The Actress in High Life / An Episode in Winter Quarters

by Sue Petigru Bowen

They had now turned into another street, and L'Isle, stopping the party, pointed out a large building opposite to them.

"What a curious mixture of styles it presents," said Mrs. Shortridge.

"What a barbarous mutilation of a work of art," exclaimed Lady Mabel.

"This is, or rather was," said L'Isle, "the temple of Diana, built before the Christian era, perhaps while Sertorius yet lorded it in the Peninsula, and made Evora his headquarters. The architect," continued he, looking at it with the eye of a connoisseur, "was doubtless a Greek. Time, and the mutilations and additions of the Moor, have not effaced all the beauty of this structure, planned by the genius and reared by the hands of men who lived nineteen centuries ago. The rubble work and plaster wall that fills the space between those columns, so requisite in their proportions—the pinnacles which crown the structure in place of the entablature which has been destroyed, are the work of the Moors, who strove in vain to unite in harmony their own style of building with that of their Roman predecessors. Enough remains to show the chaste, beautiful and permanent character of the edifices of that classic age."

After gazing long with deep interest on this monument of the palmy days and wide-spread sway of the Roman, Lady Mabel said: "Let us see if there be not still left within the building some remains of a piece with so noble an exterior."

"Unhappily," answered L'Isle, "all is changed there. Moreover, though the sacrifices are continued, they are no longer conducted with the decorum of the heathen rites. The temple of the chaste goddess is now the public shambles of the city, defiled throughout by brutal butchers, with the blood and offals of the slaughtered herd."

"Is it possible!" Lady Mabel exclaimed. "Have these people sunk so low? Is so little taste, learning, and reverence for high art left among them, that they can find no better use for this rare memorial of the past."

"No people have proved themselves so destitute of taste, and of reverence for antiquity, as the Portuguese," replied L'Isle. "They seem to have found it a pleasure, or deemed it a duty, to erase the footprints of ancient art. Monuments of all kinds, beautiful and rare, and but lightly touched by the hand of time, have been ruthlessly destroyed here. To give you a single instance: A gentleman of the family of the Mascarenhas, who had traveled in Italy, and acquired a taste for the arts, collected from different parts about the town of Mertola, twelve ancient statues, with a view to place them on pedestals in his country-house. But he dying before completing his intention, these admirable productions of Roman art, the venerable representations of heroes and sages, were hurled into a lime kiln to make cement for the chapel of St. John. And such acts of Vandalism have been perpetrated throughout Portugal."

"The barbarians!" exclaimed Lady Mabel. "The ignorance they condemn themselves to, is scarce punishment enough for the offence."

"It is difficult to say how much they have destroyed," continued L'Isle. "But, beside the voice of history, proofs enough remain that Evora was, in the days of Sertorius, of Cæsar, and in after-times, a favorite spot with the Romans. This temple before us, mutilated as it is, and the aqueduct, though repaired in modern times, are still Roman; and no ancient monument in Italy is in better preservation than the beautiful little castellum which crowns its termination. Even where Roman buildings have been destroyed we still see around us the stones with ancient and classic inscriptions built into new walls. The plough, too, of the husbandman still at times turns up the coins of Sertorius, bearing a profile showing the wound he had received in his eye, while the reverse represents his favorite hind leaning against a tree."