MERGE TO GYRENE. 459 Mahommed at Derna whenever we heard that any injury of the kind had been committed on his Highness’s property.

If the excavated tombs of Cyrene have been pointed out as objects of no trivial interest, those, also, which have been built in every part of its neighbourhood are no less entitled to our attention and admiration.

Several months might be employed in making drawings and plans of the most conspicuous of these elegant structures ; and the few examples which our short stay allowed us to secure them (as given in the plate, page 464) will give but an imperfect idea of the variety observable in their forms and details. Many of these are built in imitation of temples, although there are scarcely two of them exactly ahke ; and their effect on the high ground on which they mostly stand, as seen from different parts of the city and suburbs, is more beautiful than we can pretend to describe. A judicious observer might select from these monuments, as well as from the excavated tombs above mentioned, examples of Grecian and Eoman architecture through a long succession of interesting periods ; and the progress of the art might thus be traced satisfactorily, from its early state among the first inhabitants of Cyrene, to its degeneracy and final decay under Koman colonists in the decline of the empire.

The larger tombs were usually divided in the centre by a wall along the whole length of the building (which is the case in one of those represented in the plate, p, 464), and several bodies were disposed one over the other in each of the compartments thus obtained. Every place containing a body was covered with a slab of marble or stone, in the manner of those described in the excavated tombs ; and there 3X2