discovered in Barcelona or Palermo; and the _habitués_ would delight to inform each other that the spirited and enterprising management had secured the services of the celebrated Berbix, whose career at Massilia, for instance, had excited such admiration--the _artiste_ having killed fifteen antagonists in less than a fortnight. And then, after the pleasant and critical chat between the acts, the trumpets would again sound, and all the world would turn out upon the vast stone benches--the nobles and wealthy nearest the ring, as in the stalls with us, and the lower and slave population high up on the further benches, like the humble folks and the footmen in the gallery--and then would recommence that exhibition of which the Romans could never have enough, and of which they never tired--the excitement of the shedding of blood. From the arena I walked slowly on to the Maison Carrée. All the great Roman remains lie upon the open Boulevard, on the edge of the stacked and crowded old town, while without the circle rise the spacious streets of new _quartiers_ for the rich, and many a long straggling suburb, where, in mean garrets and unwholesome cellars, the poor handloom weavers produce webs of gorgeous silk which rival the choicest products of Lyons. Presently, to the left, appeared a horribly clumsy theatre; and, to the right, the wondrous Maison Carrée. The day of which I am writing was certainly my day of architectural sensation. First, Rome, with her hugeness and her symmetric strength, gripped me; and now, Greece, with her pure and etherial beauty, which is essentially of the spirit, enthralled me. The Maison Carrée was, no doubt, built by Roman hands, but entirely after Greek models. It is wholly of Athens: not at all of Rome--a Corinthian temple of the purest taste and divinest beauty--small, slight, without an atom of the ponderous majesty of the arena--reigning by love and smiles, like Venus; not by frowns and thunder, like Jove. Cardinal Alberoni said that the Maison Carrée was a gem which ought to be set in gold; and the two great Jupiters of France--Louis Quatorze and Napoleon--had both of them schemes for lifting the temple bodily out of the ground and carrying it to Paris. The building is perfectly simple--merely an oblong square, with a portico, and fluted Corinthian pillars--yet the loveliness of it is like enchantment. The essence of its power over the senses appears to me to consist in an exquisite subtlety of proportion, which amounts to the very highest grace and the very purest and truest beauty. How many _quasi_ Grecian buildings had I seen--all porticoed and caryatided--without a sensation, save that the pile before me was cold and perhaps correct--a sort of stone formulary. I had begun to fear that Greek beauty was too subtle for me, or that Greek beauty was cant, when the Maison Carrée in a moment utterly undeceived me. The puzzle was solved: I had never seen Grecian architecture before. The things which