292 ATHENS. 
CI ^ P> in the style of its architecture, the temples of 
P&stum than that of Minerva in the Acropolis, 
and the most entire of any of the remaining 
structures of Antient Greece, were it not for the 
damage which the sculptures have sustained, 
may be considered as still perfect. The ruined 
state of the metopes and frieze has proved indeed 
a very fortunate circumstance ; for it was owing 
solely to this that the building escaped the 
ravages which were going on in the Parthenon. 
Lusieri told us there was nothing but what was 
considered as too much mutilated to answer the 
expense and difficulty of taking it down 1 . The 
entire edifice is of Pentelican marble : it stands 
east and west, the principal front facing the east ; 
and it is that kind of building which was called, 
by antient architects, as it is expressed in the 
(l) Accordingly we read, " As the walls and columns of this 
monument are in their original position, no part of the sculpture has 
been displaced, nor the minutest fragment of any kind separated from 
the building." (Memorandum, p. 18. Lottd. 1811.) There is nothing 
said here of the "impending ruin" (Ibid. p. 8.) to which the remaining 
sculpture is exposed; nothing of "the zeal i>f the early Christians" 
(>.!!.) and "the barbarism of the Turks :" but we are told that 
" the temple itself (p. 19.) is very inferior in decorath-e sculpture to 
the Parthenon;" and this remark, made with great naivete, most 
happily explains the tutir-breadth escape of the building from the ill- 
judged rapacity which has tended to the ruin of the noblest monu- 
ments of Greece. 
