eluctantly
homeward, you feel as one does when wakened from some too delightful
dream.

Or instead of night, suppose it day and the place a temple. With those
who are entering you enter too through the outer gateway into the
courtyard. At the farther end rises a building the like of which for
richness of effect you have probably never beheld or even imagined. In
front of you a flight of white stone steps leads up to a terrace
whose parapet, also of stone, is diapered for half its height and open
latticework the rest. This piazza gives entrance to a building or set
of buildings whose every detail challenges the eye. Twelve pillars of
snow-white wood sheathed in part with bronze, arranged in four rows,
make, as it were, the bones of the structure. The space between the
centre columns lies open. The other triplets are webbed in the middle
and connected, on the sides and front, by grilles of wood and bronze
forming on the outside a couple of embrasures on either hand the
entrance in which stand the guardian Nio, two colossal demons, Gog
and Magog. Instead of capitals, a frieze bristling with Chinese lions
protects the top of the pillars. Above this in place of entablature
rises tier upon tier of decoration, each tier projecting beyond the one
beneath, and the topmost of all terminating in a balcony which encircles
the whole second story. The parapet of this balcony is one mass of
ornament, and its cornice another row of lions, brown instead of white.
The second story is no less crowded with carving. Twelve pillars make
its ribs, the spaces between being filled with elaborate woodwork, while
on top rest more friezes, more cornices, clustered with excrescences of
all colors and kinds, and guarded by lions innumerable. To begin to tell
the details of so multi-faceted a gem were artistically impossible. It
is a jewel of a thousand rays, yet whose beauties blend into one as the
prismatic tints combine to white. And then, after the first dazzle of
admiration, when the spirit of curiosity urges you to penetrate the
centre aisle, lo and behold it is but a gate! The dupe of unexpected
splendor, you have been paying court to the means of approach. It is
only a portal after all. For as you pass through, you catch a glimpse
of a building beyond more gorgeous still. Like in general to the first,
unlike it in detail, resembling it only as the mistress may the maid.
But who shall convince of charm by enumerating the features of a face!
F