DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.55699#0260
210
THE LANDSCAPE ANNUAL.
most pleasure; each having his own opinion, and de-
lighting himself sometimes with his favourite theory, at
others, with the splendid visions which belong to the
spot, if that theory be true. The temple, however, we
are at present contemplating is one of the most beautiful
ruins in Rome. It consists of two Corinthian columns,
eleven feet in circumference, and supposed to be thirty-
one feet high; but the soil has been so long suffered to
accumulate around them that but half their height is
to seen. The architrave supported by these columns
is strikingly beautiful, as well as the frieze, which is
magnificently adorned with bas-reliefs, descriptive of
the mythological character of the goddess to whom the
temple is thought to have been dedicated. Above the
whole rises an attic story, but in a totally dilapidated
state; all that remains, in any degree of preservation, of
this part of the building being a supposed statue of the
deity.
How different are the religious associations now con-
nected with the name of Minerva’s temples and the seats
of her former grandeur ! How changed is the spectacle
which throngs the way to the spots where stood her an-
cient fanes, and the feeling with which the adoring mul-
titudes hallow them as sacred to divinity ! Speaking of
the customs prevalent in the sacred city during Lent,
the author of “ Rome in the Nineteenth Century” thus de-
scribes the procession to one of these consecrated spots,
now the site of a Christian church. “ Before the Holy
Week,” it is said, “ our sufferings began. We were
disturbed the very morning of our return from Naples
with the information that it was a grand festa—-the
THE LANDSCAPE ANNUAL.
most pleasure; each having his own opinion, and de-
lighting himself sometimes with his favourite theory, at
others, with the splendid visions which belong to the
spot, if that theory be true. The temple, however, we
are at present contemplating is one of the most beautiful
ruins in Rome. It consists of two Corinthian columns,
eleven feet in circumference, and supposed to be thirty-
one feet high; but the soil has been so long suffered to
accumulate around them that but half their height is
to seen. The architrave supported by these columns
is strikingly beautiful, as well as the frieze, which is
magnificently adorned with bas-reliefs, descriptive of
the mythological character of the goddess to whom the
temple is thought to have been dedicated. Above the
whole rises an attic story, but in a totally dilapidated
state; all that remains, in any degree of preservation, of
this part of the building being a supposed statue of the
deity.
How different are the religious associations now con-
nected with the name of Minerva’s temples and the seats
of her former grandeur ! How changed is the spectacle
which throngs the way to the spots where stood her an-
cient fanes, and the feeling with which the adoring mul-
titudes hallow them as sacred to divinity ! Speaking of
the customs prevalent in the sacred city during Lent,
the author of “ Rome in the Nineteenth Century” thus de-
scribes the procession to one of these consecrated spots,
now the site of a Christian church. “ Before the Holy
Week,” it is said, “ our sufferings began. We were
disturbed the very morning of our return from Naples
with the information that it was a grand festa—-the