According to Phelps, "the size of the structure
impresses the beholder at once. It is 300 feet north and south by 400
feet east and west, and with the porticoes will cover three acres and
seven square feet. The walls are 108 feet high from the water-table,
and all this worked out of solid granite brought, most of it, from
Hallowell, Me."
The impression produced varies with various persons. One accomplished
writer finds it "not unlike that made by the photographs of those
gigantic structures in the northern and eastern parts of India, which
are seen in full series on the walls of the South Kensington, and by
their barbaric profusion of ornamentation and true magnificence of
design give the stay-at-home Briton some faint inkling of the empire
which has invested his queen with another and more high-sounding
title. Yet when close at hand the building does not bear out this
connection with Indian architecture of the grand style; it might be
mere chance that at a distance there is a similarity; or it may be
that the smallness of size in the decorations as compared to the
structure itself explains fully why there is a tendency to confuse the
eye by the number of projections, arches, pillars, shallow recesses,
and what-not, which variegate the different facades.
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