attained a pre-eminence beyond which it never passed; not a stone has been there placed without some evident and important design; every part of the structure bespeaks its own essential utility[109].” “Can there be any doubt,” says Mr. Williams, “that in the temple of Neptune at Pæstum, the very forms have something within themselves, calculated to fill the mind with the impression which belongs to the sublime; whilst, in the temple of Theseus (at Athens), the simple preservation of its form bespeaks that species of admiration, that peculiar feeling, which beauty is calculated to draw forth? It required not age to constitute the one sublime, or the other beautiful. In truth, their respective characters must have been much more deeply impressed upon them in their most perfect state, than in the mutilated form in which they now stand; surrounded by the adventitious attributes with which antiquity invests every monument of human art.” Several medals[110] have been found at Pæstum; but they denote a degeneracy from Grecian skill and elegance, being more clumsily designed and executed than most coins of Magna Græcia. The private habitations[111] were unable to resist the dilapidations of so many ages; but the town wall is almost entire, and incloses an area of three miles in circumference. In many places it is of the original height, and built with oblong stones, dug out of the adjacent fields. They are a red tavertino, formed by a sediment of sulphureous water, of which a strong stream washes the foot of the walls. It comes from the mountains, and, spreading itself over a flat, forms pools, where buffaloes are in summer continually wallowing up to their noses. These walls are built of huge polyhedric stones[112], which afford some idea of what has been lately thought the Cyclopean construction. Their materials, however, are a grey stone, without any mixture of the marble, granite, and lava, which are held essential to their construction. They are five, at least[113], and, in some places, twelve feet high. They are formed of solid blocks of stone, with towers at intervals; the archway of one gate only, however, stands entire. Considering the materials and the extent of this rampart, which incloses a space of nearly four miles round, with the many towers that rose at intervals, and its elevation of more than forty feet, it must be acknowledged that it was, on the whole, a work not only of great strength, but of great magnificence. The material, of which they are built, is the same throughout each of the temples and common to all. It is an exceedingly hard, but porous and brittle stone, of a sober brownish-grey colour. It is a curious fact, that not only the ignorant people on the spot, but Neapolitan antiquaries also, wonder whence the ancients brought these masses of curious stone: and yet few things are more certain, than that they found them on the spot.