the balustrades or battlements--call them what you will--seemed the segments of broken circles. Their irregular height varied from two to six feet, and visitors could scale them, as in Egypt they climb the pyramids. One terrace, or rather set of terraces, was called White, the other Pink: but the White were tinged lightly with pink in spots, and their rosy sisters paled here and there, so as to become nearly colourless in places. “White,” moreover, scarcely conveys the exact impression of Te Tarata, except from a distance or under strong light. Domett’s “cataract of marble” summed it up finely. But to be precise, where it was smoothest and where water and the play of light made the surface gleam or glisten, the silica coating of the White ledges reminded you rather of old ivory, or polished bone tinted a faint yellow. As for the “Pink” staircase, one traveller would describe it as bright salmon-pink, another as pale rose, for eyes in different heads see the same things differently. The White Terrace was the higher of the two, and descended with a gentler slope than the other. The skirts of both spread out into the lake, so that its waters flowed over them. The number and fine succession of these ivory arcs and rosy battlements made but half their charm. The hot water as it trickled from shelf to shelf left its flinty sediment in delicate incrustations--here like the folds of a mantle, there resembling fringing lace-work, milk outpoured and frozen, trailing parasites or wild arabesques. Or it made you think of wreathed sea-foam, snow half-melted, or the coral of South Sea reefs. Then among it lay the blue pools, pool after pool, warm, richly coloured, glowing; while over every edge and step fell the water, trickling, spurting, sparkling, and steaming as it slowly cooled on its downward way. So that, though there was a haunting reminder of human architecture and sculpture, there was none of the smug finish of man’s buildings, nothing of the cold dead lifelessness of carved stone-work. The sun shone upon it, the wind played with the water-drops. The blue sky--pale by contrast--overarched the deeper blue of the pools. Green mosses and vivid ferns grew and flourished on the very edge of the steam. What sculptor’s frieze or artist’s structure ever had such a framework? In the genial water the bathers, choosing their temperature, could float or sit, breathing unconfined air and wondering at the softness and strange intensity of colour. They could bathe in the day-time when all was sunshine, or on summer nights when the moonlight turned the ledges to alabaster. Did the tribute of his provinces build for Caracalla such imperial baths as these? No wonder that Nature, after showing such loveliness to our age for a moment, snatched it away from the desecration of scribbling, defacing, civilised men!