Near the Piræan gate is still to be seen, in a state of admirable preservation, the ground-plot and entire town of the Pnyx, or place of _parliament_ of the Athenians, as it was appropriated by Solon to the use of the citizens. Nearly the whole of it is an excavation of the rock, and the several parts of it were carved in stone of one solid mass, with the exception only of the semi-circular area, the farthest part of which consists of masonry. "To approach the spot," says Dr. Clarke, "once dignified by the presence of the greatest Grecian orators, to set our feet where they stood, and actually to behold the place where Demosthenes addressed 'the men of Athens,' calling to mind the most memorable examples of his eloquence, is a gratification of an exalted nature. But the feelings excited in viewing the Pnyx, peculiarly affect Englishmen: that holy fire, so much dreaded by the Athenian tyrants, and which this place had such a remarkable tendency to agitate, burns yet in Britain; it is the very soul of her liberties, and it strengthens the security of her laws; giving eloquence to her senate, heroism to her armies, extension to her commerce, and freedom to her people: although annihilated in almost every country of the earth, it lives in England, and its extinction there, like the going out of the sacred flame in the temple of Delphi, would be felt as a national calamity." Among the loose fragments, dispersed in the Acropolis, has been found a small piece of marble, with an inscription, but in so imperfect a state, that Dr. Clarke considered it only worth notice as a memorial of the place where it was found, and in its allusion to the Prytaneum, which is the only legible part of it. The Prytaneum, where the written laws of Solon were kept, however, was not in the Acropolis, but in a lower part of the city. The Gymnasium of Ptolemy, which stands near the temple of Theseus, is greatly dilapidated, and, in no small degree, concealed by dwellings[61]. The Erectheum is situated about one hundred and fifty feet to the north of the Parthenon. This structure consisted of two contiguous temples; that of Minerva Polias, with its portico towards the east; and that of Pandrosus towards the west, with its two porticoes standing by the north and south angles, the entrance to the Pandroseum being on the northern side. The Turks made a powder-magazine of one of the vestibules of this building, which contains one of the finest specimens of Ionian architecture now existing; and it has been judiciously remarked of the sculpture, every where displayed in this edifice, that it is difficult to conceive how marble has been wrought to such a depth, and brought to so sharp an edge, the ornaments having all the delicacy of works of metal.