insisted upon immediately quitting their unfashionable fatherland; and
that now, after three days' journey, they had succeeded in reaching the
late settlement of a horde who had migrated to the extreme west.

Quitting regions so subject to revolutions and vicissitudes, the
travellers once more emerged into quarters of a less transitory
reputation; and in the magnificent parks, the broad streets, the
ample squares, the palaces, the triumphal arches, and the theatres of
occidental Hubbabub, Popanilla lost those sad and mournful feelings
which are ever engendered by contemplating the gloomy relics of departed
greatness. It was impossible to admire too much the architecture of this
part of the city. The elevations were indeed imposing. In general, the
massy Egyptian appropriately graced the attic-stories; while the finer
and more elaborate architecture of Corinth was placed on a level with
the eye, so that its beauties might be more easily discovered. Spacious
colonnades were flanked by porticoes, surmounted by domes; nor was the
number of columns at all limited, for you occasionally met with porticos
of two tiers, the lower one of which consisted of three, the higher one
of thirty columns. Pedestals of the purest Ionic Gothic were ingeniously
intermixed with Palladian pediments; and the surging spire exquisitely
harmonised with the horizontal architecture of the ancients. But
perhaps, after all, the most charming effect was produced by the
pyramids, surmounted by weather-cocks.

Popanilla was particularly pleased by some chimneys of Caryatides, and
did not for a moment hesitate in assenting to the assertion of Skindeep
that the Vraibleusians were the most architectural nation in the world.
True it was, they had begun late; their attention as a people having
been, for a considerable time, attracted to much more important affairs;
but they had compensated for their tardy attention by their speedy
excellence. *

* See a work which will be shortly published, entitled, 'The
difference detected between Architecture and Parchitecture,'
by Sansovino the Second.

Before they returned home Skindeep led Popanilla to the top of a tower,
from whence they had a complete view of the whole island. Skindeep
particularly directed the Captain's attention to one spot, where
flourished, as he said, the only corn-fields in the country, which
supplied the whole nation, and were the property of one individual. So
unrivalle