470 03 taste in architecture. -^^'g- 29^, 



nean war, inntatoria or change-houses were commoii 

 for variety, and these in the suburbs,^ which were 

 succeeded by elegant villas iii the country. 



But the multiplicity of these houses and villas 

 led to their being composed of flimsy materials, and 

 not constructed for extensive duration. 



The earliest writers in Italy after the fall of the 

 Roman empire, give us no accounts of the ruins of 

 rural magnificence, though they speak much of the 

 beauty and amosnity of tlie situations where they 

 had formerly existed. In fhort there were greater 

 captains than Marlborough, but no Blenheims in 

 Italy, and still lefs in Greece. All great magnificence 

 was dedicated to the gods and to the public. Noble 

 example worthy of imitation I 



Neither does it appfear that before the empire of 

 Augustus, any temples of extraordinary or durable 

 magnitude or splendour had existed at Rome ; and 

 hardly had a taste for beautiful structures been esta- ■ 

 blifhcd by the munificence of the usurper, than it be- 

 came vitiated by the caprice of redundant decoration. 

 Of this we are afsured by the authority of Vitru- 

 vius. 



Tacitus too, that great historian of a declining age, 

 whose faults in style have been afsiduously copied by 

 Mr Gibbons, and other writers of these times, who 

 are thought to belong to an age and country of ad"- 

 vancing ta-.te and improvement, informs us, that 

 after the battle of Actium, the Ftafsey of the Roman 

 arms, when a visible decline o'^ free sentiment appear- 

 ed among the Romans, it extended itself {as it -were) 

 to the understandings of individuals, whence learning 



