is another antiquity of the place also to be visited at Segeste--its
_theatre_; but we are too immediately below it to know any thing
about it at present, and must leave it in a parenthesis. To our left,
at the distance of eight miles, this hill country of harmonious and
graceful undulation ends in beetling cliffs, beneath which the sea,
now full in view, lies sparkling in the morning sunshine. We shall
never, never forget the impressions made upon us on first getting
sight of Segeste! _Pæstum_ we had seen, and thought that it exhausted
all that was possible to a temple, or the site of a temple.
Awe-stricken had we surveyed those monuments of "immemorial
antiquity" in that baleful region of wild-eyed buffaloes and birds of
prey--temples to death in the midst of his undisputed domains! We had
fully adopted Forsyth's sentiment, and held Pæstum to be probably the
most impressive monument on earth; but here at Segeste a nature less
austere, and more RIANTE in its wildness, lent a quite different
charm to a scene which could scarcely be represented by art, and for
which a reader could certainly not be _prepared_ by description. We
gave an antiquarian's devoutest worship to this venerable survivor of
2000 years, and of many empires--we _felt_ the vast masses of its
time-tried Doric, and even the wild flowers within its precincts, its
pink valerians; its _erba di vento_, its scented wallflower. The
whole scene kept our admiration long tasked, but untired. A smart
shower compelled us to seek shelter under the shoulder of one of the
grey entablatures: it soon passed away, leaving us a legacy of the
richest fragrance, while a number of wild birds of the hawk kind,
called "chaoli" from their shrill note, issued from their
hiding-places, and gave us wild music as they scudded by!

A few bits of wall scattered over the corn-fields are all that now
remains of the dwellings of the men who built this temple for their