The Coming Race by Edward Bulwer-lytton — Read

I now came in full sight of the building. Yes, it had been made by / hands, and hollowed partly out of a great rock. I should have supposed / it at the first glance to have been of the earliest form of Egyptian / architecture. It was fronted by huge columns, tapering upward from / massive plinths, and with capitals that, as I came nearer, I perceived / to be more ornamental and more fantastically graceful that Egyptian / architecture allows. As the Corinthian capital mimics the leaf of the / acanthus, so the capitals of these columns imitated the foliage of the / vegetation neighbouring them, some aloe-like, some fern-like. And now / there came out of this building a form -- human; -- was it human? It stood / on the broad way and looked around, beheld me and approached. It / came within a few yards of me, and at the sight and presence of it an / indescribable awe and tremor seized me, rooting my feet to the ground. / It reminded me of symbolical images of Genius or Demon that are seen on / Etruscan vases or limned on the walls of Eastern sepulchres -- images that / borrow the outlines of man, and are yet of another race. It was tall, / not gigantic, but tall as the tallest man below the height of giants.

Its chief covering seemed to me to be composed of large wings folded / over its breast and reaching to its knees; the rest of its attire was / composed of an under tunic and leggings of some thin fibrous material. / It wore on its head a kind of tiara that shone with jewels, and carried / in its right hand a slender staff of bright metal like polished steel. / But the face! it was that which inspired my awe and my terror. It was / the face of man, but yet of a type of man distinct from our known extant / races. The nearest approach to it in outline and expression is the / face of the sculptured sphinx -- so regular in its calm, intellectual, / mysterious beauty. Its colour was peculiar, more like that of the red / man than any other variety of our species, and yet different from it -- a / richer and a softer hue, with large black eyes, deep and brilliant, and / brows arched as a semicircle. The face was beardless; but a nameless / something in the aspect, tranquil though the expression, and beauteous / though the features, roused that instinct of danger which the sight of / a tiger or serpent arouses. I felt that this manlike image was endowed / with forces inimical to man. As it drew near, a cold shudder came over / me. I fell on my knees and covered my face with my hands.