Nothing can be stranger than the remains of a beautiful temple in this alpine solitude. Greek life is a sort of protest for cities and plains and human culture, against picturesque Alps and romantic scenery. Yet here we have a building of the purest age and type set up far from the cities and haunts of men, and in the midst of such a scene as might be chosen by the most romantic and sentimental modern. It was dedicated to Apollo the Helper, for his deliverance of the country from the same plague which devastated Athens at the opening of the Peloponnesian War,(141) and was built by the greatest architect of the day, Ictinus, the builder of the Parthenon. It was reputed in Pausanias’s day the most beautiful temple in Peloponnesus, next to that of Athene Alea at Tegea. Even its roof was of marble tiles, and the cutting of the limestone soffits of the ceiling is still so sharp and clear, that specimens have been brought to Athens, as the most perfect of the kind. The friezes, discovered years ago (1812), and quite close to the surface, by Mr. Cockerell and his friends, were carried away, and are now one of the greatest ornaments of the British Museum. Any one who desires to know every detail of the building, and see its general effect when restored, must consult Cockerell’s elaborate work on this and the temple of Ægina. It affords many problems to the architect. Each of the pillars within the cella was engaged or attached to the wall, by joinings at right angles with it, the first pair only reaching forward toward the spectator as he entered. The temple faces north, contrary to the usual habit of the Greeks. In the very centre was found a Corinthian capital—another anomaly in a Doric temple, and at the epoch of Periclean art. In Mr. Cockerell’s restoration of the interior, this capital is fitted to a solitary pillar in the centre of the cella, and close to the statue of the god, which apparently faced sideways, and looked toward the rising sun. It is a more popular theory that it was set up much later, with some votive tripod upon it, and that it does not belong to the original structure. The frieze in this temple was not along the outside wall of the cella, but inside, and over the pillars, as the narrow side aisle (if I may so call it) between the pillars and cella wall was broken by the joining of the former, five at each side, with the latter. I cannot but fancy that this transference of the friezes to the inner side of the wall was caused by the feeling that the Parthenon friezes, upon which such great labor and such exquisite taste had been lavished, were after all very badly seen, being “skied” into a place not worthy of them. Any one who will look up at the remaining band on the west front of the Parthenon from the foot of the pillars beneath will, I think, agree with me. At Bassæ there are many peculiarities in the Ionic capitals, and in the ornamentation of this second monument of Ictinus’s