no longer seen. Vesuvius, still threatening,
smokes away at the extremity of the picture.

[Illustration: Plan of Vesuvius.]

Look more closely and you will perceive that the fluted columns are of
Caserta stone, of tufa, or of brick, coated with stucco and raised two
steps above the level of the square. Under the lower step runs the
kennel. These columns sustained a gallery upon which one mounted by
narrow and abrupt steps that time has spared. This upper gallery must
have been covered. The women walked in it. A second story of columns,
most likely interrupted in front of the monuments, rested upon the other
one. Mazois has reconstructed this colonnade in two superior
orders--Doric below and Ionic above--with exquisite elegance. The
pavement of the square, on which you may still walk, was of travertine.
Thus we see the Forum rising again, as it were, in our presence.

Let us glance at the ruins that surround it. That mound at the other end
was the foundation of a temple, the diminutive size of which strikes the
newcomer at first sight. Every one is not aware that the temple, far
from being a place of assemblage for devout multitudes, was, with the
ancients, in reality, but a larger niche inclosing the statue of the
deity to be worshipped. The consecrated building received only a small
number of the elect after they had been befittingly purified, and the
crowd remained outside. It was not the palace, but the mere cell of the
god. This cell (_cella_) was, at first, the whole temple, and was just
large enough to hold the statue and the altar. By degrees it came to be
ornamented with a front portico, then with a rear portico, and then with
side colonnades, thus attaining by embellishment after embellishment the
rich elegance of the Madeleine at Paris. But the proportions of our
cathedrals were never adopted by the ancients. Thus, Christianity rarely
appropriates the Greek or Roman temples for its worship. It has
preferred the vast basilicas, the royal name of which assumes a
religious meaning.

The Romans built their temples in this wise: The augur--that is to say,
the priest who read the future in the flight of birds--traced in the sky
with his short staff a spacious square, which he then marked on the
soil. Stakes were at once fixed along the four lines, and draperies were
hung between the stakes. In the midst of this space, the area or
inclosure of the temple, the augur marked out a cross--the augural
cross, indicat