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Upon descending into that mine of holiness, neither of them understood what road they were following, surrounded as they were by the lifeless, cold atmosphere, the mystic shadows, the yellowish lights falling from above, the odours of damp stone, of smoking wicks, of musty draperies; bewildered by visions of chapels, of grottos, of crosses at the foot of dark stairs; losing themselves in their flight down towards the lower caverns, keeping on a level with their own pointed vaults; of marbles the colour of blood, the colour of the night, the colour of snow; of stiff, pious groups with Byzantine features, crowding the walls, the drums of the arches; of little monks and little friars, standing in the window niches, on the pinnacles of the vaults, along the line of the entablatures, each with his venerable aureole.
Nor do I know much about those things, and I am glad that I do not, for if I had devoted my early years of study to plinths, architraves, columns, dados, friezes, pediments, sconces, wainscots, cornices, capitals, entablatures, and such like, how could I have originated my theory of star-drift and how would humanity have been enlightened upon the all-important subjects of the asteroids, the satellites of the star Gamma in Scorpio, the atmosphere on the other side of the moon, the depth of the Martian bottle-neck seas, the probability of the existence of natural gas wells in Jupiter, etc., etc.? If I had been a Linnaeus or a Buffon instead of Reuben Baker, I should have never suffered myself to fall an innocent victim to poison ivy yes, that is true, but at the same time my now famous theory of double stars and my equally famous theory as to the several elements in comets' tails would have been denied to the world.
A faint blue level streak on the far eastern horizon indicated their close proximity to the sea, while certain shapeless irregularities that began to show up against that narrow streak of blue insensibly resolved themselves, as the ship sped onward, into a vast assemblage of enormous columns, isolated and in groups, some still upreared and perpendicular, others prostrate and broken, the remains of great temples and other buildings, that, judging from the elaborate and splendid carved work of the ruined entablatures, fallen capitals, crumbling arches, massive cornices, and mutilated statues, must, long ages ago, have formed part of a city of extraordinary extent and magnificence.
What the Austrians especially admired in the palace of Schoenbrunn was a grove, containing what they called the Ruins, and a lake with a fountain springing from the midst, and several small cascades flowing from it; by this lake were the ruins of an aqueduct and a temple, fallen vases, tombs, broken bas-reliefs, statues without heads, arms, or limbs, while limbs, arms, and heads lay thickly scattered around; columns mutilated and half-buried, others standing and supporting the remains of pediments and entablatures; all combining to form a scene of beautiful disorder, and representing a genuine ancient ruin when viewed from a short distance.
After a short ride I reached the borders of the plain of Ephesus, across which I passed along a road rudely constructed, and raised above the marsh, consisting of broken pillars, entablatures, and inscriptions, at the end of which two other paths diverge; one strikes off to the left, and leads over the Cayster by a bridge above the castle of Aiasaluk the other, leading to the right, or west, goes directly to Scala Nuova, the ancient Neapolis.
A distinctive feature is the simple iron fence along the street with two wrought-iron arched gates, as beautiful as any in America, hung from high, ball-topped stone posts. Imposing in its simplicity, the interior is generally Doric in character, but the Ionic entablatures over the side sections of the beautiful Palladian chancel window reflect the treatment outside.
The public buildings, whose ruins are now forests, as it were, of white fluted columns, and which then supported entablatures, loaded with sculptures, were seen on all sides over the roofs of the houses. This was the excellence of the ancients.
The people of the Perigord, the truffle-hunting people, need never seek civilization nor fear its death, for they have its symbol, and a sacrament, as it were, to promise them that the arteries of the life of Europe can never be severed. The arches and the entablatures of this solemn thing are alive.
He had availed himself, in this heavy undertaking, of the experience of a certain wandering eastern mechanic, who, by exhibiting a few soiled plates of English architecture, and talking learnedly of friezes, entablatures, and particularly of the composite order, had obtained a very undue influence over Richards taste in everything that pertained to that branch of the fine arts. Not that Mr.
The fine humanity of it was everywhere present, and mingled not only with such grand and heroic lines as those of the sloping pediments and long-drawn entablatures of the Parthenon and Theseion, bending them into curves so subtilely modulated that our coarse perceptions did not perceive the variations from the dead straight lines till the careful admeasurements of Penrose and Cockerel and their confrères of France assured us of the fact, not only did it make these enormous harp-strings vibrate with deep human soul-music, but there is not an abstract line in moulding, column, or vase, belonging to old Greece or the islands of the Aegean or Ionia or the colonies of Italy, which does not have the same intensity of meaning, the same statuesque Life of thought.
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