life into the stiff and motionless limbs.  With great energy and determination he set himself to accomplish the task.  Applying himself, first of all, to the restoration of what was decayed and ruined, he re-established the canals and the roads, encouraged agriculture, favoured the development of the population.  The ruined towns were gradually repaired and rebuilt, and vast efforts made everywhere to restore, and even to enlarge and beautify the sacred edifices.  At Memphis, Psamatik built the great southern portal which gave completeness to the ancient temple of the god Phthah, and also constructed a grand court for the residence of the Apis-Bulls, surrounded by a colonnade, against the piers of which stood colossal figures of Osiris, from eighteen to twenty feet in height.  At Thebes he re-erected the portions of the temple of Karnak, which had been thrown down by the Assyrians; at Sais, Mendes, Heliopolis, and Philae he undertook extensive works.  The entire valley of the Nile became little more than one huge workshop, where stone-cutters and masons, bricklayers and carpenters, laboured incessantly.  Under the liberal encouragement of the king and of his chief nobles, the arts recovered themselves and began to flourish anew.  The engraving and painting of the hieroglyphics were resumed with success, and carried out with a minuteness and accuracy that provokes the admiration of the beholder.  Bas-reliefs of extreme beauty and elaboration characterize the period.  There rests upon some of them “a gentle and almost feminine tenderness, which has impressed upon the imitations of living creatures the stamp of an incredible delicacy both of conception and execution.”  Statues and statuettes of merit were at the same time produced in abundance.  The “Saitie art”, as that of the revival under the Psamatiks has been called, is characterized by an extreme neatness of manipulation in the drawings and lines, the fineness of which often reminds us of the performances of a seal-engraver, by grace, softness, tenderness, and elegance.  It is not the broad, but somewhat realistic style of the Memphitic period, much less the highly imaginative and vigorous style of the Ramesside kings; but it is a style which has quiet merits of its own, sweet and pure, full of refinement and delicacy.

[Illustration:  BAS-RELIEFS OF THE TIME OF PSAMATIK I.]

Egypt was thus rendered flourishing at home; her magnificent temples and other edifices put off their look of neglect; her cities were once more busy seats of industry and traffic; her fields teemed with rich harvests; her population increased; her whole aspect changed.  But the circumstances of the time led Psamatik to attempt something more.  His employment of Greek and Carian mercenaries naturally led him on into an intimacy with foreigners, and into a regard and consideration for them quite unknown to previous Pharaohs, and in contradiction to ordinary Egyptian prejudices.  Egypt was the China of the Old World, and had for