Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/107

Rh it is the resonant clang of a small metallic gong or tambourine, stricken by an exceptionally tattered Arab, who has with catlike agility swarmed up the twenty feet or so of pedestal and granite calf and clambered over the thigh of the Colossus into his monstrous lap, in the hollow of which both instrument and musician could easily lie concealed. It was typical of the history of human thought! First, the age of myth; secondly, the age of religious faith; thirdly, the age of philosophic doubt; and lastly, the age of blank and ribald materialism. At one end of the long chain of the centuries a hushed and awe-stricken throng of kneeling worshippers waiting for a sign; at the other, a crowd of globe-trotters gazing upward from the backs of their donkeys, while a ragged Arab clambers on to the knees of the desecrated Memnon to bang a gong for a piastre.

Let us be thankful; however, that the descent from the sublime to the vulgar is no worse than this. Better the weaponless