in plate (page 385); and to the westward and south-westward of this building are many interesting remains of private dwelling-houses, palaces, baths, &c., which require a great deal of excavation. On a pedestal in one of these, is the inscription (4) in plate (page 385); most of them appear to have been Roman, and the capitals and bases of some of the columns belonging to them are very fanciful and overcharged with ornament. Some of the shafts of small columns in this mass of building are spiral, and formed of coloured marbles; and may probably be attributed to the time of Justinian, when the city revived under his politic munificence. If the taste displayed by the Greeks and Romans of this period had been at all in proportion to the expense which they lavished upon their public and private edifices of almost every description, the result would have been splendid in the extreme; but the costliness of material, and the labour employed in ornament, will not compensate for the absence of this true test of genuine excellence; and we cannot venture to commend the strange mixture of received orders, and the wayward fancy employed in the invention of new ones, which are conspicuous in several parts of Ptolemeta. It has been observed by Signor Della Cella, that the remains of this city are purely Egyptian; but we must confess that we were unable to discover the slightest resemblance of style in Ptolemeta to that which characterizes the architecture of Egypt. There is nothing at Ptolemeta (that we could perceive) which is not either Greek or Roman; and the profusion of unnecessary ornament, which generally distinguished the later productions of both these nations, is very different from that which is observable in Egyptian remains. The style of Egypt, though highly ornamental, is founded on established principles; and there is nothing incongruous or unmeaning in the most laboured decorations which are peculiar to it: proportion and simplicity are very rarely violated in the buildings either of Egypt or Nubia; and the great variety of ornament which appears in them never disturbs the general effect, or detracts from the imposing grandeur of the masses. Whenever the general form and larger parts of a building are simple and well proportioned, a great deal of ornament may be adopted in the detail, without injury to the effect of the whole; and as this is particularly the case in Egyptian architecture, the mind is strongly impressed with the pleasing character of the general mass, before it has time to notice any other peculiarities.