RELIGION, EDUCATION, FINE ARTS. 



617 



Nebuchadnezzar, while certain of the Jews be- 

 lieve that it was concealed from the spoilers, 

 and account it among the hidden things which 

 will be revealed by the Messiah. That the old 

 Ark was not contained in the second Temple 

 all Jewish writers agree ; and the absence of 

 the Ark is one of the important particulars in 

 which this Temple was held to be inferior to 

 that of Solomon. It is held by some writers, 

 however, that the Jews could not properly 

 carry on their worship without an Ark, hence 

 that a new one must have been made and 

 placed in the Temple if the original Ark was 

 not recovered. The silence of Ezra, Nehemiah, 

 the Maccabees, and Josephus, who repeatedly 

 mention all the other sacred utensils but never 

 name the Ark, would, nevertheless, seem con- 

 clusive on this subject. 



Mount Ararat. The mountains of 

 Ararat, referred to in the Scriptures, overlook 

 the plain of Araxes in Armenia, and are 

 divided into two peaks, Great Ararat and Lit- 

 tle Ararat. The summit of the former is 17,- 

 323 feet above the level of the sea, and of the 

 latter 13,000 feet. It is believed that the rest- 

 ing place of the Ark was upon some lower 

 portion of this range rather than upon the 

 peaks, and in support of this view is the fact 

 that at an elevation of 6,000 or 7,000 feet the ' 

 climate is temperate, the harvests are quick to 

 mature and abundant ; while the peaks, for 

 more than 3,000 feet below their summits, are 

 continuously covered with ice and snow. 



Obelisks. The word is from the Greek, 

 and signifies a prismatic monument of stone 

 or other material terminating in a pyramidal 

 or pointed top. They are found principally in 

 Egypt, and date back to the most remote pe- 

 riods of antiquity. They were placed before 

 the gateways of the principal temples, and 

 correspond in Egyptian art to the columns of 

 the Romans and stelae of the Greeks, and ap- 

 pear to have been erected to record the honors 

 or triumphs of the monarchs. They are also 

 called " monoliths," being cut out of a sin- 

 gle piece of stone, and have four faces, broader 

 at the base than at the top, the width at the 

 base being one tenth the height of the shaft to 

 the beginning of the pyramidion, or cap, which 

 is also one tenth of the same height. The 

 sides are generally sculptured with one verti- 

 cal line of deeply cut hieroglyphs and repiesen- 

 tations. Some of them were originally capped 

 with bronze or gold. Their height varied 

 from a few inches to upward of one hundred 

 feet, the tallest known being that of Karnuk, 

 which rises to 105 feet 7 inches. A number of 

 them were removed to Rome by Augustus and 

 later emperors, and they were afterwards 

 transported to various cities of Italy and France 



and used to adorn squares and public parks. 

 Among the most notable of these relics of an- 

 cient art are the two known as Cleopatra's 

 Needles, which, from the inscriptions on them, 

 appear to have been set up at the entrance of 

 the Temple of the Sun, in Heliopolis, Egypt, 

 by Thothmes III., about 1831 B. C. Two cen- 

 turies after their erection the stones were nearly 

 covered with carvings, setting out the greatness 

 and achievements of Rameses II. Twenty- 

 three years before the Christian era they were 

 moved from Heliopolis to Alexandria by Au- 

 gustus Caesar and set up in the Caesarium, a 

 palace which now stands, a mere mass of ruins, 

 near the station of the railroad to Cairo. In 

 1819 the Egyptian Government presented one 

 of them to England, but it was not taken to 

 London until 1878. The other was trans- 

 ported to New York in 1880, it having been 

 presented to the United States, and was raised 

 on its pedestal in Central Park, New York, 

 January 22, 1881. The material of these, and 

 indeed of most of the obelisks, is granite 

 brought from Syene, near the first cataract of the 

 Nile. They were cut at the quarry, and floated 

 into and down the Nile during one of the an- 

 nual overflows. 



Lake School. Toward the close of the 

 last century the poets Wordsworth, Coleridge, 

 and Southey took up their residence in the 

 Lake district of Cumberland and Westmore- 

 land, in England, for the purpose, as they 

 said, of seeking the sources of poetical inspira- 

 tion in the simplicity of nature, rather than in 

 the works of their predecessors and the fash- 

 ions of the time. On this account they were 

 given the name of the Lake School by the 

 Edinburgh Review 



Kissing the Book. The custom of 

 swearing on the Bible conies from the ancient 

 Jews, who at first touched their phylacteries 



small cases containing strips of parchment 

 inscribed with texts from the Old Testament 



in taking oaths, and later laid their hands 

 upon the Book of the Law ; and the various 

 customs of taking oaths in different countries 

 have all a similar origin. The early Anglo- 

 Saxons regarded stones as sacred to their gods, 

 therefore laid their hands on a pillar of stone. 

 In mediaeval times it was customary to touch 

 a relic, and this was regarded as giving the 

 oath more sacredness than when sworn upon 

 the missal, or prayer book. Another custom 

 of the same times was swearing by churches. 

 A certain number were mentioned, and the 

 attestor was obliged to go to each one, take 

 the ring of the church door in his hand., and 

 repeat his oath. The custom of kissing the 

 cross to attest an oath 'has been observed in 

 Russia from very early times, and has extended 



