the vestiges of the magnificent AEmilian Basilica in the Forum, of whose celebrated columns Pliny spoke in the highest terms.  Specimens of pavonazzetto are to be seen in almost every church in Rome.  In the interesting old Church of Sta.  Agnese there are two columns of this marble, the flutings of which are remarkable for their cabled divisions.  The gallery above is supported on small columns, most of which are of pavonazzetto spirally fluted.  In the Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli there is also a remarkably fine specimen; while there is a grand pair of columns in the vestibule of St. Peter’s between the transept and the sacristy.  Fourteen fluted columns of Phrygian marble have been dug up from the site of the Augustan Palace on the Palatine; while the one hundred and twenty employed by the emperor Hadrian, in the Temple of Juno and Jupiter erected by him, have been distributed among several of the Roman churches.  The side walls of the splendid staircase of the Bracchi Palace are sheathed with a very rare and beautiful variety, remarkable for the delicacy of its veins and its brilliant polish.  The veneer was produced by slicing down two ancient columns discovered near the Temple of Romulus Maxentius in the Forum, converted into the Church of SS.  Cosma e Damiano.  But the finest of all the pavonazzetto columns of Rome are the ten large ones in the Church of San Lorenzo outside the walls.  In the volute of the capital of one of them a frog has been carved, which identifies it as having formerly belonged to the Temple of Jupiter or Juno, within the area of the Portico of Octavia.  Pliny tells us that both temples were built at their own expense by two wealthy Lacedaemonian artists, named Sauros and Batrakos; and, having been refused the only recompense they asked—­the right to place an inscription upon the buildings,—­they introduced into the capitals of the pillars, surreptitiously, the symbols of their respective names, a lizard and a frog.

The most precious of the old marbles of Rome is the Rosso antico.  Its classical name has been lost, unless it be identical, as Corsi conjectures, with the Marmor Alabandicum, described by Pliny as black inclining much to purple.  For a long time it was uncertain where it was found, but recently quarries of it have been discovered near the sea at Skantari, a village in the district of Teftion, which show traces of having been worked by the ancients.  From these quarries the marble can only be extracted in slabs and in small fragments.  This is the case, too, with all the red marbles of Italy, which, in spite of their compact character, scale off very readily, and are friable, vitreous, and full of cleavage planes, in addition to which they are usually only found in thin beds, which prevents their being used for other purposes than table-tops and flooring-slabs.  The predominance of magnetic iron ore, to which they owe their vivid colour, has thus seriously affected the molecular arrangement of the rocks.  It is