MEMORIALS OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 195

followers of Islam. It is, therefore, reasonable to conclude,
that the fresco at Luxor belongs to the fourth century
of the Christian era,'which began with Constantine and
closed with Theodosius.

As a painting, this fresco has no great merit, though it is
fully equal to certain frescoes I wot of in pulpit recesses in
New York churches, and quite as much in keeping with the
place. But as a monument of early Christianity it is most
interesting, and especially as showing how early Christianity,
under the patronage of emperors and bishops, was perverted
from its original simplicity. St. George and the dragon
-was no great improvement upon Amun, the presiding
divinity of this temple, before it was converted into a
church. Whether viewed in an artistic, a philosophical, or
a religious point of view, I cannot see wherein a picture of
a saint on a red horse, with a troop of retainers, thrusting
his lance into the jaws of a green dragon, is more effective
than a colossal sculpture of a divinity, upon whom the
serpent waits, as the symbol of wisdom and of eternity.
After all, such a Christianity is but heathenism plastered
and painted over at the sacrifice of grandeur and of
power.

After the plaster and the paint, came the mud of the
Nile, and the sand-dust of the mountains, and covered both
temple and church, while the rude Arab built his hovel
upon the buried roof, and squatted cross-legged, smoking his
pipe over the perished grandeur of four empires — Egypt,
Persia, Greece, and Eome — and bowed his head to the
prophet upon the grave alike of pagan and of Christian
idolatry. Now, at length, the hovels are to be swept away
by the pickaxe and basket of the explorer, and the temple
is to be reopened in its original proportions. "When these
excavations shall have been completed, the ruins at Luxor
will be second only to those of Karnac, presenting a con-