The size of Pæstum is easily to be seen by the remains of its walls. The guide-books say these walls were once fifty feet high; though I saw nothing that would have led me to believe them so lofty. Parts remain, notwithstanding, in a tolerable state of preservation. Their circuit is stated at two miles, the form being elliptical; and this would give, on the shortest side, a diameter a little exceeding half a mile, which is about the real distance. We have few villages, containing fifteen hundred souls, in America, that do not cover at much ground as this; although we have no edifice to compare with the temples that have stood on this spot, near two thousand years, _as ruins_, even in the largest towns. One of the gates still remains; but it may be questioned if it is as old as the temples. There are also the remains of an amphitheatre, or of a theatre, and of many other edifices that belonged to the civilisation of that remote age. It is probable the theatre was Roman. It sounds odd to speak of antiquity as being comparatively modern, because it was Roman; but comparing the temple of Neptune with any thing else of the sort, in Italy, would seem quite out of the question. Its history and its style prove it to be one of the most venerable specimens of human art of which we have any knowledge. The Pyramids themselves are scarcely older. And yet, standing a few hundred feet in its front, and examining the structure, one can scarcely fancy that he sees a blemish on its exterior. The lightning has scathed it; but time appears to have wrought nearly in vain on its massive columns. Some of the interior columns are gone, it is true, and a little of the pediment is broken, but scarcely more than is absolutely necessary to give the structure the air of a ruin.