Custer weekly chronicle. [volume] (Custer City, S.D.) 1890-1931, 1894-07-07
CITY or THE HUNDRED GATES.
The Great Temple OF Thebes Would Hold
-Four Notre Danes.

In any case the ordinary tourist is
likely enough to emerge from the tenn
pie of Karnak stupefied by that mere
vastness of scale, those Titanic proper
tons of architecture which ranked il
ages ago. when ii was intact or nearly
so, and which rank it TO day, when it is
a ruin, among the wonders of the world.
Ii is not the mere area of the mighty
building which Expresses one. though
four cathedrals of Eotre Dame would
go, il is said, into the Hypostyle Hall.
Nor is it merely the altitude TO which
the towering columns mount. vi theii
enormous girth, or their forest-like AZ.
ray. You think of those huge pillars
that lose themselves in the upper gloom
at Seville, and of the endlessly inter-
secting venue of the Mosque of Cor
dova, and you feel that in these two
points, at any rate, Karnak, if il be not
exactly riyaled, is not so very far ahead.
1t Is the astonishing successful combi-
nation of all the widely differing archi-
tectural effects which are s~everally pro-
duced By number, by size, by proper.
ton. by disposition. by the imperious
influence of mass, and the winning ap-
peal Of perspective-it is the combina-
ton of these into a pnalanX Of forces to
be launched irres' iibly against the
senses and the SOU Of the behOlder that
makes the great temple what it is.
Those A~tlantean columns, which were
built, surely, to uphold the heavens
themselves, and which seem TO bear up
their enormous surrounding monoliths
as a giant would lift a child, have no
suggestion Of unwieldiness in their
colossal size. leave no sense of excess in
their multitudinous number. The calyx-
SONS would take ten men to span cts
monstrous girth; yet it opens out against
the blue Egyptian sky above its r~oofiess
head as lightly as if it were the finest
Gothic tracery above an English cathe-
dral nave.
Everywhere the feeling of absolute
fitness, of perfect proportion redeems
this majestic hall of the offense of mere
Brobdin"nagerie; and whether the eve
dwells upon the parts or sweeps the
whole-whether it travels through the
endless alleys of this forest of stone and
rests by turns upon base and shaft and
| hOWNA-hhC NaPAedA "a Ao NFAhp'ANhh -
umns, or pauses to perlse walls, deep
craven with colossal gods and kings,
and still glowing here and there with
the undying colors of 1000 years, the
artistic taste is alike satisfied. So adj
mirable, indeed. are the proportions OF
the whole that the ~stupendous bulk OF
its constituent parts is hardly realized.
arrangement of their symmetry seems
necessary TO enable one TO measure it in
all its full awfulness. rs we do there,
where one OF these gigantic pillars has
fallen and bows its hundreds of ton of
weight and the superintendent burden
of its huge plinth, dislocated and askew,
toward one of its fellows. The cause of
this p%ortentous displacement no nan
knows; but the vague tradition that as
cribes il to the conqueror Cambyses,
may be safely dismissed. No mortal
! hands, relying solely on the strength of
human muscles and the only known
forces of an age that knew not of gun
powder, could eve have done the work
| OF inchoate destruction which is above
our heads. Nothing short of an earth
quake could have thrust one of those
tremendous plinths into the position of
hat overhanging horror.-H. d. Trail
in London Telegraph.