104 Architecture in the United States. 
be his object. When there is any thing about them, in richness or 
brilliancy, to call off the attention from the design, from the mental 
character of his labors, it is a fault; and the fault is in proportion to 
such an effect. In this point Italian artists fail the most. Perhaps 
it is a feeling that their powers are not equal to their task; more 
probably it is a perversion of taste :—but be the cause what. it will, 
they crowd together jasper, and porphyry, and alabaster, and verd 
antique, till the senses are dazzled and bewildered by the finery; and 
then we come from their edifices, with a confused sensation that we 
have seen some splendid object—and nothing more. This is the 
effect at first: this richness soon palls on the taste, and then we give 
them no further attention. This effect is felt by all who visit that 
country, and is evident in the books of travels some of them give, 
and also in the guide book through their cities. The talk is all about 
jasper, and verd antique, and rosso antico, till the patience of the 
reader is exhausted. Travellers there all tell us that their attention 
soon becomes languid : but how different is itin Greece. In Greece 
the curiosity is always awake ; the feelings always under powerful 
action; the admiration ever eeatcds each visit to the Parthenon 
makes us love it the more. “But the Parthenon is of marble”— 
true, but this circumstance is always felt to be an inferior considera- 
tion: it is not brought out glaring and bold; it strikes us only in its 
character of adaptation to the grandeur and majesty of the edifice, 
that mighty effort of mighty eines There is a little temple in 
Greece, in which we can suspect no such effect: it is of the rudest 
material; and yet that temple has a charm about it scarcely inferior 
to that * the Parthenon. I speak of the temple of Jupiter Panhel- 
lenius in Egina. It has received little notice from travellers, for it is 
in an island seldom visited. The modern Romans however in sub- 
stituting ornament for taste are doing little more than following their 
ancestors. ‘There was more wealth at Rome than at Athens; they 
had. far more in their power, as far as materials were concerned, 
than the Athenians; and perhaps it was this very fact that led to 2 
degenerate taste. In taste Athens was the admiration of the world: 
y could excel her only in the size and costliness of their edifices ; 
and so they erected mountains of brick work, and loaded them 
with ornaments; but Athens, standing as it did in simple grandeur, 
still bore the palm. In the one case, taste was formed on the princi- 
sof nature, every where simple, chaste and beautiful in its forms; 
e artist studied these, till they became a part of his being, his 
