Rare va- 
76 THEBES. 
But the most curious part of the antiquities of 
Thebes is in the Church of St. Demetrius, and upon 
the western side of it. There may still be seen the 
rarest specimens of architecture in Greece; 
namely, several beautiful capitals of that chaste 
and antient pattern of the Corinthian order; which 
riety of the • e^tirelv without volute for the corners, and has a 
Corinthian J 
order in ginorle wrcath of the simplest Acanthtis foliao-e to 
Architec- ^ ... 
ture. crown its base. There is not in Europe a single 
instance of this most elegant variety of the Corin- 
thian in any modern structure. In fact, it is only 
known to those persons who have seen the very 
few examples of it that exist among the ruins 
of the Grecian cities. There is no trace of it 
among the ruins of Rome; yet, in point of 
taste, it is so exceedingly superior to the more 
ornamented and crowded capital which was 
afterwards introduced, that both the rival 
connoscenti of jithens, Lusieri and Fauvel, have 
designed and modelled it; and they have 
spoken of its discovery as forming an epocha 
in the history of the art. In one or two in- 
stances, the attention of the antient sculptor to 
simplicity has been so severe, that even the 
edges of the foliage have not been ruffled (to 
borrow from the builder's vocabulary), but 
expressed in gross; and, consequently, the 
admirers of excessive minuteness, in the detail of 
