ESSAYS, DESCRIPTIVE AND MORAL. PESTUM. THE solitariness of Calabria is of a peculiar character. An American journeying in this district perceives that he has arrived at a spot where the similarity is most striking, between a people who roam over regions, once the seat of all the useful and ornamental arts, and those tribes who range in the western forests, never yet recovered from the wildness of nature. The unconcerned air, and unrelenting ferocity of a Calabrian, are as little inviting as the same qualities in the appearance of a North Ame rican Indian; while his goat-skin habit gives less play to the imagination, than the feathers and wampum of the more active and intelligent savage. But there are proofs of high ancestry in the occupancy of this portion of the Italian people, which invest their territory with an irresistible charm. Pæstum, a ruin at the time when Rome sprang up, new and magnificent, and adorned with the spoils of the world, still stands to rival the Coliseum in resisting the waste of ages. So completely has all this region been desolated, either by the natural evil of Mal'aria, or the political scourge of mal-government, that though these ruins are situated upon the Gulf of Salerno, and not a hundred miles from Naples, their existence escaped the knowledge of antiquaries until the middle of the last century. The walls, and three temples alone, mark the site of this once populous city. That which is called the Temple of Neptune, the largest of the three, is upwards of two hundred feet long, and nearly ninety wide. The two fronts present six columns to the view: while fourteen on each side shew at once the magnitude and splendour of this most ancient edifice. The columns are composed of five pieces, and are in the form of truncated cones, resting without pediment upon the floor of the temple; to which there is an ascent by a flight of steps. Some antiquarians consider the second building, of nearly equal size, a Basilica, where the courts of justice were held; and the third, which is little more than half as large, a temple erected to the honour of Ceres. The walls of Pæstum are of that massive construction, which resists the utmost force of time. This sort of building has been designated by the title of Cyclopæan. I saw some substructions, much of the same kind, at Fesolé; near the eminence upon which stands Galileo's Observatory. The name refers us back to a race |