, was the Caesareum, or temple of the deified Caesars, afterward a Christian church. Near it was the Museum, the university of Alexandria. Long marble colonnades connected the {35} university with the palace and gardens of the Ptolemies. On the opposite side of the great street was the Serapeion, the