1850.] 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



289 



NEW PARISH CHURCH, SWINDON, WILTS. 



The annexed engraving is a view of a new church that is now 

 in course of building, under the superintendence of Mr. Scott. 

 The situation is an elevated spot near the town of Swindon, Wilts. 

 The building is of the Decor<ated period, and constructed witli 

 stone, the dressings being of Bath stone worked. 1'he total 

 length of the church is 145 feet ; breadth 35 feet. Transepts 

 80 feet long, and 23 feet wide; height from floor of nave to top of 

 ridge of roof, 50 feet. Tower, 24. feet square; and height, includ- 

 ing spire, 145 feet. Tlie church will contain 926 sittings, and tie 

 cost between 6000/. and 7U0Oi?., raised by voluntary subscriptions, 

 and a grant from the Incorporated Church Building Society. Tlie 

 contractor is Mr, George flyers, of the \\'estniinster-road. 



BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 



Selections from Papers read at the Meeting held at Edinburgh, 

 August, 1850. 



ANCIENT GREECE. 



Notices of some additions made to our knowledge of the Ancient 

 Greeks by recent discoveries in Greece. By Professor Ranoabe, of 

 Athens. 



There exists one subject — one in pnrticular — by which I may 

 venture to say that Greece must excite to the highest the interest 

 of the learned — namely, that of her ancient monuments, which can 

 never cease to be an object of nniverstil study and admiration; and 

 1 may, perhaps, all the more hope to be heard with indulgence, 

 while I attempt to give a short account of the principal facts with 

 which the science of archaeology has been enriched by the disco- 

 veries made in Greece since her affrancliisemeut, tliat it is to the 

 learned investigations of British antiquarians in particular that is 

 due most of tlie knowledge we already possess of the Hellenic 

 monuments. Like those towns of Italy which reappear in their 

 ancient splendour when their covering of lava is removed, Greece, 

 as soon as she had shaken oif the slavery of so many centuries, 

 ofl^ered to the admiration of the world the innumerable treasures 

 of her antique beauty; and her monuments, after having seen so 

 many barbarian conquerors pass over their ruins, and after having 

 been so often exposed to destruction, and after — may not I, whose 

 days are passed among the mutilated remains of tlie Parthenon, 

 be permitted to say so? — the severe damage inflicted on them by the 

 too fervid zeal of a distinguished amateur, became once more the 

 objects of a renewed worship, as soon as her freedom had rendered 

 Greece accessible to all, and an enlightened go\-erument, aided in 

 its efl^oits by an archieological society, had restored them to liglit. 



Among these monuments there are many which cannot fail to 

 excite interest in the most indolent imagination. They are those 

 %vhich bring us back to times which we are accustomed to see 

 through the prism of poetry, and which disclose to us at a period 

 antecedent to history, a powerful civilisation — which we find indeed 

 in the songs of Homer, but which we are rather disposed to look 

 upon as an effort of the sublime imagination of that great genius 

 of heroic time. 



Before the emancipation of Greece, the traveller, gazing in 

 wonder on the gigantic walls of Tyrinth and Mycense, was inclined 

 to ask if their construction was not rightly attributed by fable to 

 superhuman workmen; and, in order to complete the first page of 

 Hellenic ethnography, illustrated by existing monuments, he was 

 oldiged to have recourse to tlie Tyrrhenian towns of Italy. 



But the country of Agamemnon, now more easily traversed, and 

 more carefully explored, is found to be covered with a great num- 

 ber of edifices belonging to the time of the Anaktes. Captain 

 Soitoux — one of the most indefatigable members of the French 

 commission, which has rendered so great a service to science by 

 its excellent map of Greece — saw in the wild ravines of Acar- 

 nania more than tliirty foundations of towns, of Cyclopean con- 

 struction. In Arcadia — the dwelling place of the Pelasgians, who 

 pretended to have seen the creation of the moon, and who at least 

 preceded the Hellenic race — polygonical walls are discovered every 

 day; and in a valley unknown to travellers between tlie lake Stym- 

 phalus and the Mount Traehys of Orcbomenus, I had myself the 

 happiness, two years ago, of discovering at the very spot where 

 Pausanias (viii. 23) places it, the town of Halia, long sought for, 

 and not as yet perceived by any of my predecessors. Tliis ruin 

 presents one of the most imposing examples of Pelasgie architec- 



ture, and at least two-thirds of it are in a state of rare preserva- 

 tion. Its form is that of a triangle, whose base lies along the foot 

 of the mountain, and whose two sides rise up on its flank. The 

 latter only are standing, and they attain often a height of 16 ft., and 

 contain 37 square towers. A jiarallelogram traced on the summit 

 of the triangle, forms the acropolis of tlie fortress, whose walls 

 are composed of gigantic polygonical blocks, and the lintel of 

 whose doors consists of two inclined stones, which mutually support 

 each other. 



But in Argolis, the very seat of the power of the Atrides, the 

 discoveries have not been few. At the same time with Halia, I 

 saw in a little valley, separated from the Argolic plain by a rising 

 ground, and quite close to Mycena-, a square edifice till then un- 

 known, of the finest polygonical style, each side being 38 feet in 

 length, and rising in perfect ]u-eservation to the height of 10 feet, 

 where its coping still exists. The interior was divided into three 

 compartments, but the separations are almost entirely destroyed. 

 This monument is one of the most interesting that has yet been 

 discovered, as it discloses to us a particular branch of Homeric 

 architecture. It is difficult to believe that at so short a distance 

 from Mycense, an edifice belonging to the class of those which 

 excited so highly the admiration of the ancients, should remain 

 unnoticed by them; I am therefore tempted to suppose that this is 

 no other than the Tower of Polygnotus, as it was called, where 

 Aratus, on his way from Argos to Phlius, had a meeting with his 

 conspirators (Plut. Vit. Arat. 6 and 7). 



The famous Temple of Juno at Argos, the scene of the pious 

 exploit of Cleobis and Bion, was discovered after the deliverance 

 of Greece. Under the ruins of a new temple, which had been 

 built about the 90th Olympiad, and magnificently decorated by 

 Polycletus, is to be seen the gigantic foundation of the ancient 

 sanctuary, which vvas burned about that same period bj' the negli- 

 gence of the priestess Chrysis, and is now the only religious ruin, 

 authentically proved, belonging to an epoch anterior to historical 

 times. 



I was present at the excavations made at Tyrinth by the illus- 

 trious German antiquarian, Thiersch, and I witnessed the highly 

 interesting result which be obtained. On the western side of the 

 hill of the Cyclops, he discovered a range of bases of columns ; 

 and this fact, combined with the column already known in the 

 Treasury of the Atrides, and that of the basso-relievo of the 

 lions at Mycenae, tend to modify the ideas held until now on Pelasgie 

 architecture, and to prove that tlie principle of the columns — of a 

 primitive form, undoubtedly, but containing the germ of the 

 diverse forms developed later by the Dorians and lonians — was, if 

 not an indispensable part, at least an ornament frequently employed 

 in the buildings of Homeric times. Another discovery of the 

 highest importance to the architecture and ethnological history of 

 that remote period has just been made in the south of Euboea, 

 Walpole had already seen and described (Travels vol. i.) on the 

 summit of Mount Ocha, an edifice of a peculiar form and of an 

 archaic style. Its walls are composed of very large parallelogi-amical 

 blocks, of unequal dimensions; and its roof consists of several 

 layers of stones, which advance on each side towards the centre, 

 jutting out considerably the one beyond the other, instead of 

 forming a smooth surface as in the Treasury at Mycenie. But 

 from this specimen of architecture, curious as it was from its 

 differing from the usual forms of ancient art, no conclusion could 

 be drawn to further our knowledge of that art, because it only 

 furnished one isolated example But at Styra, the town famous 

 for its quarries, situated at the northern foot of the same mountain, 

 the discovery was made a few years ago, of three buildings of the 

 same nature, one of which is peculiar for its roof being circular. 

 On another peak of Mount Ocha, I myself visited, only last sum- 

 mer, several edifices, the evident remains of a verv ancient town, 

 suspended on the brink of an abyss equally inaccessible by sea or 

 by land, and known only to the shepherds of those wild regions, 

 who give it the name of Archampolis, or ancient town. These 

 buildings are constructed on the same architectural principles; and 

 I have heard another position described not far from the Ca^o 

 d'Oro, as the Venetians called the Capharea, whei-e more such 

 ruins exist. It is very remarkable that all these constructions, 

 which, though belonging to the general system of Pelasgie archi- 

 tecture, differ sufficiently from it to contribute a class apart, are 

 all found grouped in so considerable a number on one point of 

 Greece; and this circumstance leads one to presume, that this style 

 belongs properly to some tribe, which, having its principal seat in 

 the deep valleys of the Ocha, emanated, like all those which occu- 

 pied in heroic times the soil of Greece, from the common stock of 

 the Pelasgians, but which had a character sufficiently distinct from 



39 



