(_c_) Such independent figures are, as a rule, not only to be found in isolation, but are supplemented by the construction of large buildings resembling the temple type, labyrinths, subterranean excavations of every kind, or amongst other things are utilized in masses and surrounded by walls. The first thing we may remark with regard to the temple enclosures of Egypt is this that the fundamental character of this huge type of architecture, detailed information as to which we have latterly received in the main from French writers, consists in this that they are constructions open to the day, without roofing, doors, passages between partitions[47], and above all, between columned halls, entire forests of columns. They are works, in short, of the greatest range and variety of interior construction which, without serving as the habitation of a god, or a communion of worshippers, independently by this self-consistent operation appeal to the wonder of our imaginations quite as much in the colossal size of their proportions and masses, as through the fact that their isolated forms and images make an independent and exclusive claim to our interest. Such forms and images are in truth placed there as symbols for significances which are strictly universal in their import, or in the position they occupy as representing literature, in so far, that is, as they declare such significances not through the manner of their form, but by means of writings, works of imaginative form which are engraved on their surfaces. We may in part describe these gigantic buildings as a collection of sculptured images; for the most part, however, these appear in such a number and with such repetition of one and the same form, that the arrangement becomes one of a series, and it is only in this kind of line and order that they receive what is precisely their architectonic definition, which becomes, however, once more an object in itself, and does not merely mean beams and roofing and nothing beyond them.