Thus, dear mother, have I given you some insight into Egyptian home-life, and introduced you into the inmost private room of one of their houses. I will close my description by saying, that the ceiling of the reception-room was richly and tastefully adorned with the pencil; that gracefully shaped chairs, covered with needle-work; sofas, inlaid tables, couches with crimson and gold embroidery, and elegant vases of flowers, were charmingly disposed about it; and that a lute and two sistra were placed near a window, and a harp stood between two of the columns that inclosed a pictured panel representing the finding of Osiris. Farewell, dearest mother. You will see that I have now acquitted myself of the charge of indifference to so interesting a subject as the mode of life of the ladies of Egypt, and by hastening to describe it to you in this letter, have evinced my profound filial reverence for your slightest wish. Your faithful and affectionate son, SESOSTRIS. LETTER XIII. THE CITY OF APIS. MY DEAR MOTHER: I thank you for your long and very welcome letter, written from your palace, at Sidon, whither you went to celebrate the rites of Adonis. It assures me of your continued health, which may the gods guard with jealous care, for not only the stability of your kingdom, but my whole happiness depends on your life, beloved mother and queen. You also allude to your visits to the temples of Astarte and of Tammuz, on Lebanon. What a noble worship was that of our fathers, who, amid its gigantic cedars, old as the earth itself, there first worshipped the gods! How majestic must have appeared their simple rites, with no altar but the mountain rock, no columns but the vast trunks of mighty trees, no roof but the blue heavens by day, and the starry dome by night; while at morning and evening went up the smoke of the sacrifice of bullocks to the gods. These were the first temples of men, not builded by art, but made by the gods themselves as meet places for their own worship. I question, dear mother, if the subsequent descent of religion from its solemn shrines, in the dark forests of Libanus, into the valleys and cities, to be enshrined in temples of marble, however beautiful, has elevated it. Though the Phœnicians built the first temples on the peninsula of Tyre, before any others existed, save in groves; yet in Egypt (which claims also this honor), the "houses of the gods," in their vast and pyramidal aspects, their pillars like palm-trees, their columns like cedars, approach more nearly to the dignity, sublimity, and majesty of the primeval forests and eternal mountains where religion first offered prayer to heaven. Your visit to the temple of Tammuz, at Sareptha, recalls a legend which, singularly enough, I first heard in Egypt, of the origin of the rites to that deity.