is hard to say;
and without an engraving it is difficult to give an idea of their
present state. At some points it would seem as if the pillars rested on
the fourth step. In that case to enter the temple you would have to go
down a step. In other places, however, the uppermost step is cut
through, and then it looks as if the columns had rested on bases; and
then again these spaces have been filled up, and so we have once more
the first case. An architect is necessary to determine this point.

The sides have twelve columns, not reckoning the corner ones; the back
and front six, including them. The rollers on which the stones were
moved along, still lie around you on the steps. They have been left in
order to indicate that the temple was unfinished. But the strongest
evidence of this fact is the floor. In some spots (along the sides) the
pavement is laid down; in the middle, however, the red limestone rock
still projects higher than the level of the floor as partially laid; the
flooring, therefore, can not ever have been finished. There is also no
trace of an inner temple. Still less can the temple have ever been
overlaid with stucco; but that it was intended to do so, we may infer
from the fact that the abaci of the capitals have projecting points
probably for the purpose of holding the plaster. The whole is built of a
limestone, very similar to the travertine; only it is now much fretted.
The restoration which was carried on in 1781, has done much good to the
building. The cutting of the stone, with which the parts have been
reconnected, is simple, but beautiful.

The site of the temple is singular; at the highest end of a broad and
long valley, it stands on an isolated hill. Surrounded, however, on all
sides by cliffs, it commands a very distant and extensive view of the
land, but takes in only just a corner of the sea. The district reposes
in a sort of melancholy fertility--every where well cultivated, but
scarce a dwelling to be seen. Flowering thistles were swarming with
countless butterflies, wild fennel stood here from eight to nine feet
high, dry and withered of the last year's growth, but so rich and in
such seeming order that one might almost take it to be an old
nursery-ground. A shrill wind whistled through the columns as if through
a wood, and screaming birds of prey hovered around the pediments.

TAORMINA[38]

BY JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

When you have ascended to the top of the wall of rocks