To revert to the historic facts on Ephesus—it was a dream city of inexpressible beauty, basking in a wonderful sunlight between mountain and sea, with white alabaster colonnades—one hundred and twenty columns there were across the face of the Diana Temple, which was over four hundred feet long and two hundred broad—at the entrance to the Temple, to the great hippodrome reported to seat 50,000 people, to the public square park in the heart of the city, to the baths, to the circus, to the fountains. The city occupied an area of five by three miles. Coming out of the Mediterranean, ships ascended the dredged Cayster River, to a square basin landlocked and surrounded by a magnificent stone parapet. On one side were the wharfs and docks; on the other the broad steps up to Diana’s Temple. The city proper, with its public park, faced the end of the basin of the sea through more magnificent elaborate colonnades. In fact, it might be said there was neither an ungraceful nor inartistic architectural line in all Ephesus. The city might have been dedicated and consecrated to beauty. The Diana goddess was not the huntress as told in the story. The huntress had been degraded first into an Eastern Astarte presiding over the productive powers of the earth, and finally still farther degraded to the sensuous rites, which at this time were running a sort of delirious frenzied riot in the world. Cressets of naphtha petroleum oils, and asbestos soap or oils may be used to explain much of the apparent magic of altar fires that never went out and priests who could handle flame without harm; and all the magic was concentrated on the materialistic aim of obtaining revenues from the enormous traffic that passed through Ephesus to and from Asia to Rome; and the great Diana festivals were at Ephesus in spring. Earthquake and war demolished ancient Ephesus. The Diana statue was carried off to France. The stones of the beautiful Ionic columns went to build churches in Sienna and Rome. The ruins of Ephesus by 1888, when the archæologist’s spade had been busy, were a melancholy epic in crumbling stone.