The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
History
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
"Anon out of the earth a fabric huge
Rose, like an exhalation, with the sound
Of dulcet symphonies and voices sweet,
Built like a temple, where pilasters round
Were set, and Doric pillars overlaid
With golden architrave; nor did there want
Cornice or frieze with bossy sculptures grav'n."
The structure is of black walnut, and is covered with carved statues,
busts, masks, and figures in the boldest relief. In the centre a richly
ornamented arch contains the niche for the key-boards and stops. A
colossal mask of a singing woman looks from over its summit. The
pediment above is surmounted by the bust of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Behind this rises the lofty central division, containing pipes, and
crowning it is a beautiful sitting statue of Saint Cecilia, holding her
lyre. On each side of her a griffin sits as guardian. This centre is
connected by harp-shaped compartments, filled with pipes, to the two
great round towers, one on each side, and each of them containing three
colossal pipes. These magnificent towers come boldly forward into the
hall, being the most prominent, as they are the highest and stateliest,
part of the _facade_. At the base of each a gigantic half-caryatid, in
the style of the ancient _hermae_, but finished to the waist, bends
beneath the superincumbent weight, like Atlas under the globe. These
figures are of wonderful force, the muscular development almost
excessive, but in keeping with their superhuman task. At each side of
the base two lion-_hermae_ share in the task of the giant. Over the base
rise the round pillars which support the dome and inclose the three
great pipes already mentioned. Graceful as these look in their position,
half a dozen men might creep into one of them and lie hidden. A man of
six feet high went up a ladder, and standing at the base of one of them
could just reach to put his hand into the mouth at its lower part, above
the conical foot. The three great pipes are crowned by a heavily
sculptured, ribbed, rounded dome; and this is surmounted, on each side,
by two cherubs, whose heads almost touch the lofty ceiling. This whole
portion of the sculpture is of eminent beauty. The two exquisite cherubs
of one side are playing on the lyre and the lute; those of the other
side on the flute and the horn. All the reliefs that run round the lower
portion of the dome are of singular richness. We have had an opportunity
of seeing one of the artist's photographs, which showed in detail the
full-length figures and the large central mask of this portion of the
work, and found them as beautiful on close inspection as the originals
at a distance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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