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firmly depended, that induced him to give immediate orders for 

 the erection of a city to be called after his own name. Of this 

 celebrated city, which, for eighteen centuries, continued the glory 

 of the East, and, from its opulence, was denominated the Golden, 

 Alexander himself projected the magnificent plan, and marked the 

 extended boundaries. It is said to have originally resembled, in Before Christ, 



* 332. 



form, a Macedonian mantle, having one vast street a hundred feet 

 in breadth, and no less than five miles in length, open through its 

 whole extent to the salubrious Etesian breezes blowing from the 

 Mediterranean that bounded it on the north, while the great lake 

 Mareotis constituted its southern limit This noble street was inter- 

 sected by others of equal breadth and beauty, running in parallel 

 lines, forming, at their junction, extensive squares, and crowded 

 with lofty edifices, temples, baths, amphitheatres, while walls of 

 amazing height and thickness, flanked at regular distances with 

 strong bastions, surrounded this intended metropolis of the commer- 

 cial world. Its excellent port he caused to be cleansed and deepened, 

 but it was reserved for his successors, the Ptolemies, to add the stu- 

 pendous mole that joined Alexandria to the isle of Pharos, and 

 divided the spacious harbour into two, as well as that majestic 

 Pharos itself, erected entirely of white marble, which, for beauty 

 and grandeur, had no rival, and was justly enumerated among the 

 wonders of the ancient world. Its superb palace, its famous mu- 

 seum, its vast gymnasium, its noble library, though not all the 

 immediate work of Alexander, but probably exactly finished by 

 Ptolemy Lagus according to the plan of his sovereign, his friend, 

 and his brother, all combined to render Alexandria a lasting monu- 

 ment of the towering genius of its founder, while it exhibited in- 

 dubitable testimony of the grand commercial designs, which he had 

 thus early formed, but which unfortunately he lived not to 

 mature. 



