There Are Three Handsome Bridges
Thrown Over This Vast Canal.
It contains a great body of
excellent water, which by pipes and other small branching canals,
traverses the town, and is converted to many different purposes
of oeconomy and manufacture.
Between the Roman bath and these
great canals, the ground is agreeably laid out in pleasure-walks.
for the recreation of the inhabitants. Here are likewise
ornaments of architecture, which savour much more of French
foppery, than of the simplicity and greatness of the antients. It
is very surprizing, that this fountain should produce such a
great body of water, as fills the basin of the source, the Roman
basin, two large deep canals three hundred feet in length, two
vast basins that make part of the great canal, which is eighteen
hundred feet long. eighteen feet deep, and forty-eight feet
broad. When I saw it, there was in it about eight or nine feet of
water, transparent as crystal. It must be observed, however, for
the honour of French cleanliness, that in the Roman basin,
through which this noble stream of water passes, I perceived two
washerwomen at work upon children's clouts and dirty linnen.
Surprized, and much disgusted at this filthy phaenomenon, I asked
by what means, and by whose permission, those dirty hags had got
down into the basin, in order to contaminate the water at its
fountain-head; and understood they belonged to the commandant of
the place, who had keys of the subterranean passage.
Fronting the Roman baths are the ruins of an antient temple,
which, according to tradition, was dedicated to Diana: but it has
been observed by connoisseurs, that all the antient temples of
this goddess were of the Ionic order; whereas, this is partly
Corinthian, and partly composite. It is about seventy foot long,
and six and thirty in breadth, arched above, and built of large
blocks of stone,
exactly joined together without any cement. The walls are still
standing, with three great tabernacles at the further end,
fronting the entrance. On each side, there are niches in the
intercolumniation of the walls, together with pedestals and
shafts of pillars, cornices, and an entablature, which indicate
the former magnificence of the building. It was destroyed during
the civil war that raged in the reign of Henry III. of France.
It is amazing, that the successive irruptions of barbarous
nations, of Goths, Vandals, and Moors; of fanatic croisards,
still more sanguinary and illiberal than those Barbarians, should
have spared this temple, as well as two other still more noble
monuments of architecture, that to this day adorn the city of
Nismes: I mean the amphitheatre and the edifice, called Maison
Carree - The former of these is counted the finest monument of the
kind, now extant; and was built in the reign of Antoninus Pius,
who contributed a large sum of money towards its erection. It is
of an oval figure, one thousand and eighty feet in circumference,
capacious enough to hold twenty thousand spectators.
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