i'lmi iicrc;iu Collection 
anothe;r portion of th^: frieze; in the; samf tempIvF: angkor wat 
wakeful plants, the grasses, shrubs, and 
trees that are constantly at work prying 
at the foundation stones and swaying 
the columns. Already there are piles of 
broken stone at the base of the walls, 
like the talus at the foot of a cliff, the 
outer decorations and unessential parts. 
The halls and corridors are in the main 
intact and need little more than cleaning 
to be made habitable. No wonder that 
with only the bonzes to look after the 
wat it has long ago been given up to bats 
and pigeons and filth — and silence. It is 
a silence so lonesome and deathlike in 
its isolation that one shudders in turning 
a corner to find himself confronted by 
a stony Buddha with uplifted hands, as 
if imploring him not to disturb the re- 
pose of the centuries. 
If the mass of the structure is impres- 
sive, the amount of decorative work done 
upon it, to speak only quantitatively, is 
still more so. Inside and outside, and 
from top to bottom, it is a mass of carv- 
ing in stone. A few blank spaces are to 
be found about the building, and these 
are generally in the main temple, re- 
served for the work of the greater artists 
who never came. Both the encircling 
galleries consist of a row of square col- 
umns on the outer side, an arch en cor- 
heille above, and an inner wall with an 
entablature for the whole colonnade. 
And everything is decorated — the four 
flat faces of the columns, the walls, 
the entablature, and the wooden ceiling 
which formerly rested upon it. conceal- 
ing the arch which is unornamented. 
Around the base of the structure is a 
colonnade of clustered columns, which 
may have been added as an afterthought 
some centuries later. These much re- 
semble the clustered columns of Moorish 
architecture, except that the channeling 
is not deep : and, furthermore, the capi- 
tal much resembles the Byzantine. But 
for the rest, you see the square column 
everywhere, the same dimensions from 
top to bottom ; long rows of them in 
the galleries, a cruciform colonnade of 
them on the terrace, or modified into 
pilasters when adjacent to doorways. 
(247) 
