Page:The Diary of Dr John William Polidori.djvu/106

94 is shamefully negligent of the antiquities of their fathers, for there is another more beautiful and perfect mosaic pavement discovered, but which they have allowed the proprietor to cover again with mould rather than buy it. We found in a barn heads, plinths, capitals, and shafts, heaped promiscuously. The Corinthian-column capital is deeply, sharply, and beautifully cut. A head of Apollo in all the rudeness of first art—a capital of a strange mixed order. There is the Amphitheatre, hollow yet pretty perfect, but no stonework visible; overgrown with trees; the size, my companion told me, was larger than common. In the town there were some beautiful fragments of ornament-sculpture incorporated in the walls; all marble. In the walls of the church we sought in vain for the inscription that Mathison mentions to Julia Alpinula.

[Both to Morat and to Aventicum (Avenches) Byron devotes some stanzas in Childe Harold, 63 to 67, and notes to correspond. Morat he terms "the proud, the patriot field." He speaks of the hoard of bones, and says: "I ventured to bring away as much as may have made a quarter of a hero," for "careful preservation." His reference to Aventicum and the inscription to Julia Alpinula reads rather curiously in the light of Polidori's avowal that "we sought in vain for the inscription." Byron's