Colonel Leake, to whose elaborate work I beg to refer the reader desirous of entering into minute details, concludes his general description as follows:—"Such was the simple construction of this magnificent building, which, by its united excellencies of materials, design, and decoration was the most perfect ever erected. Its dimensions of two hundred and twenty-eight feet by a hundred and two, with a height of sixty-eight feet to the top of the pediment, were sufficiently great to give an impression of grandeur and sublimity, which was not disturbed by any obtrusive division of parts, such as is found to diminish the effect of some larger modern buildings. In the Parthenon, whether viewed at a small or at a great distance, there was nothing to divert the spectator’s contemplation from the simplicity and majesty of mass and outline which forms the first and most remarkable object of admiration in a Greek temple; and it was not until the eye was satiated with the contemplation of the entire edifice that the spectator was tempted to examine the decorations with which this building was so profusely adorned; for the statues of the pediments the only elevation which was very conspicuous by its magnitude and position, being enclosed within frames, which formed an essential part of the design of either front, had no more obtrusive effect than an ornamental capital has to a single column."[267] Footnote 267: Topog. of Athens, pp. 211, 212. See also Chandler, ii. 49. sqq. That object of art, whatever its dimensions, is sufficiently great, which fills the mind with high ideas of grandeur and beauty. There is, moreover, in mere size, a point, beyond which if we proceed, the eye will fail to grasp the whole at a glance, and create a feeling of want of unity; but, in proportion as we fall short of that point will be our sense of the absence of sublimity. In this predicament, perhaps, the temples of Greece too generally stood. Considerations of expense, which in the end affected their habits of thinking, cramped the ideas of the architects, or forced them to direct their studies towards beauty of form unconnected with that grandeur which springs out of mass and elevation.