The cella is not placed opposite to the entrance of the tomb, as is usual in other examples, but on the right hand side of it in entering; and this arrangement has been made in conformity with the position of the rock in which it is excavated, and not from any caprice on the part of the architect. The date of this tomb would appear, from its architectural details, to be posterior to the time of the Ptolemies; but no degeneracy of style is observable in the paintings, which would not disgrace the best periods of Grecian art. We must at the same time recollect, that the architecture employed in the decoration of excavated tombs is not to be judged by so severe a standard as that which is applicable to the exteriors of _buildings_; the details in the first case are purely ornamental, and may be placed in the same scale with those of interiors, in which the fancy of the architect is always left more at liberty than it can be allowed to be in external decoration: and what would therefore be bad taste in one of these instances is not necessarily such in the other. Neither does it appear to have been the practice of the ancients to give an air of gloom or sadness to the abodes which they allotted to the service of the dead, and on which they have bestowed, at all periods, so much labour and expense. We find historic, allegorical, and pastoral subjects represented on such occasions in the gayest colours; as if it had been their wish to disarm death of its terrors, and to moderate the intensity of affliction by diverting the mind from the loss of the deceased to the honours which are paid to their memory. The shades of the departed were also supposed to take delight in the attention bestowed upon their mortal remains; and to wander with complacency over the gay and costly chambers which piety and affection had consecrated to their use. A departure from the established practice of the ancients in the exterior decorations of their temples and public buildings, ought not then perhaps to be received, in the instances mentioned, as a mark of vitiated taste, or of the recent date of the fabric in which such anomaly may be observed: and in applying this remark to the excavated tombs at Cyrene (scarcely any two of which are alike in their proportions) we have the more reason to regret the almost total absence of inscriptions, by which the dates of the several fabrics might be clearly ascertained. It is probable that many of these might be found on tablets, once let into, or placed over, some part of each tomb; and now buried beneath the soil and the wrecks of the exterior façades, which incumber the chambers and the approaches to them. In many instances busts have been placed over the pediments of the outer porticoes, and we often found fragments of statues in the chambers and cellæ within. So many of the tombs are however filled up to a considerable height above the level of their pavement with an accumulation of soil from without, that it