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The floor is composed of a rich mosaic of the rarest marbles, agate, jasper, and porphyry; it looks to the marble fountain and the snow-white columns, whose entablatures strew the floor of the portico they supported. The houses have only one story, and the apartments, tho not large, are very lofty. A great advantage results from this, wholly unknown in our cities.
What a world of ruined sculpture was about us! Set up in rows stacked up in piles scattered broadcast over the wide area of the Acropolis were hundreds of crippled statues of all sizes and of the most exquisite workmanship; and vast fragments of marble that once belonged to the entablatures, covered with bas-reliefs representing battles and sieges, ships of war with three and four tiers of oars, pageants and processions every thing one could think of.
The three lower stories consist of a series of semicircular arched openings, eighty in number, separated by piers with attached columns in front of them, the Doric order being used in the lowest story, the Ionic in the second, and the Corinthian in the third; the piers and columns are elevated on stylobates; the entablatures have a comparatively slight projection, and there are no projecting keystones in the arches.
What a world of ruined sculpture was about us! Set up in rows stacked up in piles scattered broadcast over the wide area of the Acropolis were hundreds of crippled statues of all sizes and of the most exquisite workmanship; and vast fragments of marble that once belonged to the entablatures, covered with bas-reliefs representing battles and sieges, ships of war with three and four tiers of oars, pageants and processions every thing one could think of.
Marble columns, sculptured capitals, and fragments of what were once magnificent entablatures, have been used to construct plain walls, or laid in obscure and neglected pavements all, however, still retaining, notwithstanding their present degradation, unequivocal marks of the nobleness of their origin.
It boasted five naves, parted by four rows of columns; it was a profusion of bas-reliefs, friezes, and entablatures, and its twelve colossal statues of the Apostles looked like subordinate deities lining the approach to the master of the gods!
Then commenced the havoc in this temple, that was my head, and was not; there were the toppling down of the vast columns, the crushing of the several architraves, the grinding together of the rich entablatures; the breaking up, with noise louder than ever thunder was heard by man, of the marble pavements; the ruins crushed together in one awful confusion above me; nature could do no more, and my dream slept.
The public buildings, whose ruins are now forests as it were of white fluted columns, and which then supported entablatures loaded with sculpture, were seen on all sides over the roofs of the houses.
In short, in all these quaint entablatures some pithy sarcasm was symbolically conveyed; only over the mantel piece was the design graver and more touching.
Shapeless and half-fashioned masses, ebauches of columns for temples which never came into the possession of capitals, or the support of entablatures unborn Dorics of the Greek portfolios are here. The sun striking obliquely from the mouth into the interior of the cavern, made the green vegetation all hoary in the slanting light. Fires in dark caverns are favourite subjects with some painters.
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