[411] “If perfection in art consist in affording continued pleasure, its achievements, when contemplating this column, must be deemed insurpassable. A Corinthian capital of 10 feet is poised on a shaft of 67½ feet, the latter resting on a base of 21½ feet; the whole rises to a height of nearly 100 feet” (Head).
[412] “Or the obelisks, commonly called Cleopatra’s Needles, one alone is now standing; the other, lying down, measures seven feet square at the base, and sixty-six feet in length. They are so well known, that it is not necessary to give a very particular description of them” (Clarke).
[413] In confirmation of this, you will find at p. 14 of Seguin’s Thessalonian Coins, the impression of a man with a hammer, as above, in one hand, and a key in the other, and the word Cabeiros as the inscription.
[414] On all public occasions displays of this kind are still indulged in the East. The floralia of the Romans were adopted from the Easterns. “Every person, male and female, had festoons depending from the top of the cap down one side of the head. These were composed of the flowers of the wild rose and hawthorn, and other beautiful kinds, which, while they set off the headpiece of the lieges, literally perfumed the air wherever they went” (Archer).
[415] Sketches of India Field Sports. Dr. Shaw and Mr. Forbes are even more conclusive.
[416] P. 338.
[417] If you examine the Tuath-de-danaan crosses with a minute eye, you will find this exposition irrefutably verified. Though they all have the traces of the Budhist sculpture, they have also the marks of obliteration; and no one of them to a greater extent than this at Finglas, where it is known that St. Patrick principally resided. Yet even this retains indistinct evidence of snakes, etc.
“The body of the snake is not only capable of flexion, but of close and intimate application to every rugged inequality of a tree on the earth; and this faculty is the result of its minute subdivisions. The body of the snake is never bent in acute angles, but always in flowing easy curves or circles. From each of those distant bones, so multitudinous in their number, which form the vertebral column (and in one species of Pythra we have counted 256, exclusive of those composing the tail), a rib arises from each side, and both together form a great portion of a circle, so as to embrace nearly the whole circumference of the body. These ribs are restricted to the vertebræ of the body only; they do not arise from those of the tail.”
[418] Travels in Northern India.
[419] Oliver Cromwell with his army of locusts.