In the progress of many centuries, the Maison Carré has been used as a Christian church, and also for many ordinary purposes, some of them of the lowest character. The fine Corinthian columns of this building have been much corroded by time, and two that were contiguous, were mutilated in the flutings to make more room for the passage of a farmer’s cart when the temple was used as a barn or stable; and, to afford more accommodations, walls were built up between the columns of the portico. In the eleventh century it was used as town-house, or hôtel de ville. When attached to the Augustine convent it was employed as a sepulcher; and in the days of terror, the revolutionary tribunal held its meetings here. The building is at present occupied as a museum. It contains many interesting objects, especially Roman antiquities: the pictures are not remarkable. There is in it a beautiful mosaic pavement taken up entire from a Roman house. This temple is supposed to have been only the center of a much larger building, extending with wings and long colonnades to the right and left, whose foundations have been discovered.
THE PONT DU GARD.
This celebrated Roman monument is distant about three leagues from the city of Nismes. Instead of finding it in a ruinous condition, as he might reasonably have expected, the traveler, on approaching it, is agreeably disappointed when he perceives that it looks as fresh as a modern bridge of a few years’ standing. The climate is either so pure and dry, or the freestone with which it is built is so hard, that the very angles of the stones remain as acute as if they had been recently cut. A few of them have, indeed, dropped out of the arches; but the whole is admirably preserved, and presents the eye with a piece of architecture, so unaffectedly elegant, so simple, and, at the same time, so majestic, that it defies the most phlegmatic spectator to view it without admiration. It was raised in the Augustan age, by the Roman colony of Nismes, to convey a stream of water between two mountains, for the use of that city. By means of it the arena of the amphitheater could be flooded for the naumachiæ. It stands over the river Gardon, a beautiful pastoral stream, brawling among rocks which form a number of pretty natural cascades, and overshadowed on each side by trees and shrubs, which add greatly to the rural beauties of the scene.
This elegant structure consists of three bridges, or tiers of arches, one above another; the first of six, the second of eleven, and the third of thirty-six arches. The hight, comprehending the aqueduct on the top, is one hundred and seventy-four feet and three inches, and the length, between the two mountains, which it unites, is seven hundred and twenty-three feet. The order of the architecture is Tuscan; but its symmetry is inconceivable. By scooping the bases of the pilasters of the second tier of arches, a passage was made for foot-travelers; but although the ancients far excelled the moderns in point of beauty and magnificence, they certainly fell short of them in point of convenience. The inhabitants of Avignon have, in this particular, improved the Roman work by a new bridge by apposition, constructed on the same plan with that of the lower tier of arches, of which indeed it seems to be a part, affording a broad and commodious passage over the river, to horses and carriages. The aqueduct for the continuance of which this superb work was raised, conveyed a stream of pure water from the fountain of Eure, near the city of Uzes, and extended nearly six leagues in length.
ANCIENT ROMAN AQUEDUCT.
ANCIENT AQUEDUCT NEAR ROME.
In this connection, we may notice an ancient Roman aqueduct, the arches of which may still be seen by the tourist as he approaches the “eternal city;” and a view of which is given in the cut on the next page. It reminds us, in its general outlines, of the Pont du Gard which has just been described, except that the latter has three tiers of arches while this has but two; and the styles of architecture in the two are different. These immense structures, carried for miles over valleys and through hills, were reared by the ancients at the cost of vast expense and labor, that they might supply themselves with pure water for domestic and public uses. And their ruins still bear witness to the gigantic scale on which such works were planned and completed, at an age and among a people that we are accustomed to think of as far inferior to our own.
THE ROMAN FORUM.
There has been much discussion as to the form and extent of the Roman forum, and as to the use of some of the structures whose ruins are found within its area. Sometimes the word forum was applied to market-places—forum boarium, fora venalia, as well as to places where justice was administered, fora civilia. The great Roman Forum at the foot of the Capitol, and contiguous to the Palatine hill, was, no doubt, intended by Romulus for the assemblies of the people. It was adorned with an immense number of Grecian statues, among which were twelve gilt statues of the principal gods. Numerous relics of its former grandeur now fill the campo vaccino—broken porticos, ruined arches, single columns, and the remains of temples. To each of these belongs a story of curious antiquarian research. Without wishing to follow the beaten path of all travelers, it is impossible to pass these world-renowned memorials of a by-gone age without some brief notice. One of these is