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important features. For forming and proportioning these we had 

 models in nature in the legs of animals, as a recent writer on the prin- 

 ciples of architecture had shown. The legs of animals were undoubtedly 

 the constructive type of the column : not the human body, «i8 had too 

 long been supposed. The human body was a complete structure, and 

 could not therefore be the t3rpe of any single feature of a building. It 

 bore analogy to the whole stucture, more or less striking in different 

 characters of edifices, or in different styles. To the mistaking of the 

 human body for the type of the column we were probably indebted for 

 those •' beautiful absurdities," the Greek Caryatides. But though the 

 legs of animals formed the constructive type of the column or the model 

 for its form, yet he believed the idea of the colonnade was caught from 

 the solemn and beautiful effect of a line of trees, which first hinted at 

 their plural value, and suggested their being employed in long rows and 

 avenues as a grand element of beauty in temple and forum. 



^\^lile the affinities of the solid walls of our edifices were with the 

 arrangement of inert matter in the quarry, there were yet various parts, 

 as framed floors, partitions, and roofs, cradling for curved ceilings, &c., 

 which followed the example of organic nature shown in the animal 

 frame. Of these the flooring-boards, the slates, the outer and inner 

 coating of plaster or cement, was the skin of the skeleton. The 

 legitimate office of plaster and cement was to form the integument or 

 skin of this frame-work, and, thus used, it was strikingly imitative of 

 nature in her organic productions. 



There were materials, as metals, from which probably an entire system 

 of architecture of the higher affinities might be derived : wood had 

 capacities for form superior to stone, but was weak and combustible: 

 metal was free from these objections, and was susceptible, by its peculiar 

 strength, tenacity, and flexibility, of effects more emulative of the 

 landscape, — more suggestive of the charms of grove and thicket than 

 masonry could pretend to. If the loftiest affinities, he would observe 

 by the way, were an object of aim in architecture, then the best material 

 was the one which had greatest capacites of form, (no matter how or by 

 what means brought into it,) combined with the greatest strength to 

 retain it uninjured. 



In the prevalence of the straight Une in architecture, it might be thought 

 we had deviated from nature ; but, as this line was demanded to a great 

 extent by utility, in using it we followed the example of nature, who forms 

 everything according to its use. We were further led to its adoption, or 

 rather driven to it, by the nature and limitation of the materials we had 

 liitherto employed, the straight line being most conformable to the 

 nature and economy both of stone and timber. The straight line, 



