Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/99

architecture which ranked it ages ago, when it was intact or nearly so, and which rank it to-day, when it is a ruin, among the Wonders of the World. It is not the mere area of the mighty building which oppresses one, though four Cathedrals of Notre Dame would go, it is said, into the Hypostyle Hall. Nor is it merely the altitude to which the towering columns mount, or their enormous girth, or their forest-like array. You think of those huge pillars that lose themselves in the upper gloom at Seville, and of the endlessly intersecting avenues of the Mosque of Cordova; and you feel that in these two points, at any rate, Karnak, if it be not exactly rivalled, is not so very far ahead. It is the astonishing successful combination of all the widely differing architectural effects which are severally produced by number, by size, by proportion, by disposition, by the imperious influence of mass, and the winning appeal of perspective—it is the combination of these into a phalanx of forces to be launched irresistibly against

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