VI.

Sicily.

THE TEMPLE OF SEGESTE.

Lifted above the vale, as if a hand

Divine had placed it on its airy height— In all its luminous beauty, lo, how grand! In its severe simplicity, how bright!

It looms upon the straining eye-a pile

To wonder at, to reverence, and admire. What time the moonbeams on its marble smile, Or noon-day suns light it with golden fire!

The temple of a creed forlorn !—the shrine

Of gods whom Time has toppled from their thrones !— Yet, like a strain of melody divine,

A something deathless in itself it owns,—

The deathlessness of Beauty! And our eyes
Feast on its harmonies with earnest gaze,
Until once more its pristine splendours rise :
Once more it wears the pride of olden days;

And up the venturous steep the shadows press

Of priests and worshippers-the clash of song Echoes aloud in each remote recess,

And glad processions crowd the hill along.

Wake, buried Past! arouse thee from thy trance!
Temple and theatre I see, but where

The blithe Sicilian's quick and subtle glance,
The maid of flashing eyes and night-dark hair?

Creeds have gone by, and priest and worshipper!
Ceres no more the votive offering claims;

No more the old mythology can stir
The fancy with its fine poetic names;

But though the goddess dies, her temple-sprung
From the high yearnings of some plastic mind—
Endures in all the beauty Genius flung

About the marble which its faith enshrined

Endures, a thing of beauty! And from far
And unknown lands the pilgrim wends his way,

To gaze upon it as upon a star

Which warms the soul with blest inspiring ray.

A

W. H. D. A.

Ta short distance from Calatafimi, to the north, and upon a hill named Bar

bara, formerly stood the city of Egesta or Segesta. An old tradition names as its founders the "pious Æneas" and his companion Acestes or Egestes. Virgil tells us that the great Trojan leader landed at the town of Segesta

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Whose hollow earth Anchises' bones contains,
And where a prince of Trojan lineage reigns"-

and that there the seer advised Æneas to found a colony

Here you may build a common town for all,
And from Acestes' name Acesta call.'

Of the Asiatic or Dorian origin of Segeste there is little doubt; and in due time the young republic appears to have attained a position of importance, despite of its incessant hostilities with the rival state of Selinunte, which eventually involved both in a common ruin. To gratify their hatred

The Temple of Segeste.

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and their ambition, the Segestans invoked the aid of foreign swords. They invited the cooperation of the Carthaginians, who landed in the island a large army, overran its fairest provinces, and destroyed Selinunte and Agrigentum. Agathocles, however, the tyrant or sovereign of Syracuse, declared war against Carthage, carried his forces into Africa, and won several battles. Returning victorious to Sicily, he poured out his vengeance upon the traitorous Segeste, and inflicted on its inhabitants the cruelest tortures. There is an extraordinary vitality, however, in free states. Segeste rose again from her ashes, flourished and waxed strong, shared in the Punic War, and finally yielded to all-conquering Rome. The favour of the Romans, which she had conciliated by the fable of her Trojan origin, obtained for her a prolonged existence, "adorned by some shadow of liberty and some memory of her former glory." Then she sunk into decay; but the story of her ultimate fall has been told by none. Probably she was destroyed by the Saracens when they invaded Sicily in the ninth century; and only a temple, a theatre, and some shapeless ruins, remain to perpetuate the memory of her existence.

From Calatafimi the traveller proceeds to this celebrated spot by a narrow road, sufficiently wide

for an ass or mule to journey, and winding through hedges of immense aloes and flowering myrtles. Descending the rock which is crowned by the town of Calatafimi, it skirts a ravine whose bed re-echoes with the sound of tumultuous waters, and then strikes towards a line of mountains which dominates the horizon. Suddenly, a vista opens through these dim blue heights, and exhibits, as in a theatrical scene, the Temple of Segeste. Gazing upon its shapely columns, you would think that a few minutes must suffice to place you in their shadow. But soon the mountains shut them out again from the disappointed eye, and a long journey must be made, and numerous windings taken, before you can reach the goal of your pilgrimage.

The temple, majestically planted on the brink of a promontory, as on a large base, appears to have been always isolated from the city; to which circumstance is probably due its preservation from the hands of the spoiler. Antiquaries are not agreed whether it was consecrated to Ceres or to Diana: the balance of authority seems in favour of the former goddess. It belongs to the class called peripteral hexastyle; that is to say, having six columns in front, and a peristyle of columus surrounding it. "It is of that form which essentially belonged to the genius of Grecian architec