hich
led to the sanctuary, seen at last as a little darkness, in which all
the mystery of worship, and of the silent desires of men, was surely
concentrated, and kept by the stone for ever. Even the succession of the
darknesses, like shadows growing deeper and deeper, seemed planned by
some great artist in the management of light, and so of shadow effects.
The perfection of form is in Edfu, impossible to describe, impossible
not to feel. The tremendous effect it has--an effect upon the soul--is
created by a combination of shapes, of proportions, of different levels,
of different heights, by consummate graduation. And these shapes,
proportions, different levels, and heights, are seen in dimness. Not
that jewelled dimness one loves in Gothic cathedrals, but the heavy
dimness of windowless, mighty chambers lighted only by a rebuked
daylight ever trying to steal in. One is captured by no ornament,
seduced by no lovely colors. Better than any ornament, greater than
any radiant glory of color, is this massive austerity. It is like
the ultimate in an art. Everything has been tried, every strangeness
_bizarrerie_, absurdity, every wild scheme of hues, every preposterous
subject--to take an extreme instance, a camel, wearing a top-hat, and
lighted up by fire-works, which I saw recently in a picture-gallery
of Munich. And at the end a genius paints a portrait of a wrinkled old
woman's face, and the world regards and worships. Or all discords have
been flung together pell-mell, resolution of them has been deferred
perpetually, perhaps even denied altogether, chord of B major has been
struck with C major, works have closed upon the leading note or the
dominant seventh, symphonies have been composed to be played in the
dark, or to be accompanied by a magic-lantern's efforts, operas been
produced which are merely carnage and a row--and at the end a genius
writes a little song, and the world gives the tribute of its breathless
silence and its tears. And it knows that though other things may be
done, better things can never be done. For no perfection can exceed any
other perfection.

And so in Edfu I feel that this untinted austerity is perfect; that
whatever may be done in architecture during future ages of the world,
Edfu, while it lasts, will remain a thing supreme--supreme in form and,
because of this supremacy, supreme in the spell which it casts upon the
soul.

The sanctuary is just a small, beautifully proportioned, inmost cha