him to form at Alexandria. Eight hundred men struggled for three
months in Egypt, in the midst of all manner of hardships, building a
road and constructing machinery to drag the obelisk, completely
cased in wood, down to the Nile. It cost two millions of francs to
place this monument where it now stands. This was done with great
pomp and ceremony in October, 1836, the royal family and about a
hundred and fifty thousand other people looking on.

Now try to place yourself in imagination at the foot of this great
Obelisk of Luxor, mounted up as it is upon a single block of gray
granite of France, covered all over with gilded engraving of the
machinery used in placing the great thing where it is. The Place de
la Concorde itself, which surrounds you, is eight sided; and if the
excavations around it were filled with water, it would be an island,
seven hundred feet or so across, and connected with the main land by
four elegant little bridges. But instead of water, these "diggings"
are beautifully filled with flower gardens. At the eight corners of
the island are eight pavilions, as they are called; or great watch
houses, of elegant architecture, occupied by the military or the
police, as occasion requires. Each of these forms the base of a
gigantic statue, representing one of the principal cities of France.
It is as if the whole eight were sitting in friendly council for the
good of Paris. How beautiful they are, with their grand
expressionless faces, and their graceful attitudes, and their simple
antique drapery. They are all sitting in their mural crowns,--the
fortified cities on cannons, the commercial ones on bales of goods.
Strasburg alone seems full of life. She has her arm akimbo, as if
braving Germany, to which she once belonged. Look, north from the
Obelisk, up the Rue de la Concorde, and the splendid church of the
Madeleine bounds your sight. On your right are the Gardens of the