It is only the headless body of a man, clad in a coat of mail, with a Medusa head upon the breast-plate, but we feel persuaded that such dignity and such majesty were never thrown into a form of stone before.
What builders they were, these men of antiquity! The massive arches of some of these ruins rest upon piers that are fifteen feet square and built entirely of solid blocks of marble, some of which are as large as a Saratoga trunk, and some the size of a boarding-house sofa.

They are not shells or shafts of stone filled inside with rubbish, but the whole pier is a mass of solid masonry.

Vast arches, that may have been the gates of the city, are built in the same way.

They have braved the storms and sieges of three thousand years, and have been shaken by many an earthquake, but still they stand.

When they dig alongside of them, they find ranges of ponderous masonry that are as perfect in every detail as they were the day those old Cyclopian giants finished them.