HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

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events, the remembrance of which, it was feared, might otherwise be lost. Aconsiderable number of them had been erected in Thebes, and other cities, aswas supposed, for this immediate purpose, under the reasonable idea, as hasbeen frequently pointed out, that the simplicity of their forms, and the extremedurability of the substance which composed them, would enable them effectuallyto resist the injuries of time, and the rude assaults of man. Part of the hopeat least was vain ; for many of them had been removed to Rome by Augustus,and others his successors, as being among the most valuable, because they werecertainly the most durable, monuments of their victories and conquests. Onealone, from its superior magnitude, had happily withstood the rapacious vanityof the conquerors, and it remained for the son of Constantine to perfect an act,then deemed almost sacrilegious, which had been commenced under the auspicesand direction of his imperial father. The obelisk in question had been removedby his order from the pedestal on which it had been erected before the templeof the sun at Heliopolis, and was from thence conveyed by floats of im-mense size down the Nile to Alexandria. When it had reached that city, thedeath of Constantine suddenly arrested the prosecution of the design ; but theambition of his son led him to attempt a difficulty of still greater magnitudethan what had suggested itself to the father, and alter the voyage of the immensemass *in question from Constantinople, whither it was originally destined, toRome, the ancient capital of the empire. The obelisk was in length onehundred and fifteen feet; and, according to the most moderate computation,,could not have weighed less than fifteen hundred tons. Such, however, was-

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the species of enthusiasm possessed by Constantius, and such the skill of hismarine architects, that a vessel was purposely built, which conveyed in safetyfrom the Nile to the Tyber this valuable monument of ancient art. Modernshave regarded with wonder and astonishment the conveyance of a rock infi-nitely inferior in magnitude and weight to the mass in question, for a dis-tance, comparatively speaking, contemptible. Yet if such has been the praisebestowed on what is considered the most enlightened age, how much greatera degree of applause did the execution of the project in question merit, ashaving taken place at a time when all science was considered as materiallydeclining from that state of perfe&ion it had once boasted.

No distinct particulars are given relative to this extraordinary vessel, whichmust of necessity, allowing for contingencies, have been superior in tonnageeven to a first rate, of the most enlarged dimensions, built at the present time.

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