rical. Before going to the cafe I
had dined, and before dining I had found time to go and look at the
arena. Then it was that I discovered that Arles has no general
physiognomy and, except the delightful little church of Saint Trophimus,
no architecture, and that the rugosities of its dirty lanes affect the
feet like knife-blades. It was not then, on the other hand, that I saw
the arena best. The second day of my stay at Arles I devoted to a
pilgrimage to the strange old hill town of Les Baux, the mediaeval
Pompeii, of which I shall give myself the pleasure of speaking. The
evening of that day, however (my friend and I returned in time for a
late dinner), I wandered among the Roman remains of the place by the
light of a magnificent moon and gathered an impression which has lost
little of its silvery glow. The moon of the evening before had been
aqueous and erratic; but if on the present occasion it was guilty of any
irregularity, the worst it did was only to linger beyond its time in the
heavens in order to let us look at things comfortably. The effect was
admirable; it brought back the impression of the way, in Rome itself, on
evenings like that, the moonshine rests upon broken shafts and slabs of
antique pavement. As we sat in the theatre looking at the two lone
columns that survive--part of the decoration of the back of the
stage--and at the fragments of ruin around them, we might have been in
the Roman Forum. The arena at Arles, with its great magnitude, is less
complete than that of Nimes; it has suffered even more the assaults of
time and the children of time, and it has been less repaired. The seats
are almost wholly wanting; but the external walls, minus the topmost
tier of arches, are massively, ruggedly complete; and the vaulted
corridors seem as solid as the day they were built. The whole thing is
superbly vast and as monumental, for a place of light amusement--what is
called in America a "variety-show"--as it entered only into the Roman
mind to make such establishments. The _podium_ is much higher than at
Nimes, and many of the great white slabs that faced it have been
recovered and put into their places. The proconsular box has been more
or less reconstructed, and the great converging passages of approach to
it are still majestically distinct; so that, as I sat there in the
moon-charmed stillness, leaning my elbows on the battered parapet of the
ring, it was not impossible to listen to the murmurs and shudder