Advancing up the avenue of lions, cast from a pair brought from Egypt by Lord Prudhoe (the present Duke of Northumberland), we have before us the outer walls and columns of a temple, not taken from any one particular structure, but composed from various sources, to illustrate Egyptian columns and capitals during the Ptolemaic period, somewhere about 300 years B.C. On the walls are coloured sunk-reliefs showing a king making offerings or receiving gifts from the gods. The capitals or heads of the columns are palm and lotus-leaved; some showing the papyrus in its various stages of development, from the simple bud to the full-blown flower. The representation of the palm and the papyrus occurs frequently in Egyptian architecture; the leaves of the latter, it will be remembered, were made into a kind of paper, and its flowers were specially used as offerings in the temples. We shall afterwards inspect some growing specimens of this curious plant in the fountain basin at the north end of the Nave, as well as of the lotus, when these restorations may be remembered with interest. On the frieze above the columns is a hieroglyphic inscription stating that “in the seventeenth year of the reign of Victoria, the ruler of the waves, this Palace was erected and furnished with a thousand statues, a thousand plants, &c., like as a book for the use of the men of all countries.” This inscription is repeated, with some slight additions, on the frieze of the interior of the Court. On the cornice of both the inside and outside of the Court, are the names of her Majesty and the Prince Consort, engraved in hieroglyphic characters, and also winged globes, the symbolic protecting deity of doorways. Entering by the central doorway, on the lintels and sides of which are inserted the different titles of King Ptolemy, in hieroglyphics, we find ourselves in the exterior court of a temple in which the multitude assembled; the decorations of the walls are similar to those we saw outside, and it must be borne in mind that the colouring is taken from actual remains in Egypt. On the wall to the left is a large picture copied from the great Temple of Rameses III. or Rameses Mai Amun, at Medinet Haboo, near Thebes, showing the counting of the hands of the slain--three thousand as we are informed by the hieroglyphics engraved over the heads of the scribes--before the king who is in his chariot; on the right-hand side of the Court is a representation of a battle-scene, with the Egyptians storming a fortress. Turning to the left, after examining the eight gigantic figures of Rameses the Great, forming the façade of another temple, we enter the Court of Amunothph, a colonnade of an early period, its date being about 1300 B.C. The columns represent eight stems and buds of the papyrus bound together, and are cast from a black granite column bearing the name of Amunothph, now in the British Museum. [Illustration: First order of Egyptian Column.]