I stood in the doorway when the Sun went down, throwing from the buildings a prodigious breadth of shadow, darkening the terraces on which they stood, and presenting a scene strange enough for a work of enchantment. This building [_i. e._ in which he viewed the scene] is sixty-eight feet long. The elevation on which it stands, is built up solid from the plain, entirely artificial. _Its form is not pyramidal_, but _oblong_, and rounding, being two hundred and forty feet long _at the base_, and one hundred and twenty feet broad, and it is protected all around, _to the very top, by a wall of square stones_." The terms of the last sentence are in direct opposition to the description,--for the elevation is distinctly _pyramidal_. It does not require a square base only rising from their corners to a central apex, to be essentially pyramidal,--for a _cone_ is pyramidal, or an "oblong" rising and diminishing from a broad base; all walls on _an inclined plane_--no matter at what degree of elevation or declivity, possess the chief essential of a pyramid. The cone, oblong, and square,--even a triple-sided or octagonal pyramid, would be, one and all, correct phrases in the language of Architecture, to express the character of the pyramid; and are so used in contradistinction to walls (one or more) of a perpendicular description,--and the instant such walls lose the facial of the plumb-line, they become _pyramidal_, from the principle of the wall rising from its base, and falling to a centre, which, we repeat, is the chief essential of the pyramid. The number of sides, or none at all (_i. e._ a cone), has no part in the pyramidal _principle_; as the key-stone is to the Arch, so the apex is to the Pyramid; but if the latter _is only half reared_, yet approaching by the inclined walls _towards an apex_, it is as much a pyramidal structure as if the sides had reached the apex itself. It is to be regretted that Mr. Stephens should have been ignorant of the Fine Arts and their rules--(we make this remark on his own honest confession[2])--because by the confusion of terms he not only often contradicts himself, but misleads the general reader in forming conclusions from his graphic descriptions. [2] Vide J. L. Stephens's Travels in Egypt. It will, however, be our duty not to pass any such contradiction, but by the rules of art endeavour to translate the language of the Ruins. Mr. Stephens has, however, a _motive_ in destroying all resemblance between these edifices and those of Egypt, _or their neighbours_. In the next chapter that motive will be unfolded in his own words.