With the exception of the two first, these remains as also the Temple of Apollo, at Gela, seem to be nearly of the same age. Indeed, their erection can be fixed between certain limits, by comparison of historical details, in which, either by direct mention or inference, a connexion is traced between the political condition and the arts of the Sicilian cities. Proceeding in this manner, it is found that all of these enormous piles rose in little more than a century, embracing the greater part of the fifth, and the early portion of the fourth, before our era. These edifices thus fall in with the interval already noticed between the earliest Doric buildings in Greece, and the erection of the Athenian temples. Accordingly, there appear in them more noble proportions and a greater elevation of column than in the former, still without the graceful majesty of the latter. Under what circumstances, however, or by what science, many of these wonderful fabrics were reared, history affords no information. Of the rise and the overthrow, for instance, of the temples at Selinus, we know nothing; some even doubt whether human power could have overthrown what it had elevated; and ascribe the regular prostration of the gigantic columns, each often exactly in a line, extending outwards from its base, as if overturned but yesterday, to the concussion of an earthquake. These appearances we have certainly remarked with astonishment, and have beheld, and measured, and wandered amid the ruins, with admiration not unmingled with awe; but the truth was obvious, that the same age which could arrange these masses into symmetry, could also have cast them down as they now lie. And we know that it was the same age--for one page, almost one sentence, records both their rise and their fall. Yet of the energies and knowledge of that age, our own has no conception. The riches of any one of the sovereigns of Europe, and the skill of his wisest subjects, would barely suffice for the erection of only one of the six Selinuntine temples--the works of a distant colony of Greece. That this may not appear exaggeration, let the reader contemplate for a moment an edifice--the porticos of which alone would require one hundred columns of stone, each sixty feet high, and thirty in circumference--such was the great Temple of Selinus.