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Rh hall seems like the Pharaonic burial-chamber in the heart of the granite monument of Cheops; and its doors exhale in the most arid and burning weather a breath of damp chilliness, such as smites a mourner in the face when he opens the iron gates of a family vault. So weirdly does it seem to hint of Death and the Past that one cannot help wondering why its corridors are not hypogea and its offices filled with mummies. Without, in sooth, its very shape is ominous. It is, despite its windows and entrances, its pilasters and niches, a huge sarcophagus of granite. Its form is funereal; and against the dismal immensity of its exterior, the openings in its awful walls seem but as carvings upon some ancient stone coffin.

It is in very truth a sarcophagus, wherein repose the mummified remains of that which was once mighty, but not magnanimous; of that which was once rich, yet not