The Great Lion Of The Place Is A New Mosque Which Mehemet Ali Is
Constructing Very Leisurely.
It is built of alabaster of a fair
white, with a delicate blushing tinge; but the ornaments are
European - the noble, fantastic, beautiful Oriental art is
forgotten.
The old mosques of the city, of which I entered two,
and looked at many, are a thousand times more beautiful. Their
variety of ornament is astonishing, - the difference in the shapes
of the domes, the beautiful fancies and caprices in the forms of
the minarets, which violate the rules of proportion with the most
happy daring grace, must have struck every architect who has seen
them. As you go through the streets, these architectural beauties
keep the eye continually charmed: now it is a marble fountain,
with its arabesque and carved overhanging roof, which you can look
at with as much pleasure as an antique gem, so neat and brilliant
is the execution of it; then, you come to the arched entrance to a
mosque, which shoots up like - like what? - like the most beautiful
pirouette by Taglioni, let us say. This architecture is not
sublimely beautiful, perfect loveliness and calm, like that which
was revealed to us at the Parthenon (and in comparison of which the
Pantheon and Colosseum are vulgar and coarse, mere broad-shouldered
Titans before ambrosial Jove); but these fantastic spires, and
cupolas, and galleries, excite, amuse, tickle the imagination, so
to speak, and perpetually fascinate the eye. There were very few
believers in the famous mosque of Sultan Hassan when we visited it,
except the Moslemitish beadle, who was on the look-out for
backsheesh, just like his brother officer in an English cathedral;
and who, making us put on straw slippers, so as not to pollute the
sacred pavement of the place, conducted us through it.
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