Of all the examples of the wonderful arts of the Greeks, the remains or the memories of which have come down to us, no one has excited such curiosity as the far-famed Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, or such regret that no fragments of it should have existed in our own days. All we knew of it, till very recently, was that the ancients themselves were inclined to look upon it as the very best specimen of architectural art which they possessed. For not only did they rank it as among the seven wonders of the world, but assigned it that pre-eminence—not because of its size or durability, but because of the intrinsic beauty of its design, and the mode in which it was ornamented.

The Pyramids of Egypt and Walls of Babylon were wonders only because of their mass or their durability. The Palace of Cyrus or the Hanging Gardens of Babylon may have been rich in colour and barbaric splendour, but we know enough of Assyrian and of Persian art to feel convinced that the taste in which they were designed must at least have been very questionable. The Colossus at Rhodes, and the Statue of Jupiter at Elis, whatever their merits,—and of one, at least, of them we can believe anything,—did not belong to architectural art. The Temple of Ephesus may have been beautiful in itself, but it became a wonder only from its size, as the largest of Greek temples. But the Mausoleum, which covered not more than one-sixth or one-seventh of its area, could have been remarkable only because it was beautiful, or in consequence of the elaboration and taste displayed in its ornamentation.

All that was known of this once celebrated building, till the recent explorations, was to be gathered from a few laudatory paragraphs in Pausanias, Strabo, Vitruvius, and other authors of that age; and a description in Pliny’s Natural History, which we are now justified in assuming to have been abstracted from a work written by the architects who originally designed the Mausoleum itself. Probably there were no diagrams or illustrations with their book, and we may suspect that Pliny himself did not understand the building he undertook to describe. At all events, it is certain that he stated its peculiarities in such a manner as to be utterly unintelligible to future generations.

Still there were so many facts in his statements, and the building was so celebrated, that few architects have escaped the temptation of trying to restore it. What the squaring of the circle is to the young mathematician, or the perpetual motion to the young mechanician, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus was to the young architect; and with the data at his disposal this problem seemed as insoluble as the other two.

Some forty or fifty of these restorations have been published, and a strange and amusing collection they are. Some are round, some octagonal, some cruciform, some oblong or square in plan, some are squat, some tall.1 Every dimension found in Pliny was applied to every part in succession, but in vain. All these designs had only one thing in common;—that they were all wrong,—some more, some less so, but none seizing what now turn out to be the main features of the design.

In 1846, Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, who was then all-powerful as our ambassador at Constantinople, obtained from the Porte a firman for the removal of certain bassi-rilievi which had been built into the walls of the Castle of Budrum, the ancient Halicarnassus. These arrived in England in due course, and were at once admitted to be fragments of the sculpture of the Mausoleum, as it had been previously assumed that they were. But their beauty only served further to increase the regret that all traces of the building to which they once belonged should have been, as it then appeared, for ever lost.

While things were in this very unsatisfactory position, the public heard with no small degree of interest that Mr. Charles Newton, formerly one of the officers of the British Museum, and then Vice-Consul at Mitylene, had not only discovered the true site of the Mausoleum on a spot formerly indicated by Professor Donaldson, but had found considerable remains of the long-lost building.

Public attention was still further attracted to the subject when it was announced that the British Government had fitted out an extensive expedition, to continue the explorations commenced by Mr. Newton at Budrum and its neighbourhood. From the time that the expeditionary force commenced its labours in October, 1856, till it was broken up nearly three years afterwards, in June, 1859, occasional paragraphs kept up the interest in its proceedings, and latterly the arrival of the marbles themselves excited expectation to the highest pitch. Everything seemed to shadow forth a most brilliant success; and, from the high character which Mr. Newton bore as a Greek scholar, and a thoroughly educated archÆologist, all the Hellenist public rejoiced that an expedition fitted out on so liberal a scale, and for so desirable an object, had fallen into what all then believed to be such competent hands.

The first published results were not encouraging. They took the form of Papers presented to Parliament, and published as a Blue Book in 1858, and a second series entitled “Further Papers relating to the Excavations at Budrum and Cnidus, presented in August, 1859.”

The diagrams of the Mausoleum which accompanied these Papers seemed only sufficient to prove one of two things;—either that the explorations had not resulted in the discovery of a sufficient quantity of architectural forms to enable a satisfactory restoration to be made, or that those who conducted the expedition were not sufficiently versed in the art of putting together architectural fragments to be able to avail themselves of the information that had been obtained.

The whole results of the expedition were at last laid before the public in February last, in a folio volume of plates accompanied by a volume of text in 8vo. by Mr. Newton. This work contains, among other things, an elaborate restoration of the Mausoleum by Mr. Pullan, an architect who was sent out by the Trustees of the British Museum to join the expedition during the continuance of its labours. This restoration, however, turns out on examination to be less satisfactory than those previously published by Lieut. Smith in the parliamentary papers above alluded to, either as a specimen of Greek art or as a solution of the difficulties inherent in the problem of reconciling the recent discoveries with the ancient descriptions of the building. It is also unfortunate that—owing probably to their author being absent from the country—the purely architectural plates are so incorrectly drawn or engraved as to add considerably to the previously existing difficulties of the question. It is likewise to be regretted that, for some reason which is not explained, all the best things are omitted from the collection. The statue of Mausolus is not there, nor that of the Goddess which accompanied the chariot. The Horses of the Chariot are also omitted; so is the Torso of the prancing Amazon, the finest thing found; so are the Castle bassi-rilievi, and the really fine Lions. There are, in fact, materials left out sufficient to fill, if not so large a volume as the present, at least one of a far higher class. Notwithstanding these difficulties and defects, there appear to be sufficient materials now before the public to effect a restoration of the building, and as almost all that was discovered on the spot is now in the British Museum, a reference to them enables us to correct or verify what has been published. Under these circumstances I have not hesitated to make the attempt. With what success I must leave it to others to judge after a perusal of the contents of the following pages.