The walls on all sides were covered with gigantic figures, quite wonderful to behold in their serene ugliness; but awakening no more human sympathy than the singular figures we saw on the Chinese-patterned plate stuck over the doorway in Nubia. The exaggeration that is usually indulged in with reference to Egyptian art is such, that if we were to attempt to describe these sculptured ornaments according to our own impressions, we should run the risk of being accused of caricature. We do not mean on this temple only, but on all the temples of Egypt. Now and then a face of beautiful expression, though still with heavy features, is met with; but in general both countenance and figure are flat, out of proportion, and stiff in drawing, whilst the highest effort of colouring consists of one uniform layer, without tints or gradation. Perhaps amidst the many thousand subjects found in tombs and temples between Philœ and Cairo, one or two may be treated with nearly as much skill as was exhibited by the Italian painters before the time of Cimabueexcept that scarcely an attempt even is made at grouping or composition. Nor must it be supposed that the Egyptian school was in course of development. They seem to have arrived at the highest excellence of which their intellect was capable. Their outlines, though in general excessively mean, are very firmly drawn; and they represent details with a laborious ingenuity worthy of the Chinese. Some enthusiastic antiquarians describe with great animation the scenes of public and domestic life which occur in such profusion; and, book in hand, we have admired and wondered atnot the genius of the artists, but that of their historians. How, in fact, do the Egyptians really proceed? They want to represent a hunt, for example: so they sketch a man with
his legs extended like compasses, armed with a huge bow, from which he is in the act of discharging a monstrous arrow. Then close by they draw, without any attempt at perspective, a square enclosure, in which they set down higgledy-piggledy a variety of animals, some of them sufficiently like nature to allow their species to be guessed at. In one corner, perhaps, is a sprig of something intended for a tree, and intimating that all this is supposed to take place in a wood. This hieroglyphical or algebraical method of 'taking off' the occurrences of human life is applied with almost unvarying uniformity. Such was high art among the Egyptians; whom it is now the fashion to cry up at the expense of those impertinent Grecians, who presumed to arrive at excellence, almost at perfection, in so many departments.
However, the vast size of the figures on the front of the propylæa of Edfou does certainly, in spite of their awkwardness, produce an imposing effect, especially at the time we first beheld them, when the gray twilight had descended upon the earth, and night was already thickening beneath the heavy portico. We walked, or rather slid, down into the great court. It was surrounded with massive columns loaded with ornament, and looked grave in the extreme, in spite of the heaps of rubbish that encumbered it, and enabled us to ascend to the summit of the colonnade at one corner. The architecture of the Egyptians was certainly sublime. Their style anticipated and surpassed the Gothic in majesty, though certainly not in beauty. Their massive walls, Cyclopean columns, dim porticos, gloomy chambers, produce even now all the terrific impressions they could have desired. Perhaps the crumbling ruins which encumber the roof, the wretched remains of Christian buildings once erected on this temple as on a rock for security, rather heighten than diminish its effect. We walked round a vast wall still in perfect preservation, which encircles the windowless parallelogram formed by the temple, and reaches about half its height, leaving a narrow court like a moat all round; and we felt that these religious edifices had been fortresses likewise, and that temporal as well as spiritual terrors had of yore surrounded them. When shall we be able to wring forth the secret of that ancient time? When will its history cease to be a myth, its kings become real personages, its civilisation something better than a romance? As yet, nothing has been discovered except a string of disjointed facts, which scholars arrange each after his own fashion, and which no more resemble any other known series of human actions than the accidental combination of the kaleidoscope does this living and breathing world. We want a key, and a key has not been found. So men go stumbling on through the inextricable labyrinth, and exhaust more ingenuity in vain speculations than would suffice to bring a variety of modern sciences to perfection.
It was perfectly safe to indulge in these thoughts, because even if any mighty antiquary had been at hand, he would have been obliged to confess that although some truth may have been brought to light, it is impossible to put one's finger upon it. For almost all men who have studied Egyptian antiquities differ entirely in their conclusionsall arrange dynasties in a different manner, and find more mistakes than discoveries in their predecessors. Well, thought we, let us leave them to their researches: if they do not find the pot of gold, they may cultivate the ground. For our part, we will hasten on to where yon pale gleam of yellow light is pouring between the propylæa and the body of the temple over the court-yard upon an enormous mountain of rubbish. It was the moon that had risennot to enlighten the scene, but to render it more dim and mysterious, more full of strange shadows and illusions. On such occasions it is difficult even for the least imaginative to check a thought of what that pale, thoughtful-looking orb, which has watched the changing aspects of this scene for so many thousand years, could tell if it had a tongue! We gazed inquiringly at it; but as it rose higher and higher, and poured down more light on all objects around, it seemed to smile at our inquisitiveness, and to bid us turn less eager glances towards the dust and rubbish of old times, where perchance we may find a precious stone, perchance a bit of broken glassbut bend our eyes more steadfastly to the future, the centuries unborn, the inevitable, though not yet created infinite.