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P R E F ACE.

4 LTHO’ the skill and diligence of so many ingenious men, for above these two last centuries,have been excited to retrieve the architecture of the antients, and restore it in its originalpurity and beauty, neither they who had formed precepts for this purpose from the writings ofVitruvius, nor others who endeavoured at the restoration of the Greek orders, from the ruined edificesof Rome, have succeeded completely in their laudable attempts; no original traces of the Doric andIonic orders could fall under their most diligent researches; they found no examples of thesebut such as were very defective: it was not then known that the Grecians had left some vene-rable Doric monuments at Poestum, near Salerno, in the kingdom of Naples; this seems a verylate discovery : the abbe Winkelman, whose penetration into the stores of antiquity, nothingcan escape, supposes them the most antient of any Grecian remains, and informs us that he isthe first who mentioned them to the puhlick. Athens all this time may be said to have beenforgotten: such sew travellers who ventured to visit Greece, whatever success they had in theirpursuits after other objects of antiquity, it seems were not furnished with the requisite skill inarchitecture, to bring away with them, either by an exact technical description, or correct draw-ings, such accounts and representations of Grecian buildings, as could prove satisfactory to thediscernment and inquiry of the curious.

This very desirable task was reserved for the united labours of M. M. STVART and REVETT ;to them we owe that excellent book, The Antiquities of Athens , a work executed with veracity,erudition and elegance, and which with the very circumstantial and true delineations of Athenianremains, will transmit to posterity the authentic records and perfect models of the Grecianorders.

From those antiquities, it is attempted in this treatise to establish documents for the threeorders, and to make a modulary division of all their component parts for practical uses; whatlittle differences may be observed, were only admitted to avoid fractions in their progreffional al-titudes, which are fixed at so many entire diameters; the character of every member in each order

is strictly preserved, because otherwise the specific distinctions in the three different modes, wouldbe confounded and out of place.

While we are modulating the orders from unquestionable originals, it would be an unpardonablefight to the only writer of antiquity upon this subject, whom time and accidents have not des-troyed, if we did not introduce him : Vitruvius is too respectable an author not to be quotedin a work of this nature, and though a Roman, he has said all that was possible in favourof Grecian architecture; and has delivered, with the necessary rules, its origin and progress: Itmust be owned, that his expressions are sometimes low and bald, but it was unavoidable in thedry parts which regard only measurements, and the mere mechanical directions ; for in his pre-faces and historical narratives, and in many scientific matters, dispersed throughout his works,the style is much more correct and florid. In his preface to his VII book he has named the Greekand Latin writers upon architecture, which may have served him in the compilation of his treatise.Pliny quotes him in his XVI, XXXV and XXXVI books of his natural history, and generallythroughout these volumes are extracts from Vitruvius, even in his own words. Whatever want of

a method