or the world of later periods, he
was lured away from the banks of the Rhone by the charms of the
Bosporus--and so, without knowing it, opened the Eastern Question: that
ever since has been fought over, and that still demands for its right
answering at least one more general European war.

Thus greatly loving their Province, the Romans gladly poured out their
treasure in adding to its natural beauties the adornments of art.
Scattered through this region--through the Provence of to-day, and, over
on the other side of the Rhone, through Languedoc--are the remnants of
their magnificent creations: the Pont-du-Gard; the arena, and the baths,
and the Tour-Magne, and the beautiful Maison-Carree, at Nimes; at Arles
the arena, the palace of Constantine, and the wreck of the once
exquisite theatre; the baths at Aix; the triumphal arches at Orange and
Carpentras; the partly ruined but more perfectly graceful arch, and the
charming monument, here at Saint-Remy--all these relics of Roman
splendour, with many others which I have not named, still testify to
Roman affection for this enchanting land.

The theatre at Orange--the Arausio of Roman times, colonized by the
veterans of the Second Legion--was not the best of these many noble
edifices. Decidedly, the good fortune that has preserved so large a part
of it would have been better bestowed upon the far more beautiful,
because more purely Grecian, theatre at Arles: which the blessed Saint
Hilary and the priest Cyril of holy memory fell afoul of in the fifth
century and destroyed because of its inherent idolatrous wickedness, and
then used as raw material for their well-meant but injudicious
church-building. But the Orange theatre--having as its only extant rival
that at Pompeii--has the distinction of being the most nearly perfect
Roman theatre surviving until our day; and, setting aside comparisons
with things nonexistent, it is one of the most majestic structures to be
found in the whole of France. Louis XIV., who styled it "the most
magnificent wall of my kingdom," placed it first of all.

The unknown architect who wrought this great work--traversing the Roman
custom of erecting a complete building on level ground--followed the
Grecian custom of hollowing out a hill-side and of facing the open
cutting with a structure of masonry: which completed the tiers of seats
cut in the living rock; provided in its main body the postscenium, and
in its wings the dressing-rooms; and, rising