oilette_, whom she had invited to see the
strangers, and who gazed at us with as much surprise as if we were
natives of Otaheite, beheld for the first time. Cordial greetings,
however, atoned for the somewhat too earnest examination to which we
had been subjected; and many civil speeches from our good hostess, who
seemed not a little proud of displaying her foreign guests, rewarded
the patience with which we submitted to the inspection.

One old lady felt the quality of our robes, another admired our
trinkets, and a third was in raptures with our veils. In short, as a
Frenchwoman would say, we had _un grand succes_; and so, our hostess
assured us.

We went over the Amphitheatre, the dimensions of which exceed those of
the Amphitheatre at Nismes. Three orders of architecture are also
introduced in it, and it has no less than sixty arcades, with four
large doors; that on the north side has a very imposing effect. The
corridor leading to the arena exhibits all the grandeur peculiar to the
public buildings of the Romans, and is well worthy of attention; but
the portion of the edifice that most interested me was the
subterranean, which a number of workmen were busily employed in
excavating, under the superintendence of the Prefect of Arles, a
gentleman with whose knowledge of the antiquities of his native town,
and urbanity towards the strangers who visit them, we have every reason
to be satisfied.

Under his guidance, we explored a considerable extent of the recently
excavated subterranean, a task which requires no slight devotion to
antiquities to induce the visitor to persevere, the inequalities of the
ground exposing one continually to the danger of a fall, or to the
still more perilous chance--as occurred to one of our party--of the
head coming in contact with the roof.

We saw also fragments of a theatre in the garden of the convent of La
Misericorde, consisting of two large marble columns and two arches.

In the ancient church of St. Anne, now converted into a museum, are
collected all the fragments of antiquity discovered at Arles, and in
its vicinity; some of them highly interesting, and bearing evidences of
the former splendour of the place.

An altar dedicated to the Goddess of Good; the celebrated Mithras with
a serpent coiled round him, between the folds of which are sculptured
the signs of the zodiac; Medea and her children; a mile-stone, bearing
the names of the Emperors Theodosius and Valentinian; a ba