IT is fortunate for us that we have more remains of the two cities where architecture was carried to the greatest perfection, than of any other. The immensity of Rome, and the vast multitude of public buildings which adorned it, might lead one to expect that we should meet there with more remains than elsewhere, but Athens never was a very large city, nor do the public buildings in it appear to have been constructed on a larger scale than in many others. In each of these cities we probably see the remains of some of the finest examples. Judging from the fragments found at Rome, we may pronounce that there were many other buildings of great beauty, but none which we could wish to exchange for the temple of Mars Ultor, of Jupiter Stator, of Jupiter Tonans, of Antoninus and Faustina, or for the portico of the Pantheon. The temple of Jupiter Capitolinus was indeed larger than any of these, but we may doubt if its architecture were better, or even so good. Here there are fewer objects to distract the attention, and we may be assured that the Parthenon, the Erectheum, the Propylæa, and the temple of Theseus, were the principal objects of beauty in the time of Athenian splendour, and if there were others which rivalled, there were none which pretended to surpass them. That we have remains of the best edifices of Hadrian and Herodes Atticus, is not quite so certain, but we know from several examples that architecture had fallen, at that period, from the dignity and purity which it possessed in the time of Pericles.