practice is begun, but not fully established, and the leaves are gracefully drawn. Now if you ask me why I refer these columns to the time of Augustus rather than that of Antiochus, to which these observations seem to apply at least equally well, I must refer you to the authority of Pliny, and the spoliation of Sylla; for I have no internal evidence. [Illustration: _Fig. 1._] [Illustration: _Fig. 2._] [Illustration: _Fig. 3._] [Illustration: _Fig. 4._] In all ruins the mind speculates on what the building has been, and where the remains are magnificent, on the power, the riches, the zeal, and intelligence requisite to produce it; and finds no small degree of pleasure in that employment. In this temple there is ample field for such speculations, enough still remains to indicate both the disposition of the building, and that of the court in which it stood, which was probably surrounded with columns. The columns remaining belonged to the temple itself; the smaller ones were more easily taken away; the size of the large ones has been their protection. One of them, which was standing in Stuart’s time, has however been destroyed by a governor of Athens, and the materials employed in the erection of a mosque, but the experiment did not succeed; for the pashaw of Negropont hearing of it, made it a pretence to extort money from him, on the ground that he had appropriated to himself the property of the grand signor. These columns are above 6 feet in diameter, and nearly 60 feet high, that is, they are somewhat thicker than those of the portico of Covent Garden theatre, and almost twice as high. They are of the Corinthian order, and their sculptured capitals still remain. There must have been originally, at least one hundred and sixteen of them: they are of Pentelic marble, but many of the blocks are much veined with mica slate, and resemble cipollino, but with a purer ground. It appears probable that thicker blocks might be obtained of this, than of the pure white marble. The workmanship is excellent, though perhaps not equal to that of the Phidian architecture. Their physical beauty is enhanced by the various effects of their grouping, as seen in different positions, and by the stains of a yellowish, or rather of an orange hue, which time has produced in all the edifices of this marble. It is probably owing to the action of the air on a small quantity of iron, contained in the mica which the Pentelic marble is never without. As perfect buildings, perhaps the original colour was the best, but as ruins, their beauty is certainly increased by the present tints. These remains are unincumbered by any modern building, except a little sort of hut, erected on a piece of the architrave, the traditional residence of a _Stylite_; and they are placed on an artificial platform, on a bank rising from the Ilissus, supported by a buttressed wall, part of which still remains. The height of the bases is unequal, and the plinths of the inner columns rest on