the French Architects at Rome. 195 
In a series of twenty-one drawings executed with the most 
rare intelligence and on a very large scale, M. Leclere has not 
only revived as it were, his subject by the immense developments 
which he has given both to the tout ensemble and to the de- 
tails, and by the art with which he has developed them ; but he 
has succeeded in giving a more complete work than any one has 
done hitherto, and new even in many respects in consequence of 
the numerous discoveries with which he has enriched it. 
In the state of impossibility in which the committee find them- 
selves of indicating all of them, they will content themselves with 
describing the most important, beginning with those which are 
relative to the external parts of the temple. 
1. Hitherto we have not had an exact drawing of the flight 
of steps by which, from the place in front of the Pantheon, its 
portico was attained. This external part of the edifice having 
been long covered by the successions of rubbish thrown on the 
adjacent ground, each had drawn it according to his own ideas, 
his taste, or fancy. M. Leclerc, according to the observations 
made and the vestiges discovered at the time of the excavations 
of 1801, in front as well as upon the flanks of the portico and 
of the body of the temple, has restored this interesting part in 
its true form. 
He shows that the ground of the surrounding square was 
paved with large irregular flags of Travertine marble, and that 
the temple was ascended by means of four steps of white mar- 
ble; at the top of which was a broad pavement or foot-path 
which extended not only over the whole of the facade, but even 
over the outskirts of the circumference of the temple, where it 
was sustained by a continued stylobatum. 
2. Vitruvius in the second chapter of his third book, treating of 
the various thicknesses to be given to columns according to the 
different breadths of the intercolumniations, prescribes the thick - 
ening of afiftieth part of the diameter of the columns placed in the 
angle of the porticos: ‘‘ because,”’ he says, “ the great light which 
strikes them more than the others making them appear more 
slender, it is necessary to remedy this false appearance, which 
would otherwise deceive the eye.” 
M. Leclere has verified that the column of the angle of the 
portico towards the right of the spectator is in fact stronger 
than the others by a fiftieth nearly of its diameter; the column 
of the opposite angle does not exhibit the same conformity with 
the precept of Vitruvius, but we know that it was plac ed there 
at the time of a very modern restoration, 
3. The two great niches which occupy the bottom of the 
aisles of the portico, stripped for a long time of every indication 
of covering, have been hitherto drawn smooth and without any 
N 2 kind 
