On the southern coast of Sicily, about ten miles to the east of Cape Granitola, and between the little rivers of Maduini and Bilici, (the Crimisus and Hypsa of ancient times,) a tremendous mass of ruins presents itself in the midst of a solitary and desolate country. These are the sad remains of the once splendid city of Selinus, or Selinuntum, which was founded by a Greek colony from Megara, more than two thousand four hundred years ago. When seen at a distance from the sea, they still look like a mighty city; but on a near approach nothing is seen but a confused heap of fallen edifices—a mixture of broken shafts, capitals, entablatures, and metopæ, with a few truncated columns erect among them. They seem to consist chiefly of the remains of three temples of the Doric order. One of these temples was naturally devoted by a maritime and trading people to Neptune; a second was dedicated to Castor and Pollux, the friends of navigation and the scourge of pirates; the destination of the third temple is uncertain. The size of the columns and the masses of stone that lie heaped about them is prodigious. The lower circumference of the columns is thirty-one feet and a half; many of the stone blocks measure twenty-five feet in length, eight in height, and six in thickness. Twelve of the columns have fallen with singular regularity, the disjointed shaft-pieces of each lying in a straight line with the base from which they fell, and having their several capitals at the other end of the line. If architects and antiquaries have not been mistaken in their task of measuring among heaps of ruins that in good part cover and conceal the exterior lines, the largest of the three temples was three hundred and thirty-four feet long, and one hundred and fifty-four feet wide. These are prodigious and unusual dimensions for ancient edifices of this kind. That wonder of the whole world, the Temple of Diana at Ephesus, itself did not much exceed these admeasurements. The great Selinuntian temple seems to have had porticoes of four columns in depth, and eight in width, with a double row of sixteen columns on the lateral sides of the cella. It is somewhat singular, from having had all the columns of the first row on the east front fluted, while all the rest of the columns were quite plain. One of these fluted columns is erect and tolerably entire, with the exception of its capital. The fluting, moreover, is not in the Doric style; for each flute is separated by a fillet. The material of which this and the other edifices were formed, is a species of fine-grained petrifaction, hard, and very sonorous on being struck with a hammer. It was hewn out of quarries near at hand, at a place called Campo Bello, where many masses, only partially separated from the rock, and looking as if the excavation had been suddenly interrupted, are still seen.