y were contemplated, and for
general richness and harmony of effect may have compared favorably
with any edifices which, up to the time of their construction, had been
erected in any country or by any people. If it may seem to some that
they were wanting in grandeur, on account of their comparatively low
height--a height which, including that of the platform, was probably in
no case much more than a hundred feet--it must be remembered that the
buildings of Greece and (except the Pyramids) those of Egypt, had the
same defect, and that, until the constructive powers of the arch came to
be understood, it was almost impossible to erect a building that should
be at once lofty and elegant. Height, moreover, if the buildings are for
use, implies inconvenience, a waste of time and power being involved
in the ascent and descent of steps. The ancient architects, studying
utility more than effect, preferred spreading out their buildings
to piling them up, and rarely, unless in thickly-peopled towns, even
introduced a second story.

The spectator, however, was impressed with a sense of grandeur in
another way. The use of huge blocks of stone, not only in platforms,
but in the buildings themselves, in the shafts of pillars, the antae of
porticos, the jambs of doorways, occasionally in roofs, and perhaps in
epistylia, produced the same impression of power, and the same feeling
of personal insignificance in the beholder, which is commonly effected
by great size in the edifice, and particularly by height. The mechanical
skill required to transport and raise into place the largest of these
blocks must have been very considerable, and their employment causes not
merely a blind admiration of those who so built on the part of ignorant
persons, but a profound respect for them on the part of those who are by
their studies and tastes best qualified for pronouncing on the relative
and absolute merits of architectural masterpieces.

Among the less pleasing peculiarities of the Persian architecture may be
mentioned a general narrowness of doors in proportion to their height, a
want of passages, a thickness of walls, which is architecturally clumsy,
but which would have had certain advantages in such a climate, an
inclination to place the doors of rooms near one corner, an allowance of
two entrances into a great hall from under a single portico, a peculiar
position of propylaea, and the very large employment of pillars in
the interior of buildin