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TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



tion is undoubtedly due to the recognition, " This 

 is an obelisk." Every cognition, as Mr. Herbert 

 Spencer tells us, is a recognition ; and every rec- 

 ognition is in itself, apart from specialties, pleas- 

 urable. And, when an educated man recognizes 

 an obelisk as such, he greets it as an old acquaint- 

 ance, around which cling many interesting associa- 

 tions of time and place. In its origin it is, for our 

 present purpose at least, Egyptian ; and we see in 

 it always a certain Egyptian massiveness, solidity, 

 simplicity, grandeur. While to the merest child 

 or boor it is beautiful for its form, its height, its 

 size, its gloss, its texture ; to the cultivated mind 

 it is further beautiful for its suggestions of a dim 

 past, a great empire, a forgotten language, a mighty 

 race, now gone forever, but once the teachers and 

 pioneers of humanity on its upward struggle to 

 light. We cannot divorce from our recognition 

 of its shape and name some dim recollection of 

 its history and its birthplace. When we meet it 

 in the cemeteries of Western America, or on the 

 hill-sides of sub-tropical Australia, it carries us 

 back, perhaps unconsciously, but none the less 

 effectively, over a thousand miles and ten thou- 

 sand years to the temple-courts of Me roe or the 

 mitred presence of Amenuph. 



If we feel thus in the case of any obelisk, still 

 more do we feel so in the case of an actual Egyp- 

 tian obelisk. It makes a great difference in the 

 impressiveness of each particular block of stone 

 whether it was hewed a myriad of years ago in the 

 quarries of Syene, or last year in the quarries of 

 Aberdeen. The sublime in its most developed 

 forms comes in to complicate our simple sense 

 of beauty when we have to deal with long-past 

 time and the relics of ancient empire. There is a 

 great gulf between the child's admiration for that 

 big pillar of polished rock and the cultivated 

 man's half awe-struck gaze upon that sculptured 

 monument of the earliest great civilization whose 

 memory has come down to us across the abyss 

 of ages. 



More or less remotely present in some few 

 minds will be the still earlier history of that 

 smooth needle of serpentine. The fancy will run 

 back to those primaeval days when the action of 

 seething subterranean waves melted together and 

 fixed into solid crystal the intricate veins of green 

 and russet whose mazes traverse its surface. But 

 the eyes that so turn backward instinctively to 

 the first beginnings of mundane things are as yet 

 but very few, and we need hardly follow out their 

 speculations further, rather satisfying ourselves 

 with the passing observation that each such pro- 

 longation of our field of vision lays open before 



us wider and yet wider expanses for the exercise 

 of our aesthetic faculties in the regions of the 

 highest and truest sublime. 



Thus we have unraveled a few among the 

 many tangled threads of semi-automatic con- 

 sciousness which go to make .up our idea of 

 beauty in the case of an obelisk in itself, regard- 

 ed without any reference to place or time. Let 

 us now turn our attention awhile to the question 

 of surrounding circumstances, and inquire how 

 far the beauty of every particular obelisk de- 

 pends upon its harmony with neighboring ob- 

 jects. 



There is a Dissenting chapel in Oxford, the 

 four corners of whose roof are decorated — as I 

 suppose the architect fondly hoped — with four 

 obelisks of painted stucco. I have often noticed 

 in passing this chapel that each separate obelisk, 

 regarded apart from its incongruous position, is 

 capable of yielding considerable pleasure on the 

 score of form alone, even in spite of the poor 

 and flimsy material of which it is composed. 

 Some faint odor of Egyptian solidity, some eva- 

 nescent tinge of architectural grace, still clings 

 individually about every one of these brick-and- 

 plaster monstrosities. Shoddy though they are, 

 they nevertheless suggest the notion of massive 

 stone, which custom has associated with the shape 

 in which they are cast. But when the eye turns 

 from each isolated pillar to the whole of which 

 they form a part, the utter incongruity of their 

 position overwhelms one with its absurdity. 

 Wherever else an obelisk ought to be set, it is 

 clear that it should not be set at every angle of a 

 roof. 



On the other hand, as we look away from 

 Appuldurcombe over to the monuments which 

 mark and individualize every ridge in the dis- 

 tance, we see that an obelisk, placed on a com- 

 manding natural height, in a solitary conspicu- 

 ous position, adds to the beauty of certain scenes 

 instead of detracting from it. Certain scenes, I 

 am careful to say ; for there are some wild, rocky 

 districts where such puny decorations only reveal 

 a miserable cockney conceit. But in typical 

 English undulating country — such a country as 

 that which swells on every side of Appuldur- 

 combe — with its gentle alternation of hill and 

 dale, dotted with church-towers and stately man- 

 sions, a monument on every greater ridge is an 

 unmitigated boon. It gives the eye a salient ob- 

 ject on which to rest as it sweeps the horizon. 

 It makes up in part for the want of jutting peaks 

 or glacier-worn bosses. Above all, it harmo- 

 nizes with the "general evidences of cultivation 



