A great point of interest among newly-discovered sites is the great temple and theatre of Epidaurus, which I did not visit, on account of an epidemic of small-pox—_εὐφλογία_ they call it, euphemistically. The very journey to this place is worth making, on account of its intensely characteristic features. You start from Athens in a coasting steamer full of natives, who carry with them their food and beds, and camp on deck where it pleases them, regardless of class. You see all the homeliness of ordinary life obtruded upon you without seeking it, instead of intruding upon others to find it; and you can study not only the country, but the people, at great leisure. But the ever-varying beauty of the scene leaves little time for other studies. The boat passes along Ægina, and rounds the promontory of Kalauria—the death-scene of Demosthenes—into the land-locked bay of Poros, where lay the old Trœzen and Hermione along the fruitful shore, surrounded by an amphitheatre of lofty mountains. The sea is like a fair inland lake, studded with white sails, and framed with the rich green of vines and figs and growing corn. Even the rows of tall solemn cypresses can suggest no gloom in such a landscape. From here it is but a short ride to the famous temple of Æsculapius, though most people go from Nauplia, as I once did in former years, before the discoveries were made which now attract the student. The excavations of the Greek archæological society have laid bare at least three principal buildings in connection with the famous spot; the old temple of the god, the theatre, and the famous _tholos_, a circular building, in which those who had been healed of diseases set up votive tablets. The extraordinary size and splendor of the theatre—Pausanias says it was far the finest in Greece—rather contrasts with the dimensions of the temple, and suggests that most of the patients who came were able to enjoy themselves, or else that many people came for pleasure, and not on serious business. The remains discovered are particularly valuable for the good preservation of the stage, but of this I can only speak at second hand. So also the circular building, which was erected under the supervision of the famous Polycletus, the great Argive sculptor, a rival of Phidias, has many peculiar features, and shows in one more instance that what earlier art critics assumed as modern was based on older classical models. Circular buildings supported on pillars were thought rather Græco-Roman than Greek, but here we see that, like the builders of the Odeon of Pericles, of the later Philippeion at Olympia, so the Epidaurians had this form before them from early days. Inside the outer row of Doric pillars was a second circle of pillars, apparently Ionic as to proportions and fluting, but the capitals were Corinthian, so that this feature also in architecture has a venerable antiquity, and was not Græco-Roman, as was once supposed. For a long time the so-called Lantern