ATHENS. 251 
architecture, and which is nearly four times as CHAP. 
large* as any of the stones that so much > , / 
excited his admiration in viewing the Propyl&a. 
This magnificent building, fronting the only 
entrance to the Citadel, has also experienced some 
of the effects of the same ill-judged rapacity 
which was levelled against the Parthenon. If 
the influence of a better spirit do not prevent 
a repetition of similar " Pursuits in Greece" 
ATHENS will sustain more damage in being 
visited by travellers, calling themselves persons 
of taste, than when it was forgotten by the world, 
and entirely abandoned to its barbarian pos- 
sessors: in a few years, the traveller even upon 
the spot must be content to glean his intelligence 
from the representation afforded by books of 
Travels, if he should be desirous to know what 
remained of the Fine Arts so lately as the time 
(3) The slab at Jlfycenee is of Ireccia, twenty-seven feet long, 
seventeen feet wide, and, above four feet and a half in thickness. 
That which remains at the Propylcea is of white marble, cut with the 
utmost precision and evenness: its length is seventeen feet nine 
inches. The former has quite an Egyptian character: the latter 
bespeaks the finer art of a much later period in history. But the slab 
of marble at the Propyleea is not the largest even in Athens ; an archi- 
trave belonging to the Temple of Jupiter Olympius exceeds it in cubical 
dimensions : the length of this architrave equals twenty-two feet six 
inches; its width three feet; audits height six feet six inches. See 
Stuart's Allans; Pref. to vol. III. p. 9. Land. 1794. 
