been evidently a very costly building; its materials are excellent, being
some of the finest free-stone I ever saw, and it is an imitation of the
celebrated Sibyl's temple, of large proportions, solid masonry, and raised
above the ground on a lofty and striking basement. But its pillars,
instead of beautiful Corinthian well-fluted, are of the meanest Doric.
They are quite too slender for their height, and for the heavy entablature
and cornice which rest on them. The dome instead of springing from nearly
the same level with the roof of the surrounding portico, is raised ten
feet higher on a most ugly and unmeaning attic story, and the windows
(which are quite useless) are the most extraordinary embrasures (for they
resemble nothing else) that I ever saw, out of a fortress. Above all, the
building is utterly unmeaning, it is neither a temple nor a tomb, neither
has altar, statue, nor inscription. It is, in fact, a 'folly' of the same
sort, but far more ambitious and costly, than that which is built at
Barrackpoor, and it is vexatious to think that a very handsome church
might have been built, and a handsome marble monument to Lord Cornwallis
placed in its interior, for little more money than has been employed on a
thing, which, if any foreigner saw it, (an event luckily not very probable)
would afford subject for mockery to all who read his travels, at the
expense of Anglo-Indian ideas of architecture. Ugly as it is, however, by
itself, it may yet be made a good use of, by making it serve the purpose
of a detached 'torre campanile' to the new church which is required for
the station; to this last it would save the necessity of a steeple or
cupola, and would much lessen the expense of the building."

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