334 ON THE RESULTS OF THE ARCH. 



of Solomon, whose structures (widely dispersed, and open to the 

 knowledge of the Greeks, as many of them were) appear in some 

 of their principal decorations to have possessed much of the 

 niassiveness of the Egyptian, it seems highly probable that the 

 Grecian art of that time had made scarcely any advance to 

 the more graceful yet dignified proportions under which we are 

 accustomed to contemplate it. In short, as to the first use of the 

 arch, the conclusion of your correspondent is that to which a 

 careful examination of all well-known examples necessarily leads — 

 that its introduction took place between the reigns of Alexander 

 and Augustus, and that the Romans were the most forward 

 to apply its newly-discovered power. With regard to Pope's 

 beautification of the Iliad by the addition of descriptive features of 

 which Homer entertained no idea — appropriate, albeit, as the 

 painter's gift of muskets to the shoulders of the Israelites in the 

 desert — or the cowls and shaven crowns of Grecian priests, as 

 depicted by old hands in illustration of " Troy Boke" — while we 

 cannot excuse, we can in some degree explain such anomalies when 

 we recollect the all-absorbing interest which the fashion of his time 

 gave to the school of Palladian design } that absurd bigotry which 

 left Athenian remains unstudied and unknown, and which denied 

 the very name of architecture to the gothic or pointed style. 



Such prejudices are now, indeed, generally and deservedly 

 exploded : but beyond this, if we pursue our inquiry into the 

 results of the discovery of the arch, we shall find that they 

 terminate in the establishment of that system, which, so far from 

 standing the lowest and without recognition in art, demands the 

 highest station and respect, and that the gothic style is thus 

 the perfection of architecture, in being the offspring of the greatest 

 of all single architectural inventions. The Grecian system is that 

 of architecture without arches ; the Roman is that of architecture 

 with arches ; but it is the Pointed style that is the architecture of 

 arches. For further illustration, let it be observed that the first 

 principle u[»on which these decorative systems are founded is that 

 of constructive fitness. The Grecian columns, with the entabla- 

 tures or horizontal masses that they sustain, are but the refinements 

 upon and representations of the upright blocks of rough stone of 

 which, in parallel rows, the first rude avenue may be supposed to 

 have been formed, each row supporting from block to block a 

 horizontal course of stones by way of a beam, with slabs across 

 from row to row to afford shelter. Agreeably to this, all the 

 Grecian temples exhibit in their exterior the utmost simplicity of 

 character and construction, their distinctive feature being generally 

 this avenue or colonnade surrounding the walls of an oblong 

 chamber or cella. But hereupon arose a difficulty ; for when that 

 chamber or cell considerably exceeded in width the spaces between 

 the columns, it became impracticable to cover it with horizontal 

 stones, and hence it was necessary either to destroy the homoge^ 

 neous character of the structure by adopting a covering of wood, or 

 to obstruct the cell by the use of as many internal columns as 



