The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-02-12
IT IS A DISAPPOINTMENT.
THE HKPOSTILE OF KARNAR NOT
 WHAT TT IS SAID TO BE.

An Observing Traveller Describes it as a
 Fraud and Not Worth the Time or Ex-
 pense of a vislt-one Temple is Like
 Another.
 Jan. 16. 1895.
 To the Editor of the JOURNAL AND COURIER:
 When man has travelled hundreds and hundreds of miles up and down the Nile and has seen all the regular things and a great many irregular and out of the way ones, he is in a position, or ought ito be, to bring to the subject the powers of judgment and criticism with which nature may have endowed him.
 Why is it that so many people are disappointed; are going about openly proclain1ing the whole thing a "sell," swearing away at Cook & Son. Linn ited," and vowing that the English gov ernment is responsible and should re- fund?
 A careful and judicial review of the whole thing compels the admission that there are grounds for complaint.
 II VT llEoldILCG, ny pOSlIlS Ildl lo e technical term used to describe hall of which the roof is sustained by pill lars or columns and of which the roof is, moreover, flat. A gorhic vault is sustainedby pillars; but a gorhic build ing is not a hypostile hall. A hall is hall. Everybody knows what hall is. A hall must have floor, roof and walls. It is as easy to imagine hall without a floor as a hall without a roof or cell ing A hypostfle hall must be hall to begin with; after that it may be as hypostile as it chooses. The walls pill lars, or columns rest on the floor and support the roof and ceiling. If an architect started out to build hall and stopped short at the floor; he would not be the creator of the hall. If he built floor and walls, columns or pillars, and did not add the roof, he would still fail of having finished a hall. He couldn't possibly build roof without something supporting it. That is the commonest kind of common sense. If the most per- feet of roofs lay on the ground, the boldest of cities would hesitate to call it a roof. He might say it was going to be roof, but he would not say it was one.
 With these simple and elementary ideas of a hypostile hall, you approach the hypustile of Karnak. Your mind is all aglow. Your anticipatory nerves are excited to the utmost. They are thrill Ting and throbbing as the top string of a piano when Rubenstein has been pounding the corresponding key. You recall everything you have read on the subject. Your exalted memory for once doesn't fail you. You can see the ex- act German, French and English texts l of the criticism you read scores of years ago. They stand out vividly as if print | ed with letters of fire.
 Well, what do you see? You see a lot of gigantic columns iii various stag l es of ruin, standing as closely to one | another as trees in a primeval forest. l Only about one-third of the original | number are standing, and of those | standing not one is in condition to | carry it's share of the weight of the roof. Every column looks as if by mistake it had swallowed an overdose of dyna- mite. And the outside walls, where they are standing, look as if they had had unfortunate encounters with squadrons of advancing earthquakes. Large connecting. sections of the temple have entirely disappeared. The pylons and propylons look as if modern artillery had been using them for targets. There Is no more idea conveyed of the majestic gloom of a hypostile hall than if you had sailed up the Connecticut and were looking at Portland quarries from the shore of Middletown. As a clever Bos- ton lady put it: "It looks like Boston after the fire" You may be astonished at the mass of material brought togeth