Diana at Ephesus, after having risen with increasing splendor from seven
repeated misfortunes, [128] was finally burnt by the Goths in their
third naval invasion. The arts of Greece, and the wealth of Asia,
had conspired to erect that sacred and magnificent structure. It was
supported by a hundred and twenty-seven marble columns of the Ionic
order. They were the gifts of devout monarchs, and each was sixty feet
high. The altar was adorned with the masterly sculptures of Praxiteles,
who had, perhaps, selected from the favorite legends of the place the
birth of the divine children of Latona, the concealment of Apollo
after the slaughter of the Cyclops, and the clemency of Bacchus to the
vanquished Amazons. [129] Yet the length of the temple of Ephesus was
only four hundred and twenty-five feet, about two thirds of the measure
of the church of St. Peter's at Rome. [130] In the other dimensions,
it was still more inferior to that sublime production of modern
architecture. The spreading arms of a Christian cross require a much
greater breadth than the oblong temples of the Pagans; and the boldest
artists of antiquity would have been startled at the proposal of raising
in the air a dome of the size and proportions of the Pantheon. The
temple of Diana was, however, admired as one of the wonders of the
world. Successive empires, the Persian, the Macedonian, and the Roman,
had revered its sanctity and enriched its splendor. [131] But the rude
savages of the Baltic were destitute of a taste for the elegant arts,
and they despised the ideal terrors of a foreign superstition. [132]

[Footnote 128: Hist. Aug. p. 178. Jornandes, c. 20.]

[Footnote 129: Strabo, l. xiv. p. 640. Vitruvius, l. i. c. i. praefat l
vii. Tacit Annal. iii. 61. Plin. Hist. Nat. xxxvi. 14.]

[Footnote 130: The length of St. Peter's is 840 Roman palms; each palm
is very little short of nine English inches. See Greaves's Miscellanies
vol. i. p. 233; on the Roman Foot. * Note: St. Paul's Cathedral is 500
feet. Dallaway on Architecture--M.]

[Footnote 131: The policy, however, of the Romans induced them to
abridge the extent of the sanctuary or asylum, which by successive
privileges had spread itself two stadia round the temple. Strabo, l.
xiv. p. 641. Tacit. Annal. iii. 60, &c.]

[Footnote 132: They offered no sacrifices to the Grecian gods. See
Epistol Gregor. Thaumat.]

Another circumstance is related of these invasions, which might deserve
our notice, w