Sculpture and painting, when allied with architecture, may endure as long, but their aim is not to convey to the mind the impression of durability which is so strongly felt in the presence of the more massive works of architectural art. Even when ruined and in decay the buildings are almost equally impressive, while ruined sculptures or paintings are generally far from being pleasing objects, and, whatever their other merits may be, certainly miss that impression obtained from the durability of architectural objects. VII.—MATERIALS. Another very obvious mode of obtaining architectural effect is by the largeness or costliness of the materials employed. A terrace, or even a wall, if composed of large stones, is in itself an object of considerable grandeur, while one of the same lineal dimensions and of the same design, if composed of brick or rubble, may appear a very contemptible object. Like all the more obvious means of architectural effect, the Egyptians seized on this and carried it to its utmost legitimate extent. All their buildings, as well as their colossi and obelisks, owe much of their grandeur to the magnitude of the materials employed in their construction. The works called Cyclopean found in Italy and Greece have no other element of grandeur than the size of the stones or rather masses of rock which the builders of that age were in the habit of using. In Jerusalem nothing was so much insisted upon by the old writers, or is so much admired now, as the largeness of the stones employed in the building of the Temple and its substructions. We can well believe how much value was attached to this when we find that in the neighbouring city of Baalbec stones were used of between 60 and 70 ft. in length, weighing as much as the tubes of the Britannia Bridge, for the mere bonding course of a terrace wall. Even in a more refined style of architecture, a pillar, the shaft of which is of a single stone, or a lintel or architrave of one block, is always a grander and more beautiful object than if composed of a number of smaller parts. Among modern buildings, the poverty-stricken design of the church of St. Isaac at St. Petersburg is redeemed by the grandeur of its monolithic columns, whilst the beautiful design of the Madeleine at Paris is destroyed by the smallness of the materials in which it is expressed. It is easy to see that this arises from the same feeling to which massiveness and stability address themselves. It is the expression of giant power and the apparent eternity of duration which they convey; and in whatever form that may be presented to the human mind, it always produces a sentiment tending towards sublimity, which is the highest effect at which architecture or any other art can aim.