nd with them lie beautiful
capitals apparently as large as a small cottage; and also single slabs of
stone, superbly sculptured, that are four or five feet thick, and would
completely cover the floor of any ordinary parlor. You wonder where
these monstrous things came from, and it takes some little time to
satisfy yourself that the airy and graceful fabric that towers above your
head is made up of their mates. It seems too preposterous.

The Temple of Jupiter is a smaller ruin than the one I have been speaking
of, and yet is immense. It is in a tolerable state of preservation. One
row of nine columns stands almost uninjured. They are sixty-five feet
high and support a sort of porch or roof, which connects them with the
roof of the building. This porch-roof is composed of tremendous slabs of
stone, which are so finely sculptured on the under side that the work
looks like a fresco from below. One or two of these slabs had fallen,
and again I wondered if the gigantic masses of carved stone that lay
about me were no larger than those above my head. Within the temple, the
ornamentation was elaborate and colossal. What a wonder of architectural
beauty and grandeur this edifice must have been when it was new! And
what a noble picture it and its statelier companion, with the chaos of
mighty fragments scattered about them, yet makes in the moonlight!

I can not conceive how those immense blocks of stone were ever hauled
from the quarries, or how they were ever raised to the dizzy heights they
occupy in the temples. And yet these sculptured blocks are trifles in
size compared with the rough-hewn blocks that form the wide verandah or
platform which surrounds the Great Temple. One stretch of that platform,
two hundred feet long, is composed of blocks of stone as large, and some
of them larger, than a street-car. They surmount a wall about ten or
twelve feet high. I thought those were large rocks, but they sank into
insignificance compared with those which formed another section of the
platform. These were three in number, and I thought that each of them
was about as long as three street cars placed end to end, though of
course they are a third wider and a third higher than a street car.
Perhaps two railway freight cars of the largest pattern, placed end to
end, might better represent their size. In combined length these three
stones stretch nearly two hundred feet; they are thirteen feet square;
two of them are sixt