It was impossible to admire too much the architecture of
this part of the city. The elevations were indeed imposing. In
general, the massy Egyptian appropriately graced the attic-stories;
while the finer and more elaborate architecture of Corinth was placed on
a level with the eye, so that its beauties might be more easily
discovered. Spacious colonnades were flanked by porticoes, surmounted
by domes; nor was the number of columns at all limited, for you
occasionally met with porticos of two tiers, the lower one of which
consisted of three, the higher one of thirty columns. Pedestals of the
purest Ionic Gothic were ingeniously intermixed with Palladian
pediments; and the surging spire exquisitely harmonised with the
horizontal architecture of the ancients. But perhaps, after all, the
most charming effect was produced by the pyramids, surmounted by
weather-cocks.
Popanilla was particularly pleased by some chimneys of Caryatides, and
did not for a moment hesitate in assenting to the assertion of Skindeep
that the Vraibleusians were the most architectural nation in the world.
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