68 

 SKETCHES BY A PRACTISING ARCHITECT.— No, I. 



BY A GENTLEMAN OF PLYMOUTH. 



Extracted from ^^AmohTs Magazine of the Fine Arts,'^ just published. 



"To what base uses we may return ! " 



The sketches of a travelling architect are far more 

 hkely to exhibit the poetry of his art than those of an 

 architect in practice, at least in these days of penny 

 wisdom, when a man had rather forfeit all the acknow- 

 ledged rules of proportion between solid and void, than 

 pay the tax upon a sufficiency of windows of sufficient 

 size. Only consider for a moment the eajly career of 

 a young architect of aspiring mind and lively imagina- 

 tion. He has hitherto been employed, first as an office 

 student, and afterwards in the pleasing occupation of a 

 tour through all the brighter scenes of classic celebrity. 

 Having studied, at home, the volumes of Palladio, 

 Wilkins' Magna Graecia, Stuart's Athens, and Denon's 

 Egypt, he hurries away on wings of eager expectancy, 

 tangibly to enjoy communion with those revered ob- 

 jects, whose essentials of beauty and proportion have 

 been already made known to him through the media 

 of description, and the graver Italy opens to him her 

 rich treasure of miscellaneous art ; Sicily points 

 proudly to Agrigentum ; he weeps at the sight of the 

 Athenian Acropolis, and, on entering the sepultural cell 

 of Theseus, exclaims, 



" If it were now to die, 

 'Twere now to be most happy !" 



forgetting at the moment that he has yet to wander 

 with the Nile amid the astounding ruins of mighty 

 Thebes ! He now contemplates the massive splen- 

 dours of Latopolis and Tentyra ; swells with honest 

 pride at the evidences of man's intelligent power as 

 affi)rded by the Propylea of Edfon, Luxor, and Philae ; 

 teems with a still increasing spirit of emulation, and 

 paraphrases the vengeful proclamation of Lear : — 



^*' Aye, ye proud monuments, 



I will afford such rivals to you all, 



