intellectual culture is still greatly indebted to Alexandria, and especially for the patronage she accorded to the works of Aristotle.  Whilst the speculative mind was in later centuries allured by the supernatural, and the discussion of the criterion of truth and the principles of morality ended in the mystic doctrines of Neo-Platonism, the practical tendencies of the great Alexandrine scholars were instrumental in laying the foundations of science.  To the Museion were attached the libraries:  one in the Museion itself, and another in the quarter Rhacotis in the temple of Serapis, which contained about 700,000 volumes.  New books were continually acquired.  The librarians had orders to pay any sum for the original of the works of great masters.  The Ptolemies were not only patrons of learning but were themselves highly educated.  Ptolemy Soter was an historian of no mean talent, and his son Philadelphus, as a pupil of the poet Philetas and the philosopher Strabo, was a man of great learning.  Ptolemy III. was a mathematician, and Ptolemy Philopator, who had erected and dedicated a temple to Homer, was the writer of a tragedy.  The efforts of the Ptolemies to bring the two nationalities, Hellenic and Egyptian, nearer to each other, to mould and weld them into one if possible, to mix and mingle the two civilisations and thus strengthen their own power, was greatly aided by the national character of the Greeks and the political position of the Egyptians.

The Greeks found in Egypt a national culture and especially a religious system.  The pliant Hellenic genius could not remain insensible to that ancient and marvellous civilisation with its sphinxes and hieroglyphics, its pyramids and temples, its learning and thought, so strangely perplexing and interesting to the Greek mind.  Not only the magnificence of Egyptian art, the majesty of her temples and palaces, but the wisdom of her social and political institutions impressed the conquerors.  They made themselves acquainted with the institutions of the country; they studied its history and took an interest in its religion and mythology.  Similarly, the conquered Egyptians, who had preferred the Macedonian ruler to their Persian oppressors, exhibited a natural desire to learn the languages and habits of their rulers, to make themselves acquainted with their knowledge and phases of thought, and art and science.  The interest of the Greeks was strengthened by this, and the Egyptians were made to see their history in its proper light.  To this endeavour we owe the history of Manetho.  But, in spite of the policy of the Ptolemies, the impressionable nature of the Hellenic character and the interest of the Egyptians,—­in spite of all that tended to a fusion of Hellenism and Orientalism, it never came to a proper amalgamation.  The contradiction between the free-thought philosophy of Greece, which was fast outgrowing its polytheism and Olympian worship, and the deeply rooted sacerdotal system of the Pharaonian