ape is
broken now and then by a group of buffaloes standing up to their
dewlaps in reeds, by peasants on horseback, with goads in their
hands, and muskets slung athwart their backs, or by patrols of
Italian soldiers crossing and re-crossing on the brigand-haunted
roads. Certain portions have been reclaimed from the swamp, and here
may be seen white oxen in herds of fifty grazing; or gangs of women
at field-labour, with a man to oversee them, cracking a long
hunting-whip; or the mares and foals of a famous stud-farm browsing
under spreading pines. There are no villages, and the few farmhouses
are so widely scattered as to make us wonder where the herdsmen and
field-workers, scanty as they are, can possibly be lodged.

At last the three great temples come in sight. The rich orange of
the central building contrasts with the paler yellow of its two
companions, while the glowing colour of all three is splendidly
relieved against green vegetation and blue mountain-flanks. Their
material is travertine--a calcareous stone formed by the deposit of
petrifying waters, which contains fragments of reeds, spiral shells,
and other substances, embedded in the porous limestone. In the
flourishing period of old Poseidonia these travertine columns were
coated with stucco, worked to a smooth surface, and brilliantly
tinted to harmonise with the gay costumes of a Greek festival. Even
now this coating of fine sand, mingled with slaked lime and water,
can be seen in patches on the huge blocks of the masonry. Thus
treated, the travertine lacked little of the radiance of marble, for
it must be remembered that the Greeks painted even the Pentelic
cornice of the Parthenon with red and blue. Nor can we doubt that
the general effect of brightness suited the glad and genial
conditions of Greek life.

All the surroundings are altered now, and the lover of the
picturesque may be truly thankful that the hand of time, by
stripping the buildings of this stucco, without impairing their
proportions, has substituted a new harmony of tone between the
native stone and the surrounding landscape, no less sympathetic to
the present solitude than the old symphony of colours was to the
animated circumstances of a populous Greek city. In this way those
critics who defend the polychrome decorations of the classic
architects, and those who contend that they cannot imagine any
alteration from the present toning of Greek temples for the better,
are both right.

I