500 TEMPLE OP HF.LIOPOL1S. 



This temple has resisted the injuries of time, and the madness of 

 superstition, being yet almost entire. It is an oblong square, in 

 its general form and proportion, exactly like St k Paul's, Coyoiit 

 Garden; but, for magnificence of structure and dimension, there 

 is scarce any comparison, this temple being almost as big again 

 every way. Jts length on the outside rs one hundred and ninety, 

 tiro feet, and its breadth ninety.six ; its length in the inside one 

 hundred and twenty feet, and its breadth sixty. The pronaos, or 

 ante. temple, took up fifty-four feet of the hundred and ninety, but 

 is now ruined ; and the pillars which supported it, are broken. 

 The whole body of this temple, as it now stands, is surrounded 

 with a noble portico, supported by pillars of the Corinthian or. 

 der, six feet three inches in diameter, about fifty-four in height, 

 and each of three stones apiece. Their distance from each other, 

 and from the wall of the temple, is nine feet. There are fourteen 

 of them on each side of the temple, and eight at each end, count, 

 ing the corner pillars in each number* The architrave and cornice, 

 which are supported all round by these pillars, are exquisitely 

 carved. And, as you walk round this temple, between its wall 

 and the pillars which go round it, you have, over head, a solid ar- 

 cade all the way, of great stones hollowed out archwise ; in the 

 centre of each of which is a god, a goddess, or a hero struck out 

 with that life, that is not to be conceived, and all round the foot 

 of the wall of the temple itself is a double border of marble, the 

 lowest part of which is a continued bas-relief in miniature, ex. 

 pressing heathen mysteries and ceremonies ; where, without anjr 

 confusion, you see a surprising mixture of men and beasts, in the 

 most happy composition, and most agreeable variety. 



Having thus described the outside of this temple, we proceed to 

 the inside; but let us first take a view of the entrance, than which 

 nothing can be more august. The ascent to it is by thirty steps, 

 on each side bounded by a wall, that terminates in a pedestal, on 

 which formerly stood a statue, as we may naturally suppose. The 

 front is composed of eight Corinthian pillars, as we have already 

 said, fluted, as are all the rest that go round the temple, and an 

 ample and nobly proportioned triangular pediment. Within these 

 eight pillars, at the distance of about six feet, are four others, like 

 the former, and two pillars of three faces each, that terminate the 

 walls of the temple, which come out a good way from the body of 

 the temple itself. All these form a porch or portico before the 



