My Library

“ ‘Now, mark what I say: Proof, positive proof exists that this palace, itself so imperial, so grand, so immeasurably superior to aught of the kind attempted by man in this “Progressive age (?)” was, after all, but a mere addition, an inconsiderable wing, a sort of appendage, a kind of out-house to one of the main edifices of that immortal city. “ ‘No man knows, or for four thousand years has known, who built A����—who laid the stones of K�����—who cut marble monsters weighing two hundred and thirteen tons out of a single block of stone, and that stone so hard that no modern steel will cut, or even scratch it! “ ‘Railways! steam power! wheels! pulleys! screws! wedges! inclined planes! levers, did you say? “ ‘Sir, all these things existed long ago, else how could solid obelisks of five hundred tons weight have been transported a distance exceeding one thousand one hundred miles, from the mountains where they were hewn, to the places where they were set up, and where we find them to-day? “ ‘Without all the appliances enumerated, how could these monuments, some of which measure eighty-nine feet in length, have been erected after they were brought; and take notice, that some of these stone monsters were placed upon pedestals, themselves ten or twelve