that it was
impossible to see it. The winding street is so narrow, and so constantly
crowded with two opposed streams of traffic, that your donkey cannot
pause to give you a chance to inspect the portion which is close to your
eyes, and there is no spot where you can get a view in perspective of
the whole. So you pass up the lane, turn, and come down again; and, if
conscientious, you repeat the process, obtaining for all your pains only
a confused impression of horizontal plaques and panels, with ruined
walls tottering above them, and squalid shops below. There is a fine
arched gateway adorned with pendentives; that, on account of its size,
you can see; it leads into the khan proper, where were once the chambers
for the travelling merchants and the stalls for their beasts; but all
this is now a ruin. One of the best authorities on Saracenic art has
announced that this khan is adorned with more varieties of exquisite
arabesques than any single building in Cairo. This may be true. But to
appreciate the truth of the statement one needs wings or a ladder. The
word ladder opens the subject of the two ways of looking at
architecture--in detail or as a whole. The natural power of the eye has
more to do with this than is acknowledged. If one can distinctly see,
without effort and aid, a whole facade at a glance, with the general
effect of its proportions, the style of its ornament, the lights and
shadows, the outline of the top against the sky, one is more interested
in this than in the small traceries, for instance, over one especial
window. There are those of us who remember the English cathedrals by
their great towers rising in the gray air, with the birds flying about
them. There are others who, never having clearly seen this vision--for
no opera-glass can give the whole--recall, for their share of the
pleasure, the details of the carvings over the porches, or of the old
tombs within. It is simply the far-sighted and the near-sighted view.
Another authority, a master who has had many disciples, has (of late
years, at least) devoted himself principally to the near-sighted view.
In his maroon-colored Tracts on Venice he has given us a minute account
of the features of the small faces of the capitals of the columns of the
Doge's palace (all these ofs express the minuteness of it); but when we
stand on the pavement below the palace--and naturally we cannot stand in
mid-air--we find that it is impossible to follow him: I speak of