grass has grown upon the aqueduct
in all these years. And yet the huge fabric is strengthened by no
buttress, has needed no repair. This lightness of structure, combined
with such prodigious durability, produces the strongest sense of
science and self-reliant power in the men who designed it. None but
Romans could have built such a monument, and have set it in such a
place--a wilderness of rock and rolling hill, scantily covered with
low brushwood, and browsed over by a few sheep--for such a purpose,
too, in order to supply Nemausus with pure water. The modern town does
pretty well without its water; but here subsists the civilisation
of eighteen centuries past intact: the human labour yet remains,
the measuring, contriving mind of man, shrinking from no obstacles,
spanning the air, and in one edifice combining gigantic strength and
perfect beauty. It is impossible not to echo Rousseau's words in such
a place, and to say with him: 'Le retentissement de mes pas dans ces
immenses voutes me faisait croire entendre la forte voix de ceux
qui les avaient baties. Je me perdais comme un insecte dans cette
immensite. Je sentais, tout en me faisant petit, je ne sais quoi
qui m'elevait l'ame; et je me disais en soupirant, Que ne suis-je ne
Romain!'

There is nothing at Arles which produces the same deep and indelible
impression. Yet Arles is a far more interesting town than Nismes,
partly because of the Rhone delta which begins there, partly because
of its ruinous antiquity, and partly also because of the strong local
character of its population. The amphitheatre of Arles is vaster and
more sublime in its desolation than the tidy theatre at Nismes; the
crypts, and dens, and subterranean passages suggest all manner of
speculation as to the uses to which they may have been appropriated;
while the broken galleries outside, intricate and black and cavernous,
like Piranesi's etchings of the 'Carceri,' present the wildest
pictures of greatness in decay, fantastic dilapidation. The ruins of
the smaller theatre, again, with their picturesquely grouped fragments
and their standing columns, might be sketched for a frontispiece to
some dilettante work on classical antiquities. For the rest, perhaps
the Aliscamps, or ancient Roman burial-ground, is the most interesting
thing at Arles, not only because of Dante's celebrated lines in the
canto of 'Farinata:'--

Si come ad Arli ove 'l Rodano stagna,
Fanno i sepolcri tutto 'l loco varo;