htstorical sketch of vaults.

4<r,

Mr. Reveley, in his preface to the third volume ofStuart’s Antiquities of Athens, takes occasion tocensure Sir William Chambers for his Strictures ofGrecian Architecture. The columns which Sir William Chambers called gouty, have since his timefigured in our ball-rooms and theatres ; perhaps be-cause Tarchesius, Pytheus, Hermogenes, Hermo-dorus, and Cossurius thought them unfit for sacrededifices. In the time of Pericles , though sculpturemight be mature, architecture was in swaddlingclothes; and they shew little respect to her riper years,who imitate her gross and bulky works, previous to,and of his time j and neglect the refined specimensof her skill in the Alexandrian and Augustan ages.Those who affect the Grecian style of architectureimported by Stuart and his followers, have unhap-pily little regard to the nature of the materials whichthey use, the atmosphere in which they build, and tothe point of sight in which their imitations are viewed.What is bold, cut in white marble, and seen under aclear sky, is bald and meager in English materialsand under an English sky. What is designed for ahill or an open plane rarely fits a narrow street.Roman and Gothic architecture are of another cha-racter, and by use have become indigenous. Sir Wil­ liam Chambers might be wrong in calling the GrecianDoric columns gouty, at least he will for a few yearsbe thought so ; but he was correct in saying, that “ themagnificence of Grecian buildings * could not be

* The most magnificent example of Grecian architecture wasperhaps the Temple of Jupiter Olympus at Elis. In it there wasa sitting statue of that god, sixty feet high. It was observed byStrabo (1. viii.) that if the god had got up, he must either havebroken his own head, or have made a hole in the roof. The godmight safely play at leap-frog in Westminster Abbey .