THE SPHINX
AND near the Pyramids, more wondrous and more awful than all else in the
land of Egypt, there sits the lonely Sphinx. Comely the creature is, but
the comeliness is not of this world. The once worshipped beast is a
deformity and a monster to this generation; and yet you can see that
those lips, so thick and heavy, were fashioned according to some ancient
mould of beauty—some mould of beauty now forgotten—forgotten because that
Greece drew forth Cytherea from the flashing foam of the Ægean, and in
her image created new forms of beauty, and made it a law among men that
the short and proudly wreathed lip should stand for the sign and the main
condition of loveliness through all generations to come. Yet still there
lives on the race of those who were beautiful in the fashion of the elder
world, and Christian girls of Coptic blood will look on you with the sad,
serious gaze, and kiss you your charitable hand with the big pouting lips
of the very Sphinx.
Laugh and mock if you will at the worship of stone idols, but mark ye
this, ye breakers of images, that in one regard the stone idol bears
awful semblance of Deity—unchangefulness in the midst of change; the same
seeming will, and intent for ever, and ever inexorable! Upon ancient
dynasties of Ethiopian and Egyptian kings; upon Greek, and Roman; upon
Arab and Ottoman conquerors; upon Napoleon dreaming of an Eastern Empire;
upon battle and pestilence; upon the ceaseless misery of the Egyptian
race; upon keen-eyed travellers—Herodotus yesterday, and Warburton {236}
to-day: upon all and more, this unworldly Sphinx has watched, and watched
like a Providence with the same earnest eyes, and the same sad, tranquil
mien. And we, we shall die, and Islam will wither away, and the
Englishman, leaning far over to hold his loved India, will plant a firm
foot on the banks of the Nile, and sit in the seats of the Faithful, and
still that sleepless rock will lie watching, and watching the works of
the new, busy race with those same sad, earnest eyes, and the same
tranquil mien everlasting. You dare not mock at the Sphinx.