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CCCCXXXIV. The merit of a work of art consists in fulfilling the design with which it was undertaken. In buildings set apart for the worship of God, or,—where God is unknown,—for the worship of those elements, stars, or other created beings, which have usurped his place, the object must evidently be to awaken in the mind ideas analogous to those which, we may suppose, the visible presence of the Deity would occasion. The ancient Persians are said to have thought no temple worthy of God, but that in which he has graciously placed us, adorned with all the magnificence of nature, and lighted up, in eternal succession, by the sun, and moon, and stars. Philosophically speaking, their opinion cannot be gainsayed. But man is an imitative animal, and loves to taste, in a certain degree, the pleasures of creating; and this he seems to do, when, embodying the original archetype in his mind, he gives birth to forms which previously had no existence. If his conceptions have been purified by religion or philosophy from the dross of superstition, he will seek in erecting a temple, to copy, to the utmost of his power, the harmony, beauty, and majesty so resplendently visible in the great temple of the universe. This endeavour is strikingly observable in the Gothic cathedrals of our ancestors, where the slender aspiring columns, the "embowed roof," stretching over us like the vault of the sky, the vast painted windows, the lofty cloisters, the fretwork, the tracery of stone, the endless variety of chapels, recesses, niches, balconies, galleries, and arcades, beheld in the "dim religious light" which

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pervades those sacred edifices, and filled, peradventure, with the sound of anthems, or the pealing notes of the organ, seem naturally to impel our thoughts heavenward, purifying them as they rise. By the religious edifices of Greece a train of impressions, in many respects different, was produced; for in those the object which architecture proposed to itself appears to have been the present enjoyment arising from the contemplation of beauty, severe grandeur, majestic proportion, and the most exquisite harmony of design and execution. The feeling of religion, therefore, though not wholly absent, too closely resembling the voluptuous intellectual delight which the mimetic arts, under the direction of genius, diffuse over the soul, the divine breath that swept over the minds of the worshippers, partook less of piety than of poetry. It moved, it enlivened, it vivified, but it did not elevate.

CCCCXXXV. Egypt possessed a religion peculiar to itself, which, if it afforded glimpses of the soul's immortality and of a world beyond the grave, likewise contained dogmas material, degrading, absurd, and pre-eminently gloomy: and the character of its belief is indelibly impressed upon its temples. Many of their structures, when approached between rows of sphynxes or colossal statues and obelisks, or through the lofty gateways of enormous propylæa, have, no doubt, an air of extraordinary grandeur; but it is the grandeur of a fortress, or of the palace of some mighty

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barbaric king, not of the house of God. The character of everything around concentrates and fixes our ideas upon earth, or conducts them, by a rapid transition, to hell. If the Dives and Afrits of Oriental romance had erected temples to Ahriman, or the Evil Principle, they would doubtless have selected for their model those of Egypt, in which vast proportions, and gorgeous magnificence, are combined with every image and every contrivance calculated to quench in man the wish to be great and good, and destroy all modesty and purity in women. But there is deformity in the mere architectural proportions. If we imagine a human being who, from the huge dimensions of his limbs, must have been designed to reach the height of a hundred feet, but, from some constitutional defect, does not exceed twenty yards, we shall form a just idea of an Egyptian temple, whose elevation seldom or never corresponds with the length and breadth. An example will render this more palpable. The great temple of Karnak measured, we are told, twelve hundred feet in length. But what was its height? Exclusive of the propylon,-less lofty, perhaps, than that of Edfoo,-it did not exceed seventy feet, or one seventeenth of the length.-Nearly the same imperfection is observable in that of Luxor, and every other large structure in Egypt; which gives them all the appearance of buildings sunk half way into the earth by their enormous weight. The accumulation of sand and rubbish, and the constant rising of the soil, have, moreover, contributed to enhance this

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original defect; an unfortunate circumstance, for which, of course, the architects are not answerable.

CCCCXXXVI. On the question respecting the antiquity of these edifices I make no pretensions whatever to decide. Those who profess to have discovered the key to the ancient sacred language attribute to them a prodigious duration; but if any real progress has been made in the science of hieroglyphics, which we may, perhaps, be permitted to doubt, it would yet seem far too limited to enable its possessors to speak positively in a matter of this kind. Judging from the style of architecture and sculpture observable in all the Egyptian temples, it is my opinion that the most ancient and the most modern were erected within the compass of a few hundred years of each other. Few, perhaps, if any, date beyond the age of Cambyses. The prophet Jeremiah, foretelling the conquest of Egypt by the Persians, says "He shall break also the images of Beth-Shemesh that is in the land of Egypt; and the houses of the gods of the Egyptians shall he burn with fire." And profane historians, narrating the actions of the son of Cyrus, observe that, to evince his utter contempt for the Egyptians, he slew Apis their godt, destroyed their temples, and carried away their idols. The arguments in favour of the immense antiquity of these edifices, derived from

* Chap. xliii. v. 13. Beth-Shemesh may probably signify "the house of Chemmis:" i. e. Beit Chemmis. Previous to this conflagration, the Egyptians would therefore appear to have made use of timber in their religious edifices.

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the rise of the soil, appear unworthy of serious consideration. If their foundations are now greatly below the level of the ground, it is because of the continual accumulation of dust and rubbish, not from the deposits of mud left by the Nile, which does not overflow the sites of the ancient cities. The temple of Déndera, situated on the skirts of the desert, seems to be more deeply sunk in the earth than that of Medinet Habou*, Luxor, or Karnak; and the same thing may be said of the fane of Apollo at Edfoo. Yet the cause of the greater accumulation of soil around these two buildings is not referrible to their superior antiquity, since they are confessedly of a comparatively late era; and many of the mud huts of Mitraheni or Benisooëf are still more strikingly overtopped by the rising mounds of earth and ruins. This mode of reasoning might not be so fallacious if applied to the vocal statue, or the obelisk of Heliopolis, which stand in the open plain, subject to the overflowing of the Nile. How much of the obelisk has been buried by time we could not conjecturet; for as it stood, at the time of our visit, in the midst of young corn, excavation was impracticable; but with Memnon's statues the case is different, for so much of their pedestals, and the figures sculptured on them, is visible, that we may certainly infer but a very trifling rise has taken place in the plain of Thebes since they were set up. The temple

Excepting a small portion of the cella, or whatever we choose to call the western extremity of that edifice.

+ Pococke, presuming it to be one of the obelisks of Sochis, originally seventy feet in height, calculates the rise of the soil at seven feet and a half; but he made no excavations. Vol. i. p. 23.