The
ground of the outer court is also a mosaic of jet and gold: but
thenceforth the jet-squares give place throughout to squares of silver,
and the gold-squares to squares of clear amber, clear as solidified oil.
The entrance is by an Egyptian doorway 7 ft. high, with folding-doors of
gold-plated cedar, opening inwards, surrounded by a very large
projecting coping of plain silver, 3-1/2 ft. wide, severe simplicity of
line throughout enormously multiplying the effect of richness of
material. The interior resembles, I believe, rather a Homeric, than an
Assyrian or Egyptian house--except for the 'galleries,' which are purely
Babylonish and Old Hebrew. The inner court, with its wine-pool and
tanks, is a small oblong of 8 ft. by 9 ft., upon which open four
silver-latticed window-oblongs in the same proportion, and two doors,
before and behind, oblongs in the same proportion. Round this run the
eight walls of the house proper, the inner 10 ft. from the outer, each
parallel two forming a single long corridor-like chamber, except the
front (east) two, which are divided into three apartments; in each side
of the house are six panels of massive plain silver, half-an-inch
thinner in their central space, where are affixed paintings, 22 or else
21 taken at the burning of Paris from a place called 'The Louvre,' and 2
or else 3 from a place in England: so that the panels have the look of
frames, and are surrounded by oval garlands of the palest amethyst,
topaz, sapphire, and turquoise which I could find, each garland being of
only one kind of stone, a mere oval ring two feet wide at the sides and
narrowing to an inch at the top and bottom, without designs.
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