The beauty of the most perfect
of them must be rather guessed at, and seen by faith, than with the
bodily eye; to look at the corroded faces and forms is like trying to see
angels through mist and cloud. I suppose nine tenths of those who seem
to be in raptures about these fragments do not really care about them;
neither do I. And if I were actually moved, I should doubt whether it
were by the statues or by my own fancy.
We passed, too, through Assyrian saloons and Egyptian saloons,--all full
of monstrosities and horrible uglinesses, especially the Egyptian, and
all the innumerable relics that I saw of them in these saloons, and among
the mummies, instead of bringing me closer to them, removed me farther
and farther; there being no common ground of sympathy between them and
us. Their gigantic statues are certainly very curious. I saw a hand and
arm up to the shoulder fifteen feet in length, and made of some stone
that seemed harder and heavier than granite, not having lost its polish
in all the rough usage that it has undergone. There was a fist on a
still larger scale, almost as big as a hogshead. Hideous, blubber-lipped
faces of giants, and human shapes with beasts' heads on them. The
Egyptian controverted Nature in all things, only using it as a groundwork
to depict, the unnatural upon. Their mummifying process is a result of
this tendency. We saw one very perfect mummy,--a priestess, with
apparently only one more fold of linen betwixt us and her antique flesh,
and this fitting closely to her person from head to foot, so that we
could see the lineaments of her face and the shape of her limbs as
perfectly as if quite bare.
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