It was gazing out over the ocean of Time--over lines of century-waves which, further and further receding, closed nearer and nearer together, and blended at last into one unbroken tide, away toward the horizon of remote antiquity.

It was thinking of the wars of departed ages; of the empires it had seen created and destroyed; of the nations whose birth it had witnessed, whose progress it had watched, whose annihilation it had noted; of the joy and sorrow, the life and death, the grandeur and decay, of five thousand slow revolving years.

It was the type of an attribute of man--of a faculty of his heart and brain.

It was MEMORY--RETROSPECTION--wrought into visible, tangible form.

All who know what pathos there is in memories of days that are accomplished and faces that have vanished--albeit only a trifling score of years gone by--will have some appreciation of the pathos that dwells in these grave eyes that look so steadfastly back upon the things they knew before History was born--before Tradition had being--things that were, and forms that moved, in a vague era which even Poetry and Romance scarce know of--and passed one by one away and left the stony dreamer solitary in the midst of a strange new age, and uncomprehended scenes.
The Sphynx is grand in its loneliness; it is imposing in its magnitude; it is impressive in the mystery that hangs over its story.