lowest range of the CUNEI. All niches were, no doubt, for statues;
but these might also have been, it pleases some to suppose, for the
reverberation of applause; and they quote something about
_"Resonantia Vasa"_ from Macrobius, adding, that such niches were
once probably lined with brass. Of bolder speculatists, some believe
the _kennel_ to have been made with a similar intention. Others hold
that it may have been a concealed way for introducing lions and
tigers to the arena! Now, what if it were a _drain_ for the waters,
which, in bad weather, soon collect to a formidable height in such a
situation? Whether for voice, or wild beasts, or drainage, or none of
these objects, there it is. As to the first, we cannot help being
sceptical. Did it ever occur to an audience to wish the noise they
make _greater_, and contrive expedients for _making it so?_

We are here high up amidst the mountains, where, we are to remember,
as the ancients came not to spend, like ourselves, an idle hour, but
to consume most of the day, _shelter_ would be wanted. Two large
lateral spaces, or as it were, side chambers, have received this
destination at the hands of the antiquary, and have been supposed
lobbies for foul weather or for shade at noon. We were made to notice
by our guide, what we should else have overlooked, how the main
passage described above communicates with several smaller ones in its
progress, and that a small stair was a subsequent contrivance or
afterthought meant to relieve, on emergency, the overcharged large
one; its workmanship and style showed it plainly to have been added
when the edifice had already become _an antiquity_. This altogether
peculiar and most interesting building has also suffered still later
interpolations: a Saracenic frieze runs round the wall; so that the
hands of three widely different nations have been busy on the
mountain theatre, which received its _first audience_ twenty-five