curious human
figures. The whole thing is a gem of lightness and preservation and is
often cited for its beauty; but--if it doesn't sound too profane--I
prefer, especially at Arles, the ruins of the Roman theatre. The antique
element is too precious to be mingled with anything less rare. This
truth was very present to my mind during a ramble of a couple of hours
that I took just before leaving the place; and the glowing beauty of the
morning gave the last touch to the impression. I spent half an hour at
the Museum; then I took another look at the Roman

[Illustration: ARLES--DOOR OF ST. TROPHIMUS.]

theatre; after which I walked a little out of the town to the Aliscamps,
the old Elysian Fields, the meagre remnant of the old pagan place of
sepulture, which was afterwards used by the Christians, but has been for
ages deserted and now consists only of a melancholy avenue of cypresses
lined with a succession of ancient sarcophagi, empty, mossy and
mutilated. An iron-foundry, or some horrible establishment which is
conditioned upon tall chimneys and a noise of hammering and banging, has
been established near at hand; but the cypresses shut it out well
enough, and this small patch of Elysium is a very romantic corner.

The door of the Museum stands ajar, and a vigilant custodian, with the
usual batch of photographs on his mind, peeps out at you disapprovingly
while you linger opposite, before the charming portal of Saint
Trophimus, which you may look at for nothing. When you succumb to the
silent influence of his eye and go over to visit his collection, you
find yourself in a desecrated church, in which a variety of ancient
objects disinterred in Arlesian soil have been arranged without any
pomp. The best of these, I believe, were found in the ruins of the
theatre. Some of the most curious of them are early Christian
sarcophagi, exactly on the pagan model, but covered with rude yet
vigorously wrought images of the apostles and with illustrations of
scriptural history. Beauty of the highest kind, either of conception or
of execution, is absent from most of the Roman fragments, which belong
to the taste of a late period and a provincial civilisation. But a gulf
divides them from the bristling little imagery of the Christian
sarcophagi, in which, at the same time, one detects a vague emulation of
the rich examples by which their authors were surrounded. There is a
certain element of style in all the pagan things; there is not