Walled towns, stored arsenals and armories, goodly races of horse, chariots of war, elephants, ordnance, artillery, and the like--all this is but a sheep in a lion’s skin, except the breed and disposition of the people be stout and warlike.--BACON. It has just been shown that the leading dynasties of the Theban kingdom, before the invasion of the Hyksos, had essentially a pacific character. Their epoch was a period of social, literary and artistic activity, such as usually comes to a nation only at the apex of its career, or as it is passing into its decline. It was so here. Egypt as a nation was soon overthrown; an outside people invaded the sacred precincts, so jealously guarded hitherto from even peaceful intrusion, usurped the power, and for some centuries dominated the original inhabitants. These invaders, as we have seen, were of a more primitive type of civilisation than the Egyptians. Their reign was a time of apparently retrograde evolution, marked to after generations by no lasting monuments such as made earlier generations famous. Yet it may be questioned whether, on the whole, the influence of these semi-barbarians upon the cultured but somewhat degenerate stock of the ancient civilisation, may not have been in the highest degree beneficial. Everywhere in history we shall see that the virile stock is the stock which is not weakened by too many generations of that luxury which seems to be the necessary associate of higher culture. We shall see also that a mixed race is always at a premium. A nation which shuts itself off from contact with other nations is in the condition of a finely inbred race of domesticated animals. The racial peculiarities may be greatly developed, certain finer traits of mind and body may be highly intensified. But in the full rounding out of aggregate powers of mind and body, there is a deviation that amounts to degeneration. And when this weakened stock comes into competition with some cruder but sturdier race, the issue is not in doubt; the fate awaits it that befel the Egyptians at the hands of the “barbaric” Hyksos invaders.