e
white-robed priests. The breezes from the fragrant mountains and the
distant sea, of which it commands a fine view, sigh through it in harmony
with its sad and solitary grandeur.

On a neighboring hill are the vestiges of the ancient city, a few ruined
towers, probably of the citadel, and a theatre, the stone seats of which
are almost entire; part of the sculptured figure of a faun still remains
on the proscenium; wild shrubs shade a great part of the ruin, and where
manhood and beauty once sat, listening to the tragedies of an Eschylus or
Euripides, the adder and the lizards sun themselves. The next ruins we
visited were those of Selinunte, anciently Selinus or Selinuntium, which
lies on the southern coast of the island. This city was founded by a
colony of Greeks about twenty-five hundred years ago. It was taken during
the Carthaginian wars, and in a great measure destroyed by Hannibal the
son of Giscon, four hundred and nine years before CHRIST. The country on
approaching Selinunte is a dreary plain covered with the palmetto. On
gazing toward the sea, when distant two or three miles, the traveller's
eye catches what he would take for a rocky hill, were it not for a few
mutilated columns which rise above the blue horizon. As he approaches, the
stupendous scene of ruin strikes him with awe. There in a mighty heap lie
column and capital, metope and cornice; and the mind is lost in wonder at
the power that raised these giant structures, and the power that overthrew
them. Only one complete column, and that without its capital, and several
mutilated ones, remain standing of the great temple supposed to be of
Neptune; the rest are prostrate; and all lying in one direction, bear
evidence that they have been thrown down by an earthquake.

The first temple is Grecian Doric, as are all those of which I shall
speak. Its columns are about eleven feet across, and they must have been,
including their capitals, more than sixty feet high. Above these lofty
columns was placed the architrave, one of the stones of which, that we
measured, was twenty-five feet in length, eight in height, and six in
thickness; but another is still larger; forty feet long, seven broad, and
three deep. To transport these enormous masses of stone from their quarry,
which is several miles distant, with a deep valley and river intervening,
would trouble the modern engineer; but to poise and place them on the top
of the columns, seventy feet from the ground,