The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1894-12-01
CITY OF THE HUNDRED GATES.
The Great Temple Of Thebes w.Gid Hold
-Four Notre DANES.


The ordinary tourist is likely enough to
emerge from the temple Of Karna& stupe-
fed by that mere vastness Of scalc-thoso
Titanic proportions Of architecture which
ranked II ages ago, when it was intact or
nearly so and which rank it today, when
1t is a ruin, among the wonders of the
world 1t is not the mere area of the
mighty building which Expresses 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 enor-
nous girth, or their forestlike array. 1ud
think of those huge pillars that lose them
selves in the upper gloom at Seville ana
of the endlcssly intcrsecting avenues OF the
mosque of Cordova, and you feel that in
these two points, at any rate karnak, IL
1t be not exactly rivalcd, is not so very Tar
ahead
1t is the astonishing successful combi-
nation of all the widely differing architec-
tural effects which are scvorally produced
by number, by size, by proportion, by dis.
position, by the impcrious influence OF
mass and the winning appeal of perspec-
tive-it Is the combination of these into a
phalanx of forces to he launched irrcsisti-
| bly against the senses and the soul of the
beholdCr that makes the great temple what
1t is. Those Atlantcan columns, which
were built surely to uphold the heavens
| themselves, and which seem to bear up
| their enormous surmounting monoliths as
giant would lift n child, have no sugges-
| ton of unwiChlincss in their colossal size,
| leave no sense of excess in their multltu-
dinous number. The calyX capital into
which each column blossoms would take
10 men to span its monstrous girth; yet il
opens out against the blue Egyptian sky
above its roofless head as lightly as If 1t
were the finest Gothic tracery above an
English cathedral nave.
Everywhere the feeling of absolute fit
ness, of perfect proportion redeems this
majestic hall of the offense of mere Brob.
dingnageric, and whether the eye dwells
upon the parts or sweeps the whole, wheth
or it travels through the endless alleys OF
this forest of stone and rests by turns upor
base and shaft and flowerlike capital of it,
component columns, or pauses to perust
walls, deep craven with colossal gods anc
kings and still glowing here and there witt
the undying colors of 1000 years the ar
tistic taste is alike satisfied. SO admirable
indeed are the proportions of the who'll
that the stupendous bulk of its constitu
ent parts Is hardly realized Derange
ment of their symmetry seems necessar,
to enable one to measure it in all its full
awfulness, as we do there, where one o
these gigantic pillars has fallen and bow
its hundreds of tons of weight and the su
perincumbent burden of its huge plinth
dislocated and askew, toward one of it
fellows. The cause Of this portentous dis
placement no man knows but the vagu
tradition that ascribes. it to the conquero
Cambyses may be safely dismissed. N
mortal hands, relying solely on the strength
of human muscles and the only know
forces of an age that knew not of gunpow
der, could ever have done the work of in
choate destruction which is above GU
heads. Nothing short of an earthquak
could have thrust one of those trcmendou
plinths into the position of that overhang
ing horror. London Telegraph