nation, though without the fostering arm of power or taste, to preserve its mouldering remains, still throughout the north of Italy Pola will find no equal* in the magnificence of antiquity. Pillars and stones are strewn upon the beach, the narrow streets are paved with curious inscriptions, and wherever the eye rests, it sees colonnades and façades noble in decay. Let us enter by the Porta Aurea. This noble entrance was built by the affluence of an individual, and intended as a funereal arch. Four fluted columns support an entablature of basso-relievo, representing chariots and warriors; in the centre is the inscription:

SALVIA POSTUMA SERGII DE SUA PECUNIA.

Just below on each side the arch is a figure of Fame carrying a garland; the ceiling of the arch is richly carved in stone representing grapes and vine-leaves entwined, and in the centre an eagle carrying a serpent. What a splendid monument for an individual!!

"Laudis titulique cupido "Hæsuri tumulis cinerum custodibust."-Juvenal.

* When I visited Istria I had not passed south of Florence; I had not yet seen Rome, Pompeii, and Agrigentum ! ↑ Who, that has seen the mausoleums of Augustus and

In the centre of the town stand the temple of Augustus and the temple of Diana. The former long defied the ravages of time; but when the Genoese in 1880 became masters of the Adriatic, they wantonly burnt in the roof. The remainder however, though showing some signs of outrage, still remains entire. The façade consists of six Corinthian pillars, with the following inscription above:

ROMAE: ET: AUGUSTO: CAESARI: INVI: F: PAT;

PATRIAE:

The temple of Diana has nothing but tradition to point out its former destination: in the small square adjoining is an inscription which the natives say was taken from this temple:

Q: SERTIUS: CALLISTIUS: VIVIR: AUG: V: T: PRISCA:
CONJUGI: OPTUMAE: LIBERTIS: LIBERTABUS:
Q: SUIS: OMNIBUS:

Another near it seems to have been a monu

ment.

T: HOSTILIO: T: H: CALLISTO: ANN: XXVII: HOSTILIA : CALLISTE: SOROR: V: E:

Adrian, nay, the sepulchres of such unknown characters as Cestius and Metella, will doubt the justice of the satirist?

The front of the temple presents two Corinthian pilasters and a rich cornice; it forms at present the side of an old house.

There in the ruin, heedless of the dead,
The shelter-seeking peasant builds his shed.

The amphitheatre of Pola has been and is the glory of Istria and admiration of the world. Built by Titus after the destruction of Jerusalem, its form and architecture remain entire, when eighteen centuries have rolled by. Its shape is elliptical, and it consists of three stories, the two lower with arched windows, the upper square*. At the two extremities of the amphitheatre are the grand entrances, consisting of arches rather broader than the rest. At the sides are four entrances for the spectators, each consisting of two arches, thus the entrances in the whole form ten arches; between the great entrances and the side are nine, between the sides thirteen, which with the above ten form seventy two. The arena in the centre is particularly large, and some appearance remains of its having been formerly di

* The length is 366 Venetian feet, breadth 292 feet, height 74 feet two inches, the distance between the pillars 10 feet odd inches, and in the entrances 14 feet 10 inches.

vided. We could only trace one division in the seats, forming a distinction between the upper and the lower, but this passage still is very visible, running parallel with the exterior wall. Into this passage divers cross passages lead between the seats from the entrances, first descending by a sloping pavement, and then ending in eight steps with an arch thrown over them; one of these remains nearly perfect, and is in breadth six English feet seven inches: the larger passage is ten English feet one inch broad. The architecture is nobly simple, but massive. Pilasters of the Tuscan order decorate the intervals between the arches on the exterior, and in the interior the middles of the capitals being smooth betray where the arches of the corridors branched off. The whole of the exterior wall is intire, but on the eastern side the earth conceals as high as the second story. No inscriptions are now to be found on the spot; whatever the ravages of time and invasion had spared, the Emperor of Austria has lately removed. An hundred yards nearer the town are the remains of a portico, which once, according to tradition, crossed the road that led to the amphitheatre: it now makes part of the wall of an old fort, is closed up in the centre,

and all but a small portion of the beautiful cornice carried away by an English admiral.

Besides these Roman antiquities, Pola possesses some noble remains of the middle centuries. The fort which was built by the Venetians exists in excellent repair, well situated at the head of the bay and overlooking the town. Near it are the ruins of the convent of St. Francesco. Its chapel, though laid open by the fury of the French invasion to the inclemency of the seasons, is still

"Like veteran, worn but unsubdued."

Scott's Marmion.

Nay, the great entrance and circular window above, with all the oriental richness of the Saracenic style, not a little resembled the gothic edifices of our own country, to the decay of which this line applies. In their cathedral and in many of the houses of the town there exist pillars and cornices of the same style. The fronts often contain curious inscriptions of the sixteenth century: indeed I have seen one placed as the stone of the porchway. In the centre of the amphitheatre the inhabitants show a narrow dark descent, which they declare once