But this is only the commencement of the grandeur of this wonderful Temple. Within this cloister is an open court, running also quite around; it is paved with marble, and its level is broken by a few steps of ascent, also passing along the whole circuit of the court. This is the court of the Gentiles; and inscriptions on columns are seen at intervals, forbidding this class of people to advance nearer to the Temple. Along the inner edge of this court runs another cloister, consisting also of a row of chambers, with a single colonnade in the interior, or looking toward the Temple. In the space allotted here to the chambers, the ground has taken an ascent of seventeen feet from the court of the Gentiles, but the colonnade itself is on level ground, the pillars being, as in the outer colonnade, forty-six feet in height, and making, with the entablature, likewise a full elevation of more than sixty feet; but from the rise of the ground this colonnade is twenty feet higher than the other. In this cloister, fronting us on the east, is the “Beautiful Gate;”[67] and truly, no one need be directed to mark its surpassing magnificence. It is ninety-one feet in height by seventy-three in width; the doors are of massive Corinthian brass, covered on both sides, as are also the jambs and lintels, with plates of gold and silver, sometimes plain, sometimes in fretted work, or raised into figures in low or in high relief. On either side of the doorway is a tower, seventy-three feet high, adorned with columns twenty-one feet in circumference. On the northern and southern sides of this cloister are eight other gates, of less magnitude, but covered in a similar manner, as are also their jambs and lintels, with plates of gold and silver; and strengthened also like the former, with towers and massive columns. Passing through this, we are once more in an open court, paved with marble, and rising by steps towards the central point. The eastern side of this court is allotted to the worship of the Jewish women, while that on the north and south is divided off for the men. At the inner edge of this court is again another wall; it is of marble, only a few feet in height, and is richly ornamented with sculpture; it separates the court of the Jewish worshippers from the inmost court of all, the court of the Priests. And there, at the eastern side of this inmost court, in the open air, at the apex of this stupendous Pyramidal structure, canopied only by the heavens, stands the Altar of Burnt Sacrifice. It is a colossal structure, being twenty-seven feet in height and ninety-one feet on each of its sides. The ascent is by an inclined plane on the south.