MERGE TO GYRENE. 457 rate the intensity of affliction by diverting the mind from the loss of the deceased to the honours which are paid to their memory.

The shades of the departed were also supposed to take delight in the attention bestowed upon their mortal remains ; and to wander with complacency over the gay and costly chambers which piety and affection had consecrated to their use. A departure from the established practice of the ancients in the exterior decorations of their temples and public buildings, ought not then perhaps to be received, in the instances mentioned, as a mark of vitiated taste, or of the recent date of the fabric in which such anomaly may be observed : and in applying this remark to the excavated tombs at Cyrene (scarcely any two of which are alike in their proportions) we have the more reason to regret the almost total absence of inscriptions, by which the dates of the several fabrics might be clearly ascertained.

It is probable that many of these might be found on tablets, once let into, or placed over, some part of each tomb ; and now buried beneath the soil and the wrecks of the exterior facades, which incumber the chambers and the approaches to them. In many instances busts have been placed over the pediments of the outer porticoes, and we often found fragments of statues in the chambers and cell® within. So many of the tombs are however filled up to a considerable height above the level of their pavement with an accumulation of soil from without, that it is scarcely possible to say what they contain ; while the entrances are usually incumbered with the fragments of the fallen porticoes which once formed the ornaments of the exteriors. On the day of our arrival at Cyrene we perceived