as, this is partly Corinthian, and partly
composite. It is about seventy foot long, and six and thirty in
breadth, arched above, and built of large blocks of stone, exactly
joined together without any cement. The walls are still standing, with
three great tabernacles at the further end, fronting the entrance. On
each side, there are niches in the intercolumniation of the walls,
together with pedestals and shafts of pillars, cornices, and an
entablature, which indicate the former magnificence of the building. It
was destroyed during the civil war that raged in the reign of Henry
III. of France.

It is amazing, that the successive irruptions of barbarous nations, of
Goths, Vandals, and Moors; of fanatic croisards, still more sanguinary
and illiberal than those Barbarians, should have spared this temple, as
well as two other still more noble monuments of architecture, that to
this day adorn the city of Nismes: I mean the amphitheatre and the
edifice, called Maison Carree--The former of these is counted the
finest monument of the kind, now extant; and was built in the reign of
Antoninus Pius, who contributed a large sum of money towards its
erection. It is of an oval figure, one thousand and eighty feet in
circumference, capacious enough to hold twenty thousand spectators. The
architecture is of the Tuscan order, sixty feet high, composed of two
open galleries, built one over another, consisting each of threescore
arcades. The entrance into the arena was by four great gates, with
porticos; and the seats, of which there were thirty, rising one above
another, consisted of great blocks of stone, many of which still
remain. Over the north gate, appear two bulls, in alto-relievo,
extremely well executed, emblems which, according to the custom of the
Romans, signified that the amphitheatre was erected at the expence of
the people. There are in other parts of it some work in bas-relief, and
heads or busts but indifferently carved. It stands in the lower part of
the town, and strikes the spectator with awe and veneration. The
external architecture is almost intire in its whole circuit; but the
arena is filled up with houses--This amphitheatre was fortified as a
citadel by the Visigoths, in the beginning of the sixth century. They
raised within it a castle, two towers of which are still extant; and
they surrounded it with a broad and deep fossee, which was filled up in
the thirteenth century. In all the subsequent wars to which this