The Idler in Italy - 1 Author:Marguerite Blessington Volume: 1 General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1839 Original Publisher: H. Colburn Subjects: Italy Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-... more »Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: The walls, a hundred and eight feet high, and three hundred in length, are composed of large square stones of equal size, joined with great skill and nicety, and ornamented by two ranges of arcades and an attic. At the summit of the exterior are two rows of stones, which protrude from the wall; supposed to have been used for fastening the canvas or sail-cloth that covered the theatre, to shelter the audience from the sun or rain. The exterior of the theatre is in an extraordinary degree of preservation, and presents a striking and imposing effect; but the interior retains nothing of its pristine grandeur : part of it being converted into a prison, and the rest employed as a receptacle for rubbish, and for the scarcely less degrading purpose of supplying habitations to the mendicants with which Orange is filled. What a contrast does the present state and uses of this building present to its original destination! Here, where the comedies of Plautus and Terence were enacted, we behold only the most disgusting details of poverty and uncleanliness; and where sat the proud and warlike Roman leaders, troops of squalid children and half-starved dogs disport. To examine the interior of one of the vomitories of the theatre, we were compelled to enter the abode of wretchedness into which a portion of the building has been converted. Nothing could exceed the dirt, except the misery of the habitation: it was of Cimmerian darkness, and the lamp carried before us threw a lurid gloom over the black walls and visage of the beldame who led us through the gloomy...« less