the French Architects at Rome. 197 
structive, which, exhibiting under one and the same point of 
view the parallel of the construction of the best preserved an- 
cient frontispieces, facilitates the comparison of the materials em- 
ployed, as well as that of their section, their ornaments, and other 
means of execution. ; 
9. Doubts had been always entec:tained respecting the simul- 
taneous construction of the two frontispieces which we re- 
marked at the fagade of the Pantheon. Those of good taste, 
and even the most enlightened artists, shocked at this vicious 
double employment of the frontispiece, which being only a mere 
representation of the roof ought to be essentially unique in a 
building, did not hesitate to pronounce that these two fronts 
could not have existed together in the primitive state of the 
Pantheon, and that doubtless the posterior frontispiece formed 
the summit of a first facade, ou which had been placed afterwards 
the portico and its frontispiece. 
However plausible this opinion may be, it must give way to 
the evidence of the result obtained by M. Leclerc: according to 
a series of observations tov long to detail, but directed with the 
greatest sagacity, he has concluded, and demonstrated by his 
drawings, not only that the horizontal cornice of the posterior 
frontispiece has not been cut with a view to introduce therein 
the frontispiece of the portico, but that it has been always thus 
from the origin of the edifice, and that the intimate connexion 
of the construction of these two frontispieces with that of the 
body of the edifice does not admit of a doubt that they had 
been constructed at the same time. 
10. One of the most important points to elucidate, because 
it serves to decide what has always been the true destination of 
the monument, was to examine if, as a number of writers have 
asserted, the Pantheon originally formed part of the baths of 
Agrippa, of which it must have formed one of the principal 
apartments, By an attentive examination of the posterior part 
of the edifice, to which are still attached considerable remains 
of those baths, M. Leclerc has ascertained that in fact they were 
immediately contiguous to the Pantheon, that the masonry of 
the two edifices was intimately connected to a certain height, 
that even the second exterior cornice of the Pantheon went round 
aud seemed to have prevailed on the body of the edifice for the 
haths; but that there was no aperture and no orifice to warrant 
the idea that there had ever existed between them any interior 
and direct communication : hence he concluded that from its 
origin the Pantheon had always been a temple. 
If from the exterior of the Pantheon we pass with M. Leclere 
into the interior, we shall find that his studies and inquiries have 
not been less fruitful, 
Ng 1]. Some 
