ARC M IT ECTURE

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the men of these tiiv.es had neither experience nor tools : butwhen, by long experience and reasoning upon it, the artists hadestablished certain rules, had invented many instruments, andbv great practice had acquired a facility in executing their ideas,they made quick advances towards perfection, and at length dis-covered certain manners of building, which succeeding ages haveregarded with the. highest veneration. It is not unreasonable toconclude, that from Fgypt, where the cotemporary nationssought the. arts and studied the sciences, the Greeks derived then-first ideas of building, but which were so changed and improved bybeing thus transplanted, that it can scarcely he known from whatstock they had their origin. The Greeks, anxious to add ele-gance to convenience, disregarded the massive and ponderous ar-chitecture of the Egyptians; whose ignorance cf the arch madeit absolutely necessary for them to have small spaces betweentheir columns, and to burthen their edifices with large and strongarchitraves. To the fine eye, the skilful hand, and sublime ge-nius of the Greeks, is architecture indebted for its rule of har-mony, elegance of design, and taste of ornament, which beganto arrive at perfection under the fostering care of Pericles ; whichperiod, including the reign of Alexander the Great , must he con-sidered as its climax of grace, elegance, and beauty, in Greece .The Homans, from this period, are to be considered as the en-couragers and palronisers of architecture, which now made a greatand rapid progress, though little was done that could be remarkedfor its novelty. Some authors have attempted to prove, that, fromthe Etruscans , and not from the Egyptians, the Greeks imbibed theirfirst ideas of architecture. The Etruscans (or Tuscans) certainly werewell skilled in Imildins, and from them the donums in their earlyState sought help in all their large works. 'I lie remains of the temple of Jupiter Capitol inns, the Cloaca Maxima , Arc. the works of Tuscanartists, shew them to have well understood the science and thepractice of useful and elegant architecture. Neither when we inspectthe antique vases, of undoubted Etru ic.m woskm.uiship, can wedeny them to have possessed taste and elegance. Hut from what-ever nation the Greeks first acquired their taste for architecture, itmust be allowed that they completed the science, by uniting theuseful and the agreeable in all their designs. But it k not alittle remarkable, that improvements in architecture did not takeplace in anv nation, till after, or about the time that Jerusalem was taken bv Nebuchadnezzar. The grandest buildings erectedamong the Assyrians seem to have owed their existence to thismonarch; and it can scarcely be imagined that he w ould not endea-vour to imitate the architecture of Solomon’s temple, to which,bv his conquest of Jerusalem , he had full access. It is also re-markable, that the dimensions of the two pillars, Jachin and Boaz,set up bv Solomon, vr-rv nearly correspond with those of theDoric order, first invented by the Greeks, and which originallycame from their colonies settled in Asia Minor . The height ofSolomon’s pillars, without the chapiter, was 18 cubits; that ofthe chapiter itself was 3 cubits; the circumference was 12 cubits;from whence, according to the Scripture language, we mayreckon the diameter to have been exactly 4 cubits. Had they beena single cubic higher they would have been precisely of thesame height with columns of the original Doric erder. We donot mean positively to affirm, that this famous temple gave a mo-del of architecture to the w hole world; although it is scarcely con-ceivable, but that imitations of it, as far as it could he knowu,must have taken place among many nations. Among theancient Egyptians, Persians, and Babylonians , the vast strengthand extent of their buildings seem to have been w hat they chieflyvalued; and in this they certainly as much excelled the Greeksand modern nations, as the latter excel them in the beautiful pro-portion and elegance of their structure. On the decline of ar-chitecture among the Homans, and when the empire was entirelyover-run by the Goths , the latter naturally introduced their ownmethods of building. Like the ancient Egyptians, the Goths seem to have been more studious to amaze people with the great-ness of their buildings Hum to please the eye with the regularityof their plans, or the propriety of their ornaments. They cor-rected themselves, however, a little by the models of the Ho-man ediiices, which they saw before them : but these modelsthemselves were faulty ; and the Goths being totally destitute ofgenius, neither architecture nor any other art could be improvedby them. Those ancient buildings in this island, which havegone under the indiscriminate denomination of Gothic, our mo-

dern antiquaries have more accurately'divided into Saxon, Nor-man, and Saracenic, or that species vulgarly, though improperly,called Modern Gothic.

1 lowever there seems to be little or no ground for a distinctionbetween the Saxon and Norman architecture. The ancient partsof most cf our cathedrals are of this early' Norman worn, tnecharacteri-tic marks of w hich are these: The walls are very thick,generally without buttresses; tile arrh.es, both within and with-out, as well as those over the doors ami wusdows, semicircular,and supported by very- clumw columns, with a kind of regularbase and capital. In short, plainness and solidity constitute thestriking features of this method of building. Yet the architectsof those days sometimes deviated from this rule. Their capitalswere adorned with carvings of foliage, and even animals; then-massive columns exhibited smalt half columns united to them,and their surfaces ornamented with spirals, squares, lozenge net-work, and other figures, either engraved or in relievo. \ ariousinstances of these may be seen in the cathedral of Canterbury',particularly the under croft; tire monastery of Lir.dhfavn, or HolyIsland ; the Cathedra! at Durham ; and the vuim-d choir at Or-ton! in Suffolk . The columns, fig. 6, 7, 8, y, Plate XI. are atthe monastery of Lindisfr.mor lloiv Island, l- ig. 10, 11, 12, arein the ruined Chancel at Orford in Suffolk , l-’ig. 13. is at ChristChurch, Canterbury. The Savacenical architecture is distin-guished by its numerous and prominent buttresses, its lofty spirespaid pinnacles, its large and ramilied windows, its ornamentalniches and canopies, its sculptured saints, the delicate lace-workot its (retted roofs, and the profusion of ornaments indiscrimi-nately lavished. But its most distinguished characteristics are thesmall clustered pillars and pointed arches, formed by the seg-ments of two intersecting circles, Plate XI. which arches, thoughadopted last, are of a more simple and obvious construction thanthe semicircular ones. To what country or people tlv modernGothic, or the style of building with pointed arches, owes its ori-gin, seems by no means satifsetorily determined. Some lia^e ima-gined it may possibly have arisen from the arcades of thf earlyNorman ,or Saxon buildings. But it is more generally conjec-tured to be of Arabian extraction, and to have been introducedinto Europe , by some persons returning from the Crusades in theHoly Land, home plausible arguments, however, have beenadduced, to prove that this style of architecture was introducedinto Spain by the Moors, and from that country passed by theway ot France into Britain . It appears from history’, that beforethe Homan invasion, the natives of Britain had no better lodgingsthan thickets, dens, and caves. Some of the caves, whichever*their winter habitations, and places of retreat in time of warwere rendered secure and warm by art, like those of the ancientGermans, which are thus described by Tacitus :—“ They’ areused to dig deep caves in the ground, and cover them with earth,where they lay up their provisions, and dwell in w inter for thesake of warmth. Into those they’ retire also from their enemies,who plunder the open country, hut cannot discover these sub-terraneous recesses.” Some of the subterraneous or earthhouses, as they are called, are still remaining in the westernisles ot Scotland, ami in Cornwall . At the time of Ca-sar’s in-vasion, our ancestors had nothing answering to our ideas of acity or town, consisting of contiguous houses, regular streets,lanes, &c. Their dwellings, like those of the ancient Germans ,were scattered about the country, -and generally situated on thebrink of rivulets, for the sake o’f water; and on the skirt of somewood or torest, for the convenience of hunting, and pasture forcattle. But as soon as live Romans began to form settlements, andplant colonies in this island, a sudden and surprising- change en-sued in the state of architecture. For that people, who were asindustrious as they were brave, quickly adorned every countrythat they conquered. They not only built a prodigious num-ber of solid, convenient, and magnificent structures for theirown accommodation; but they- exhorted, encouraged, and in-structed the Britons to imitate their example. Indeed this wasone of the arts which Agricola, the most excellent of the Ro-man governors, employed to civilize the Britons, and reconcilethem to the Homan government. But not very long after thisperiod, architecture and all the arts connected with it, began todecline very sensibly in Britain , and in all the provinces of thewestern empire. This was partly owing to the building of Con-stantinople , which drew m;my ot' the most fatuous architects and

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