The temple of Neptune is thought to be the oldest of the remaining edifices of Pæstum, and it certainly is much the finest, although that called of Ceres belongs to a more advanced taste in architecture. The rudeness of the former, however, accords so admirably with its massiveness, as well as its antiquity, that I believe few people hesitate about giving it the preference. To me, it was much the most impressive, and I had almost said the most imposing, edifice I know. The mind insensibly ran back to other ages as I gazed at the pile, which, like the fresh-looking lava of Ischia, appeared to laugh at human annals. Three centuries since, I said mentally, Columbus discovered half the world, astonishing the inhabitants of the two hemispheres equally, by bringing each to a knowledge of the other. At that period, which more than swallowed the entire history of my own country, this temple lay buried in vines and brambles, the haunt of serpents and birds. Seven centuries would take us back to the period of the English conquest, when England itself was a nation scarcely emerged from barbarism. Four or five more might carry us back to the age when marauders from the East laid waste the sickly town that had succeeded the city of the original colonists, when the past, to even its people, seemed remote and obscure. Four or five centuries more would take us up to the Romans, who came to see this temple as an object of wonder, and as a curious relic of distant ages. Another thousand years would probably bring us to the period when the priests officiated at the altar, and homage was paid to one of the attributes of Divine power, through the mysticisms of heathen allegory. What a speck does the history of America become in this long vista of events—what a point the life and adventures of a single man! And yet even this temple does not reach to the last great convulsion, when the earth was virtually destroyed, and animal life may be said to have taken a new commencement: at the next, even the temple of Neptune will disappear. Some astronomers, by calculating the epochs of a particular and a remarkable comet, that which was last seen in 1681, suppose it possible that it may have struck the earth about the time of the Deluge, causing that phenomenon, and producing most of those physical changes that certainly have altered the face of the earth, destroying many of its animals, and which may have actually given it new revolutions. Admitting that this theory is substantially true,—and it is as likely to be so as any other that has been broached,—we may regard the temple of Neptune as one of the best specimens of architecture that succeeded the new civilisation. At all events, it is something even to fancy one has seen a work of human art that may be esteemed a standard of human skill three thousand years ago.