BENGAZI. 315 few remains now appear above ground to interest the sculptor, the architect, or the antiquary. Berenice has, in fact, disappeared from the beautiful plain on which it stood, and a miserable, dirty, Arab town has reared itself on its ruins, or rather on the soil which covers its ruins, for all its interest is now under ground.

The erection of Bengazi on the site of the ancient town, rather than the effects of time, or of hostile violence, appears to have been chiefly the cause of the total disappearance of the latter ; for the stones of which the buildings were originally composed being too large for the purposes of the Arabs, are broken up into small pieces before they are used in modern structures, and generally before they are removed from the places in which they are dug up. Many a noble frieze and cornice, and many a well-proportioned capital has been crushed under the hammer of these barbarians ; so that, even \ere there not a single house in Bengazi which has not been composed of ancient materials, yet there is nothing of architecture in any of them at present to fix, and scarcely to arrest, the attention. We were ourselves just too late to save from the hammer several portions of a large and well-executed Ionic entablature, which a worthy Arab Shekh had caused to be excavated and brought into his court-yard, to form part of a house which he was building without the town, and which was carefully beat to pieces by his servants and slaves before it was bedded in the mud which received it. Very extensive remains of building are still found about Bengazi, at the depth of a foot or two from the surface of the plain ; and whenever a house is intended to be erected, the projector of it has nothing more to do, in order to obtain 2 s a