um, stood. Eight Ionic columns adorned its entrance and
sustained a portico of the purest elegance, from which ran two long
slender colonnades widening apart from each other and forming an acute
angle. They are still surmounted with their architrave, which they
lightly supported. The terrace, looking out upon the country and the
sea, formed the third side of the triangle, in the middle of which rose
some altars,--the ustrinum, in which the dead were burned, a small round
temple covering a sacred well, and, finally, a Greek temple rising above
all the rest from the height of its foundation and marking its columns
unobstructedly against the sky. This platform, resting upon solid
supports and covered with monuments in a fine style of art, was the best
written page and the most substantially correct one in Pompeii.
Unfortunately, here, as everywhere else, stucco had been plastered over
the stone-work. The columns were painted. Nowhere could a front of pure
marble--the white on the blue--be seen defined against the sky.

The remaining temples furnish us few data on architecture. You know
those of the Forum. The temple of Fortune, now greatly dilapidated, must
have resembled that of Jupiter. Erected by Marcus Tullius, a reputed
relative of Cicero, it yields us nothing but very mediocre statues and
inscriptions full of errors, proving that the priesthood of the place,
by no means Ciceronian in their acquirements, did not thoroughly know
even their own language. The temple of Esculapius, besides its altar,
has retained a very odd capital, Corinthian if you will, but on which
cabbage leaves, instead of the acanthus, are seen enveloping a head of
Neptune. The temple of Isis, still standing, is more curious than
handsome. It shows[F] that the Egyptian goddess was venerated at
Pompeii, but it tells us nothing about antique art. It is entered at the
side, by a sort of corridor leading into the sacred inclosure. The
temple is on the right; the columns inclose it; a vaulted niche is
hollowed out beneath the altar, where it served as a hiding-place for
the priests,--at least so say the romance-writers. Unfortunately for
this idea, the doorway of the recess stood forth and still stands forth
to the gaze, rendering the alleged trickery impossible.

Behind the cella, another niche contained a statue of Bacchus, who was,
perhaps, the same god as Osiris. An expurgation room, intended for
ablutions and purifications, descending to a subterra