recurrence of thunder-storms is frequent, and they are extremely violent; at Athens, thunder is rare: but this remark is so very wide of my subject, that it reminds me to return to it. You will think I have said enough of the Acropolis, but I must still take you round the outside of the walls, and we will notice a few adjoining antiquities as we proceed. There is a sitting statue of early Greek workmanship on the ascent to the Acropolis, and a beautiful, but much injured capital of a peculiar style near the entrance; there is also in the way up a fountain of brackish water, which is said to run only in summer. A well within the Acropolis, the water of which is not good, is perhaps connected with this. Beginning below the Propylæa, we observe between that edifice and the lower modern battery, some ancient piers built up in the present walls, which seem to announce the most ancient access to the Acropolis, the materials and style of masonry are like that which I have mentioned as existing under the north-west angle of the Propylæa, and as being in all likelihood, prior to the age of Pericles. Taking our course along the northern side of the hill, we meet with the grotto of Pan; a hollow in the rock of no great extent, with numerous square and circular recesses cut apparently for the reception of votive tablets. At a little distance there is a vault descending from the Acropolis, and some steps passing over part of it; these steps have been thought to belong to the entrance of the original Acropolis, but this is at best very doubtful, and I have no theory as to their probable object or date. Proceeding farther, the rock is extremely uneven, both in height and direction, and there are many hollows in it, but of no considerable depth. Some of them appear to have had votive tablets, and perhaps architectural ornaments. In the wall above, we see parts of an enormous entablature; it is twice interrupted, but recurs again at the same level, as if it were placed by design, and not accidentally. The architrave, triglyphs, and cornice, are of limestone; but the metopes are slabs of marble. Two theories have been made for this; one is supported by M. Fauvel, who thinks it a portion of the regular finish of the work. If so its size was proportioned, not to the mere height of the wall, for in some places the space below this crowning is hardly more than the height of the entablature itself, but to that of the rock and wall together. The other theory takes into consideration what we are told of the mode of erecting these walls after the Persian invasion, when to avoid the effects of Lacedæmonian jealousy, they were reconstructed in the greatest haste, and of any materials which first came to hand, however previously employed. These fragments, therefore, may either have belonged to the old temple of Minerva, or to that of Jupiter Olympus, which was also a large edifice of the Doric order. I should incline to Fauvel’s opinion, were it not that several marble