D PECCOCEIA VALENTINA M
CONIUGI PIENTISSIMA.

Before I leave _Arles_, and I leave it reluctantly, whatever you may do,
I must not omit to mention the principal monument, and pride of it, at
this day, i.e. their Obelisque. I will not tell you where nor when it
was dug up; it is sufficient to say, it was found here, that it is a
single piece of granite, sixty-one feet high, and seven feet square
below; yet it was elevated in the Market-place, upon a modern pedestal,
which bears four fulsome complimentary inscriptions to _Lewis_ the XIV.
neither of which will I copy. In elevating this monstrous single stone,
the inhabitants were very adroit: they set it upright in a quarter of an
hour, in the year 1676, just an hundred years ago, amidst an infinite
number of joyful spectators, who are now all laid in their lowly graves;
for though it weighed more than two thousand hundred weight, yet by the
help of capsterns, it was raised without any difficulty. The great King
_Harry_ the IVth had ordered the houses in the arena of the Amphitheatre
to be thrown down, and this obelisk to be fixed in the center of it; but
his death, and _Lewis_'s vanity, fixed it where it now stands; it has
no beauty however to boast of but its age and size, for it bears neither
polish, characters, nor hieroglyphicks, but, as it seems to have been an
Egyptian monument, the inhabitants of _Arles_ have, like those people,
consecrated it below to their King, and above to the sun: on the top is
fixed a globe of azure, sprinkled with _fleurs de lis d'or_, and crowned
with a radiant sun, that is to say, as the sun was made by GOD to
enlighten the world, so LEWIS LE GRAND was made to govern it.


I am sure now, you will excuse my mentioning what is said of this great
man _below_; but speaking of light, I must not omit to mention, that