It Will Give
The Reader A Fair Idea Of The Main Point, Though, In Certain Minor
Details, It Is Not To Be Trusted.
Some of my papers and sketches, which
by precaution I had placed among my medicines, after cutting them into
squares, numbering them, and rolling them carefully up, were damaged by
the breaking of a bottle.
The plan of Al-Madinah is slightly altered
from Burckhardt's. Nothing can be more ludicrous than the views of the
Holy City, as printed in our popular works. They are of the style
"bird's-eye," and present a curious perspective. They despise distance
like the Chinese,-pictorially audacious; the Harrah, or ridge in the
foreground appears to be 200 yards, instead of three or four miles,
distant from the town. They strip the place of its suburb Al-Manakhah,
in order to show the enceinte, omit the fort, and the gardens north and
south of the city, enlarge the Mosque twenty-fold for dignity, and make
it occupy the whole centre of the city, instead of a small corner in
the south-east quarter. They place, for symmetry, towers only at the
angles of the walls, instead of all along the curtain, and gather up
and press into the same field all the venerable and interesting
features of the country, those behind the artist's back, and at his
sides, as well as what appears in front. Such are the Turkish
lithographs. At Meccah, some Indians support themselves by depicting
the holy shrines; their works are a truly Oriental mixture of ground
plan and elevation, drawn with pen and ink, and brightened with the
most vivid colours-grotesque enough, but less unintelligible than the
more ambitious imitations of European art.
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