By the proportions of the court and of the peristyles which frame it; by the spacious intercolumniations and the horizontal lines of the façade; by the repetition of the two enormous roofs, which lift their massive black curves with a single sweep; by the symmetrical disposition of the two little pavilions which are before it and which lighten the severity of the whole with the agreeable grotesques of their octagonal roofs; the building (to apply the essential laws of architecture) is given a learned aspect, a classic beauty in short, due to an exquisite observation of rule. The temple is composed of two parts. I suppose that the passages with their rows of tablets on the walls, each one preceded by a long, narrow altar of stone, offer to a hasty worship the primary series of precepts. Lifting our feet to avoid the sill which it is forbidden to tread upon, we penetrate into the shade of the sanctuary. The vast high hall has the air of holding an occult presence. It is utterly empty. Here silence sits veiled in obscurity. Here are no ornaments, no statues. On each side of the hall we distinguish, between their curtains, great inscriptions; and, before them, altars; but in the middle of the temple, behind five monumental pieces of stone, three vases and two candlesticks; under an edifice of gold, a baldachin or a tabernacle which frames it on all sides; four characters are inscribed upon a vertical column. Here writing possesses this mystery: it speaks. No moment marks its duration, no position. It is the commencement of an ageless sign. No mouth offers it. It exists; and the worshiper, face to face with it, ponders the written name. Solemnly enunciated in the gloom of the shadowy gold of the baldachin, the sign, between the two columns which are covered with the mystic windings of the dragon, symbolizes its own silence. The immense red hall seems to be the very color of obscurity, the pillars are hidden under a scarlet lacquer. Alone in the middle of the temple, before the sacred word, two columns of white granite seem its witness; the very soul, religious and abstract, of the place. THE BANYAN The banyan toils.