perfect closing, crowned battelments, embost caruings,
bearing forth like embroderie, arched beames, mightie mettaline images,
ouerthrowne and broken in sunder, the trunke of their exact and perfect
members, appearing hollow of brasse. Skyffes, small boates and vessels
of _Numidian_ stone and _Porphyr_, and diuers couloured marble. Great
lauers condites, and other infinite fragments of notable woorkmanship,
far different and inferiour from that they were, in their perfection,
but now brought back as it were to their first vnshapelines, being
fallen and cast downe, some heere, some there, vpon the earth from the
which they were taken. Among the broken and decayed places, wherof great
sundrie wall weeds and hearbes, especially the vnshaking Anagyre, the
Lentise of both kindes, beares foote, dogges head, Gladen greene,
spotted Iuie, Centarie, and diuers suchlike. And in the myldered places
of broken walles grew Howslike, and the hanging Cymbalaria bryers, and
pricking brambles, among the which crept Swifts and Lyzarts which I sawe
crawling among the ouergrowne stones, which at the first sight in this
silent and solitarie place, made me to be warily afraid of them. On
euery side there lay fallen downe smoothe round pieces of serpent
spotted Marble, purple and red diuerse couloured. Fragments of strange
histories, _Panglyphic_ and _Hemygliphic_[E] compendiously caracterized,
shewing the excellencie thereof, vndoubtedly accusing our age, that the
perfection of such an art is forgotten.

[Sidenote d: Paros is one of the 35. Isles called Cyclades and
Sporades, in the sea Aegeum which deuideth Europ from Asia.]

[Sidenote E: Panglyphic be wholy carued from the head to the foote
in all members. Hemigliphic apeare but halfe.]

Then comming to the myddle fronture of the great and excellent woorke,
I sawe one sole large and marueylous porche worthy of great estimation,
proportioned according to the huge quantitie of the rest of the whole
work, which was placed betwixt and continued in building from the one
and the other of the mountaines hare lipped, and aboue arched, whose
space betwixt as I doe coniecture was in measure sixe furlongs, and
twelue paces. The top of which mountaines were perpendicularly equall
eyther of them touching the azur'd skey. At the sight whereof I imagined
with my selfe and deuised to thinke with what yron instruments, with
what labour of mens hands, and number of workmen, such a piece of wo