In my last letter I described to you, as well as the feebleness of language would admit, my presentation to the Queen Amense, and the splendors of her court and palace. In Syria we have no approach to this Egyptian magnificence, unless it is to be found in Tadmor, the city of the Euphrates country, which travellers call a single temple the size of a city! The peculiarity of Egyptian architecture is very striking. It has an air of ponderous majesty--being, in all its proportions, colossal. Yet this massive aspect is relieved by shaping the stone and marble in the most graceful lines, and enriching with sculpture, either in relief or intaglio, the immense surfaces of their gigantic columns and enormous propyla. In all the temples and palaces I have yet seen here, two species of column chiefly prevail--one of which, this being the most ancient style, is fluted and composed of a single shaft, with a capital in the shape of an opening pomegranate, the reflexed edge being an imitation of the opened flower of the lotus, and presenting a graceful object to the eye. The other column, introduced by the present dynasty, is always colossal; but its massiveness is relieved by being striated, which gives the mass the appearance of being composed of united stems, and increased by horizontal belts or bands cut in the stone, which seem to tie them together under the capital and in the middle. Just above the square or round plinth, the base of the shaft itself is rounded and adorned with leaves, which gives it the appearance of growing up from the plinth. You can judge of the combined grandeur and grace of such columns, dear mother, by imagining several buds of the rose of Palestine set like cups, one upon the other, and upon the top of all a lotus-flower, and the whole magnified to ninety or a hundred feet in height, and converted into Syene stone. On the abacus of the columns, which form so prominent and universal a feature in Egyptian architecture, rests a broad but simple architrave, usually sculptured with hieroglyphics illustrating subjects connected with the deity of the temple, or the occupant of the palace which they adorn. The upper edge of it is often occupied by a row of the sacred serpent, _uræus_. The boldness and breadth of the cornice supplies the want of a pediment--flat roofs being used in this country, when used at all, where rain is scarcely known, and where snow was never seen.