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Tragic scenes are delineated with columns, pediments, statues, and other objects suited to kings; comic scenes exhibit private dwellings, with balconies and views representing rows of windows, after the manner of ordinary dwellings; satyric scenes are decorated with trees, caverns, mountains, and other rustic objects delineated in landscape style.
Three rows of six guttae each are attached to the under surface of a mutule. Above the cornice, at the east and west ends of the building, come the triangular PEDIMENTS or gables, formed by the sloping roof and adapted for groups of sculpture.
John. On either side this tower extended long wings, the dark brickwork of which was relieved with noble stone casements and carved pediments; the high roof was partially concealed by a balustrade perforated not inelegantly into arabesque designs; and what architects call "the sky line" was broken with imposing effect by tall chimney-shafts of various form and fashion.
But, insensibly, piety or ostentation began to fill the temples with groups of gods and heroes, strangers to the place, and guests of the power who was properly invoked there. The deep recesses of their pediments were peopled with colossal forms, exhibiting some legendary scene appropriate to the place or the occasion of the building.
Pedestals of the purest Ionic Gothic were ingeniously intermixed with Palladian pediments; and the surging spire exquisitely harmonised with the horizontal architecture of the ancients. But perhaps, after all, the most charming effect was produced by the pyramids, surmounted by weather-cocks.
Those of an oblong form had columns either in the front alone, or in the eastern and western fronts, or on all the four sides. They generally had porticos attached to them, and were without windows, receiving their light from the door or from above. The friezes were adorned with various sculptures, as were sometimes the pediments, and no expense was spared upon them.
It was, in truth, a castle of the middle ages, on which a Roman prince, at the commencement of the last century, had engrafted the character of one of those vast and ornate villas then the mode, but its original character still asserted itself, and, notwithstanding its Tuscan basement and its Ionic pilasters, its rich pediments and delicate volutes, in the distant landscape it still seemed a fortress in the commanding position which became the residence of a feudal chief.
Greek sculpture may be classified, according to the purposes which it served, under the following heads: Architectural sculpture. A temple could hardly be considered complete unless it was adorned with more or less of sculpture. The chief place for such sculpture was in the pediments and especially in the principal or eastern pediment.
Among the statues and fragments from the western pediment are part of the chest and shoulders of the colossal figure in the centre, supposed to be Neptune, a fragment of the colossal figure of Minerva, a fragment of a head, supposed to belong to the preceding, a fragment of a statue of Victory, and a statue of a river god called Ilissus, and several fragments of statues from the pediments, the names or places of which are not positively ascertained, among which is one supposed to have been Latona, holding Apollo and Diana in her arms; another of the neck and arms of a figure rising out of the sea, called Hyperion, or the rising Sun; and a torso of a male figure with drapery thrown over one shoulder.
The high and gloomy stone fronts, with the variegated ornaments and pediments of the windows, looked yet taller and more sable by the imperfect moonshine. Our walk was for some minutes in perfect silence. At length my conductor spoke. "Are you afraid?" "I retort your own words," I replied: "wherefore should I fear?"
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