what appears to be an ancient portal, with carved bas-reliefs, and an
inscription which I could not make out. Some Romans were lying dormant
in the sun, on the steps of the basilica; indeed, now that the sun is
getting warmer, they seem to take advantage of every quiet nook to bask
in, and perhaps to go to sleep.

We had gone but a little way from the arch, and across the Circus
Maximus, when we saw the Temple of Vesta before us, on the hank of the
Tiber, which, however, we could not see behind it. It is a most
perfectly preserved Roman ruin, and very beautiful, though so small that,
in a suitable locality, one would take it rather for a garden-house than
an ancient temple. A circle of white marble pillars, much time-worn and
a little battered, though but one of them broken, surround the solid
structure of the temple, leaving a circular walk between it and the
pillars, the whole covered by a modern roof which looks like wood, and
disgraces and deforms the elegant little building. This roof resembles,
as much as anything else, the round wicker cover of a basket, and gives a
very squat aspect to the temple. The pillars are of the Corinthian
order, and when they were new and the marble snow-white and sharply
carved and cut, there could not have been a prettier object in all Rome;
but so small an edifice does not appear well as a ruin.

Within view of it, and, indeed, a very little way off, is the Temple of
Fortuna Virilis, which likewise retains its antique form in better
preservation than we generally find a Roman ruin, although the Ionic
pillars are now built up with blocks of stone and patches of brickwork,
the whole constituting a church which is fixed against the side of a tall
edifice, the nature of which I do not know.

I forgot to say that we gained admittance into the Temple of Vesta, and