Just over the door are discerned a pair of wings, which extend its whole breadth; the body to which they belong is totally destroyed, and it cannot now certainly be known, whether it was that of an eagle or of a cherub, several representations of both being visible on other fragments of the building. The north end of the building is adorned with a curious fret-work and bas-relief; and in the middle there is a dome or cupola, about ten feet in diameter, which appears to have been either hewn out of the rock, or moulded of some composition, which, by time, is grown equally hard. At about the distance of a mile from the OBELISK are two others, besides the fragment of a third; hence it has been reasonably suggested, that they were a continued row. Every spot of ground intervening between the walls and columns, is laid out in plantations of corn and olives, inclosed by mud walls. In the direction of the mountains lie fragments of stone, here and there columns stand erect, and clumps of broken pillars are met with at intervals. All this space seems to have been covered with small temples and ornamental buildings, approached by colonnades. Next to the temple, the most remarkable structure is the long portico, which commences about two thousand two hundred feet to the north-west of the temple, and extends for nearly four thousand feet further in the same direction. “It is a remark worthy the observation of historians,” says Volney, “that the front of the portico has twelve pillars like that at Balbec; but what artists will esteem still more curious is that these two fronts resemble the gallery of the house built by Perrault, long before the existence of the drawing which made us acquainted with them. The only difference is, that the columns of the Louvre are double, whereas those of Palmyra are detached.” About one hundred paces from the middle obelisk, straight forward, is a magnificent entry to a piazza, which is forty feet broad and more than half a mile in length, inclosed with two rows of marble pillars, twenty-six feet high, and eight or nine feet in compass. Of these there still remain one hundred and twenty-nine; and, by a moderate computation, there could not, originally, have been less than five hundred and sixty. The upper end of the piazza was shut in by a row of pillars, standing somewhat closer than those on each side. A little to the left are the ruins of a stately building, which appears to have been a _banqueting-house_. It is built of better marble, and is finished with greater elegance, than the piazza. The pillars which supported it were one entire stone, which is so strong that one of them, which has fallen down, has received no injury. It measures twenty-two feet in length, and in compass eight feet nine inches.