A pilgrimage to the temples and tombs of Egypt, Nubia, and ...

152 TEMPLE OF ESNEH.
the French caricature of an enthusiastic horti-
culturist doing the honours of his garden to an
unhicky visitor, whose floral tastes were not such
as to render the exhibition at all acceptable,
and who, while expatiating aloud on the plea-
sure he is deriving from his host's minute ex-
planations of everything, murmurs aside in a
tone of despair, " Mais il ne me fera pas grace
dhm seul oignon ! " Make the application as
I intend, and prepare yourself to act the vic-
tim's part, for be assured that I, in my turn,
"
ne vous feral pas grace (Tun seul temple !
And nothing that I have seen in all my
travels ever appeared to me more sublime than
the temple of Esneh — I ought to say that
portion of it which remains standing ; for that
which, from its space, I at first supposed to
be the temple itself, proved to be only the
pronaos, or portico. Here we found none of
those drawbacks which deface the general view
of Luxor in the shape of Arab habitations in-
corporated with its stately columns. All is
perfect— walls, roof, floor,— and no accumula-
tion of sand to diminish the effect of the
lofty pillars, of which there are twenty-four,
disposed in four rows of six each, with capi-
tals each differing from the other, being varia-