270 NOTICES OF THE MEETINGS [March 4, 
of the human race alike in arts, and arms, and literature, and 
politics. Our poetry, our philosophy, our institutions, our archi- 
tecture, are either lineally (however remotely) descended from 
those of Greece, or have ‘been subject to most important Grecian 
influence ; no such influence can ever be shown on the part of 
Egypt. The Lecturer argued that both external and internal 
evidence was against any derivation of Greek architecture from 
Egypt. 
First, chronology shows us that Greek architecture had begun 
to exhibit its distinctive features, though by no means in their 
full perfection, before any intercourse had arisen between Greece 
and Egypt. ‘That intercourse began in the reign of Psammetichus. 
Those who assert the derivation of Greek architecture from Egypt 
never assign it to so late adate, but revert to the fables of Inachus, 
Danaus, or Cecrops, which the light of modern historical criticism 
in the hands of Mr. Grote and others has taught us to reject as 
mere recent inventions. None of these stories derive the least 
authority from the Homeric poems ; it is clear that the only bar- 
barian nation of whom Homer had any clear notion were the 
Phoenicians ; of Egypt he knew just as much as he might have 
picked up from them. If there be any Egyptian element in 
Greece, it must have come indirectly through the Phoenicians ; but 
even of this no proof has been offered. 
Secondly, the whole character of the two architectures is against 
the supposition ; the Egyptian, as was before said, being derived 
from excavations, the Grecian from timber structures. The Lec- 
turer pointed out that all the peculiarities of Egyptian architecture 
were due to its excavation, referring to his History of Architecture 
for a more detailed view of the subject. He instanced 
Ist. The general massiveness of the style. 
Qnd. The general tendency to sloping walls, of which the pyra- 
mids are the full development. 
3rd. The character of the intercolumniations, as little more than 
perforations in the wall. 
4th. The stilt or dé on the capital. 
5th. The presence of a base and absence of diminution in the 
shaft — sometimes the actual presence of a counter diminution. 
6th. The manner in which painting and sculpture are applied. 
7th. The absence of a pediment. 
In all these points he endeavoured to trace out vestiges of the 
excavatory origin of the style, and in the opposite characteristics 
of Grecian architecture, no less clear marks of its timber de- 
rivation. 
The true Grecian architecture is the Doric, the direct emanation 
of the Grecian period, the pure representation of the timber con- 
struction. In the great Doric temples of Athens, the idea of hori- 
zontal extension, the soul of the entablature construction, is per- 
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