Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/394

404 of such a man!” she said to me in the evening. The earth is yet the home of pure beauty and happiness.

On the 16th we took a carriage and drove down to Pestum, where we wished to see the rediscovered ancient temples; the oldest and noblest architectural work of art in Italy. The day was glorious and the road good, leading through flowery meadows here and there traversed by foot-paths, so like the landscape with us in Sweden, with little brooks, bushes, groups of trees, even the little villages resembled ours; but the ground did not appear to be well cultivated. We met great numbers of cattle which were being driven to the city, where they were making ready for the festival of some saint with its accompanying great fair.

After a charming drive of four hours we reached Pestum. Here stood formerly, it is said, the city of roses, the city of the Sybarite; the home of the most refined life-enjoyment. Here now, its sole remains are the three great temples standing in a desolate field which produces only thistles, nettles and entangling weeds. These temples were beautiful, and the impression they produced grand and solemn, especially those of Neptune and Ceres, with their magnificent colonnades, beneath the open, beaming heavens, and looking out upon the vast sun-bright sea. They bore witness in their beauty of a time and a life, when mankind, still more than now, did every thing with reference to the present moment or temporal life, and endeavored and were able, under this heaven, to forget that they were mortal. Therefore also, these temples are standing as solemn memento mori. A death-like silence reigned around them. The only living being whom we saw