approached nearer to the purity of the mother Syriac.--L. H.
H.

"I have studied it," I answered, "for many years. Also the language is
spoken in Egypt and elsewhere."

"So it is still spoken, and there is yet an Egypt? And what Pharaoh sits
upon the throne? Still one of the spawn of the Persian Ochús, or are
the Achæmenians gone, for far is it to the days of Ochús."

"The Persians have been gone for Egypt for nigh two thousand years, and
since then the Ptolemies, the Romans, and many others have flourished
and held sway upon the Nile, and fallen when their time was ripe," I
said, aghast. "What canst thou know of the Persian Artaxerxes?"

She laughed, and made no answer, and again a cold chill went through
me. "And Greece," she said; "is there still a Greece? Ah, I loved the
Greeks. Beautiful were they as the day, and clever, but fierce at heart
and fickle, notwithstanding."

"Yes," I said, "there is a Greece; and, just now, it is once more a
people. Yet the Greeks of to-day are not what the Greeks of the old time
were, and Greece herself is but a mockery of the Greece that was."

"So! The Hebrews, are they yet at Jerusalem? And does the Temple that
the wise king built stand, and if so what God do they worship therein?
Is their Messiah come, of whom they preached so much and prophesied so
loudly, and doth He rule the earth?"

"The Jews are broken and gone, and the fragments of their people strew