EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE.

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remarkable for their vastness and the massiveness of the stone used in their construction. This does not seem to have been aimed at by the American builders, Among all these ruins we did not see a stone worthy of being laid on the walls of an Egyptian temple. The largest single blocks were the "idols" or "obelisks," as they have been called, of Copan and Quirigua; but in Egypt stones large as these are raised to a height of twenty or thirty feet and laid in the walls, while the obelisks which stand as ornaments at the doors, towering, a sin, gle stone, to the height of ninety feet, so overpower them by their grandeur, that, if imitations, they are the feeblest ever attempted by aspiring men.

Again: columns are a distinguishing feature of Egyptian architecture, grand and massive, and at this day towering above the sands, startling the wondering traveller in that mysterious country. There is not a temple on the Nile without them; and the reader will bear in mind, that among the whole of these ruins not one column has been found. If this architecture had been derived from the Egyptian, so striking and important a feature would never have been thrown aside. The dromos, pronaos, and adytum, all equally characteristic of Egyptian temples, are also here entirely wanting,

Next, as to sculpture. The idea of resemblance in this particular has been so often and so confidently expressed, and the drawings in these pages have so often given the same impression, that I almost hesitate to declare the total want of similarity. What the differences are I will not attempt to point out; but, that the reader may have the whole subject before him at once, I have introduced a plate of Egyptian sculpture taken from Mr. Catherwood's portfolio. The subject on the right is from the side of the great monument at Thebes known VOL. II.-3 K