In the garden itself are the ruins of a Roman temple, which has for long been known as the Temple of Diana. In 1739 an inscription was found dedicating it to the god Nemausus and the goddess Diana on behalf of the commonwealth of Nîmes, and attributing its building to the munificence of the Emperor Augustus.
Part of the beautiful colonnaded portico has been reconstructed. It connected the temple with the Nymphæum, which was where the central square basin now is. Preserved in the temple is a single tall pillar—one of those used to support the velarium under which the Roman ladies reclined in the course of their bathing.
The architecture of this temple forms a valuable connecting link between that of the Romans and of the later Provençal builders, concerning which Mr. Cook has something interesting to tell us. He is more interesting still on the subject of the Maison Carrée, for he gives us, with a wealth of technical detail and illustration, the curious reason for its being so supremely satisfying to the eye.
No one even with an uneducated eye for beauty can look at this little gem of Greek architecture without a sensation of pleasure. Mr. Baring-Gould, whose eye is not uneducated, writes of it: "It is the best example we have in Europe of a temple that is perfectly intact. It is mignon, it is cheerful, it is charming. I found myself unable at any time to pass it without looking round over my shoulder, again and again, and uttering some exclamation of pleasure at the sight of it."[25]
And Mr. Henry James, in that delightful book, "A Little Tour in France," writes in his own way:
"The first impression you receive from this delicate little building, as you stand before it, is that you have already seen it many times. Photographs, engravings, models, medals, have placed it definitely in your eye, so that from the sentiment with which you regard it curiosity and surprise are almost completely, and perhaps deplorably, absent. Admiration remains, however,—admiration of a familiar and even slightly patronizing kind. The Maison Carrée does not overwhelm you; you can conceive it. It is not one of the great sensations of the antique art; but it is perfectly felicitous, and, in spite of having been put to all sorts of incongruous uses, marvellously preserved. Its slender columns, its delicate proportions, its charming compactness, seemed to bring one nearer to the century that built it than the great superpositions of arenas and bridges, and give it the interest that vibrates from one age to another when the note of taste is struck."
In a word, the beauty of this little temple is alive, and one of the reasons for its being so I now proceed to extract from Mr. Cook's discussion of a subject that he has made particularly his own.
Why is it that the Maison Carrée is so eminently pleasing to the eye—is alive—while the Madeleine in Paris, which is a strictly mathematical enlargement of it, is "dull and unsuccessful"? Because the lines of the Madeleine are straight, and those of this temple, as of all Greek architecture, are not, though they are so nearly so that the fact was not discovered until about twenty years ago.
The divergences are surprisingly small, and in fact this great secret of the ancient builders—Egyptian, Roman, Byzantine and Gothic, as well as Greek—was not suspected until it was proved on the Parthenon in the middle of the last century. "In the Parthenon the curve is under four inches in two hundred and twenty-eight feet. At Nîmes it is nearly five inches in less than a hundred feet."[26]
These skilful curves can be traced in Gothic cathedrals. The walls in the nave of Westminster Abbey "are bent inwards at about the height of the keystones of the arches and outwards above and below this point, and they are structurally sound unto this day."[27]