I8J5.] 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL: 



R> 



HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 

 ^ Brief Fieiv of the General flishrrj of ylichikcliirc,fwm th Earlie:<l 

 Penoth of EgyptUm .Irt to the JMiddk of the Xl-'I. Ctnlitnj. By 

 Thomas Leveiu'on Donaldson, Fellow. (Read at the livya! In- 

 tlitute of British jlrchittcts, Monday, January 13.) 



{Continued from page 5S.) 

 We now quit the bunks of tlie Nile, li-aving its patient and l;iborio\is 

 people, with wliosi- power, m;igiiiticence, ami intelligence all antiquity 

 is filled ; we quit its pyramid?, its tombs, its temples and wondrous 

 monuments, struck with a sense of their majesty, tlioir overwhehniiig 

 size and profuse embellislnnent, and considering the refinement to 

 which their arts and manufactures were carried, and the extent to 

 \Thich their commerce penetrated, we might well deem (had not ex- 

 perience taught us the contrary), that human intelligence could not 

 have risen to higher flights of imagination or more perfect productions 

 of skill. 13ut we learn that a people of much later origin, or at least 

 of a much later date of civilization, caught from the Egyptians the 

 tirst germs of art and science, and penetr.ited by their monuments 

 were seized with a higher inspiration of the imaginative faculties, 

 enunciated sounder precepts of wisdom, and throwing oft" the formal 

 shackles of suiierstilion and mysticism sought a new world of art and 

 science in nature's self, and have been regarded as the masters of 

 future generations in the canons of art, of letters, and of science. 



You roust feel that I allude to the wondrous Greeks. Yet although 

 I am conscious that they owe most of the first elements of their future 

 greatness to the lessons acquired by their philosophers, their artists 

 and historians on the banks of the Nile, still we cannot but allow that 

 they must have been influenced also by the arts and manuf ictures of 

 other people of high antiquity, such as the Phoenicians, Assyrians, and 

 other mercantile nations, whose ships oft sought the coasts of Greece 

 in search of commercial wealth or as an asylum from the overgrowing 

 population at home, or the tyranny of their rulers or predominant fac- 

 tions. But although we know how skilful those nations were in the 

 arts of commerce and the useful productions of life, still we have no 

 monuments of art now remaining to attest their genius in those finer 

 productions of the human genius which raised the Egyptians, and 

 subsequently the Greeks, to so high a scale in tlie intellectual world. 

 'Tis true we hear of the masses laised at Babylon, at Nineveh, and 

 Sidon, and Tyre, but they are rather mentioned for their vastness and 

 constructive skill than for their beauty as works of art — and they are 

 quoted by the Greek writers rather upon the authority of other tra- 

 vellers, than described as monuments which iliey tliemselves saw and 

 studied and described from actual inspection. It is true, that like 

 Memphis and Thebes and all other great cities, Babylon and Nineveh 

 were situate upon the banks of rivers, but the Euphrates and Tigris 

 had not, like the Nile, their discharge in the Mediterranean, and con- 

 sequently were not accessible to Greek commercial enterprise, it was 

 only later, when Greek courage and Greek discipline rendered them 

 the terror and admiration of the then^kuown world, that their armies 

 penetrated as conquerors or allies to inland regions, and brought home 

 the refinements and luxuries of central Asia. 



The earliest practisers of our art in Greece were the Pelasgi, whose 

 origin is lost in the darker periods of Greek history. Their skill 

 seems to have been principally applied to the construction of their 

 city walls, the first object of necessity to tribes (if 1 may so call them), 

 who were little better than hordes of robbers, constantly carrying their 

 predatory incursions into each other's territories and plundering friend 

 or foe — thosi- nearest being the most dangerous. 



Argos is generally first named as being founded by Phoroneus, son 

 of Inacus, from whose son, Argos, it derived its name. Uanaus tra- 

 velling from Egypt rendered bimself master of the throne of Argos 

 and Sicyorn, founded by Egialeus a supposed other son of Inacus, 

 usually mentioned by Greek chronologists as the earliest date of Greek 

 civilization, and first notice in history as a people. Three hundred 

 years afterwards the sacred rock of the Parthi-iion was selected by 

 Cecrops for a city, called after him Cecropia and subsequently named 

 Athens. He established laws and erected a court of judicature cdled 

 Areopagus, after the models, as we are expressly told by Tlmcydides 

 (lib. 2), of the tribunals of Egypt. The next striking event was the 

 Argonautic expedition, headed by Jason, Castor, Pollux, Hercules, 

 Telamon, and Orpheus, which visited many nations and enriched 

 themselves by the experii nee gained in tin ir visits to the cities of 

 Asia Minor. Mycena; now assumes an important place in Archaic 

 history. Its Tyrant Euristheus compelled Hercules to undertake his 

 twelve labours, iii the performance of which he visited various foreign 

 parts. In these remote times we find the origin of that distinct ilif- 

 lerence of character which pervaded Greek art in coutradistincuon to 

 that of Egypt. The earliest temples were built of wood — the igno? 



ranee of their first artists, the poverty of tlie people, did not allow 

 them to avail themselves of the stone and marble which are to be found 

 throughout Greece; and at a period when some of the most glorious 

 edifices of Memphis and Thebes had their propylea, obelisks, columns, 

 and statues, the Greek worshipped his mountain god in a log built 

 fane formed of the pines cut from the summit of Parnassus, Taygetus, 

 or tJita. But under the Atrida; a great step was made, and solid 

 masonry of horizontal courses was introduced. 



Other cities had like treasuries, as that of Minyas at Archomenes, 

 the first according to Pausanias erected for such a purpose, and pro- 

 bably erected by some artist who accompanied the colonists who came 

 to Greece from t^gypt and Asia Minor. We now learn for the first 

 time the use of bronze, as those chambers were lined by that metal, 

 and frequent mention is made of kings who hid themselves from their 

 enemies in bronze chambers, which were probably of this form. Eu- 

 ristheus used almost always to hide himself in his bronze chamber 

 whenever Hercules returned to Mycenae after accomplishing one of his 

 labours. 



Mr. Donaldson then alluded to the Greek nrgration to Asia Minor, 

 to the impulse given by the siege of Troy, to architecture and its stats 

 at the time of Homer. He then analysed the origin of the Greek Doric, 

 as derived from timber construction, and the difference of its entabla- 

 ture, with architrave, frieze, and cornice from the Egyptian entablature. 



It seems to be certain from the evidence brought forward by Canina 

 that the Ionic as well as the Doric was invented before the Persian 

 invasion of Greece by Xerxes; and in fact the example atSamos, given 

 in the works of the Dilettanti .Society, so peculiar in its design, proves 

 a very remote epoch, not a decline of a previously well-conceived and 

 highly finished example but the first rude attempt at somewhat not yet 

 matured and perfect in its conce|)tion. We may hence conclude that 

 in the period between t!:e Trojan war and the Persian invasion the 

 Greeks, although distracted by internal wars, still pursued the art 

 with perseverance, and following the right traces. They seem to 

 have made a point of studying nature as the source to direct them in 

 the principles of art; and as in those of painting and sculpture they 

 sought in the finest forms of the Grecian youth and in the exquisite 

 figures of the athletes and runners in the sacred games, the proportions 

 of their heroes and their gods, so they r<'curred to the productions of 

 the vegetable world and the parts of the log hut or wooden temple for 

 the principle features of the orders and graceful details of the mould- 

 ings which gave a charm to, and relieved the heaviness of, their sub- 

 stantial conslructions. We may assume as certain that the Corinthian 

 order had not yet been discovered; for otherwise we should find it 

 doubtless employed in those edifices, at least in some parts, erected 

 immediately after the Peisian invasion. Nor probably hiid the Ionic 

 yet established its claims, as I said before, to be considered a perfect 

 conception, for unless restrained by a superstitious veneration for an- 

 tiquity, or an attachment to established forms, we might suppose that 

 the Theseum and Parthenon would have been raised in all the suinp- 

 tuousness of the more enriched parts of the Ionic. That the Doric 

 was perfect in all its parts at the Persian invasion we may infer from 

 the fragments of the large Doric order, whose blocks form part of the 

 citadel walls o( the Acropolis of Athens, and which seem with all 

 reason to be the ruins of the original Parthenon destroyed by the Per- 

 sians and worked up when the citadel was rebuilt. We mav judge 

 also from the fact that the temples of Sicily and Magna Grecia, which 

 appear probably to have been erected soon after the settlement of 

 those colonies, contain all the parts of the more refined productions 

 of Ictinus, although of more massive proportion', of ruder workman- 

 ship, and with some greater crudity of detail. The Doric example at 

 Corinth, apparently the prototype of the Sicilian and Magna Grecian 

 temples, is the expression of a masculine and fierce sentiment; the 

 Athenian models the emanation of a gentler and more refined feeling. 

 This pervaded the entire of Attica, at Eleusis, Rhamnus, and the 

 Promontory of Sunium, as the other did Syracuse, Girgenii, Selinus, 

 Pestnm, Metapontum. 



Tracing then the development of the Grecian character from their 

 state of barb.irism, their gradual acquirement of the arts of civiliza- 

 tion, their commerce and wars with other nations, we find them pro- 

 gressing in the cultivation of the arts of peace, creating two new ori- 

 ginal orders distinct in their original types and peculiar in sentiment, 

 and all this before the Persian invasion, when most of the temples and 

 other edifices in Attica were destroyed, and before the epoch of 

 Pericles and Ictinus, wdiose productions are too often regarded as the 

 first examples of those onlers. 



The conquest of the Persians driven from Greece, and the riches of 

 which they were plundered, inspirited the Grecians to turn all their 

 energies to produce those 3|ilendid and perfect works of art, the ad- 

 miration of all succeeding ages. From that time there was a rapid 

 and progressive improvemegt, the natural result of which, and of the 



