The temple, to speak technically of it, is peripteral, octastyle, and hypæthral. The proportions every body acknowledges to be highly beautiful. This is easily stated in words, but the feeling arising from the perception of that beauty is incommunicable. In the front, the proportion of every part seems exactly what it ought to be, but I believe in the flank, that I prefer the proportions of the temple of Theseus. Why a continued colonnade, crowned by a straight entablature, should require more slender proportions than one supporting a pediment, I cannot tell; but such seems to be the fact. Yet, as in the Parthenon, the height of the column is five diameters and fourteen twenty-fourths, very nearly, and in the Theseum the height is only five diameters, and fifteen twenty-fourths; the difference seems too small to produce any sensible effect; but the intercolumniations in the Parthenon are only equal to about one diameter, and two sevenths of the columns, while in the Theseum they are one and two thirds, and to this greater space is doubtless owing the lighter appearance of the latter. The whole is, as you know, of Pentelic marble; the part exposed to the action of the south wind, which probably carries with it saline particles, is white, and somewhat corroded; the other parts are stained exactly of the hue of burnt terra Siena, but some places take a dingier tint, perhaps from the effect of the explosion, while the north side is partially varied with the sulphur yellow of the _Lichen candelarius_. The western end, which, though the part opposite to the entrance of the Acropolis, is in fact the back of the temple, represented the contest of Neptune and Minerva; and the relative position of the deities, and of the benefits they offered to the Athenians, is well explained by Wilkins by reference to a medal. Behind the statues the tympanum is faced by upright slabs of marble, some of which are hollowed out at the back, I do not know why, and you might, perhaps, creep behind the two figures which remain, which are those said to be of Hadrian and Sabina; but though all these statues were finished all round, as you know, by having seen them in London, there was certainly no provision made for a close inspection after they were up in their places. These two remaining statues have lost their heads, and consequently all that entitled them to their appellation, and the remaining fragment of cornice has fallen from its first position, and rests upon the figures. The metopes of this front are almost obliterated, but the sculpture of the inner frieze is exquisite, perhaps the finest piece of the whole circuit. Sometimes when this is lighted by the declining sun, the effect is inconceivably beautiful; but this effect never could have had place in the perfect state of the building, because it is only owing to the want of ceiling and roof in the peristyle, that it is ever illuminated by the direct light of the sky.