At Athens four ancient buildings[82] have been entirely destroyed within these few years; a small Ionic temple in the Acropolis; another temple, supposed to be of Ceres, near the Ilissus, or bridge over that stream, and the aqueduct of Antoninus Pius. Part also of the propylæan columns have been thrown down, with a mass of the architrave on the western front of the Erectheion, and one of the columns of the Olympeion. In fact, more than forty of the temples and public buildings[83], which are mentioned by Pausanias, have so totally disappeared, as not to leave a trace, by which it is possible to identify their situation: and this leads us to the Parthenon, which we have purposely left to the last, because the wrong done to it of late years, by a nobleman of Scotland, has been the means of introducing to our own country a taste for the elegant and beautiful, which it never enjoyed before. "The Parthenon," says Mr. Dodwell, "at first sight rather disappointed my expectations, and appeared less than its fame. The eye, however, soon becomes filled with the magnitude of its dimensions, the beauty of its materials, the exquisite perfection of its symmetry, and the harmonious analogy of its proportions. It is the most unrivalled triumph of sculpture and architecture that the world ever saw. The delight which it inspires on a superficial view is heightened in proportion as it is attentively surveyed. If we admire the whole of the glorious fabric, that admiration will be augmented by a minute investigation of all the ramified details. Every part has been finished with such exquisite purity, that not the smallest instance of negligence can be discovered in the execution of those particulars, which are the least exposed to observation: the most concealed minutiæ of the structure having been perfected, with a sort of pious scrupulosity." "I pass delicious hours," says M. La Martine, "recumbent beneath the shade of the Propylæa: my eyes fixed on the falling pediment of the Parthenon, I feel all antiquity in what it has produced of divine; the rest is not worth the language that has described it. The aspect of the Parthenon displays, better than history, the colossal grandeur of a people. Pericles ought not to die. What superhuman civilization was that which supplied a great man to command, an architect to conceive, a sculptor to decorate, statuaries to execute, workmen to cut, a people to pay, and eyes to comprehend and admire such an edifice! Where shall we find such a people, or such a period? No where!"