Photographic views of Egypt, past and present . leisurely around it, andtranslate into our own language, or vivify into presentactual scenes, the processions, the battles, the ceremonies,the religious offerings, and the state displays sculptured onits walls and columns, and for the most part still legible, webehold all Egypt move before us as in a panorama, whosescenes and actors are instinct with life. This animated re-production of the sculptures which I attempted when on theground, I would hope to convey to the reader by followingin course the histories here written on the stone. I stood in
Photographic views of Egypt, past and present . leisurely around it, andtranslate into our own language, or vivify into presentactual scenes, the processions, the battles, the ceremonies,the religious offerings, and the state displays sculptured onits walls and columns, and for the most part still legible, webehold all Egypt move before us as in a panorama, whosescenes and actors are instinct with life. This animated re-production of the sculptures which I attempted when on theground, I would hope to convey to the reader by followingin course the histories here written on the stone. I stood in Karnac, under the light of the full moon. Itwas an hour for silence, and we enjoined this upon eachother, and gave ourselves to solitary musing. The cuckoo,that had wooed us with his note as we reposed under thegreat pillars in the sultry noon, had gone to nestle with hismate; and the myriad birds thai by day had fluttered alongthe corridors, had hid themselves in the crevices of thecapitals. Even the owl that hooted as we entered, was DISSOLVING VIEWS. 219 Only the moon was there, threading the avenues with silverfootsteps, and holding her clear light that we might readthe sculptured chronicles of kings. We sat down in the centre of the grand avenue. Twelvemajestic pillars on either hand towered along its length, andseemed, as of old, to support an arch of azure studded withstars. The dismantled towers of the grand entrance,whose bases stand like pyramids truncated to sustain thefirmament, grew more gigantic in the shadow of thecolumns, while their once massive gates, uncovered by thehand of time, seemed only to have lifted up their heads tolet the King of Glory in. In the avenue that crossed besideour seat — one of twelve, having each ten columns of hugedimensions — at either extremity, a column had fallen cross-wise against its neighbor, carrying with it its fragment ofthe stone roof, and there it hung almost ethereal in the stillmoonlight — a symbol of the st
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1850, bookidphotographic, bookyear1856
