1842.] 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



147 



that appreciated ? These are associations even more potent than 

 any— as Mr. Alison might say — of lines and angles with strength and 

 utility, and of curves and enrichments with elegance and grace. 



In the moving and breathing figures of the procession in the Par- 

 thenon, and in the rich adornnients of the Choragic monument, we are 

 reminded of the " earth-born" people, who hurled back the invaders 

 from the fields of Marathon and Platses, and who hailed the works of 

 .ffischykis and Sophocles victorious in the theatre. Not that the 

 intrinsic beauties of Grecian architecture are non-existent or unworthy 

 of notice, but rather, that great as they are, they are subdued by the 

 larger influence of intellectual association. The native beauty is 

 beheld, in the perfect adaptation to the two ends of elegance and 

 strength, so that the proportion, which exhibits the greatest degree of 

 elegance, is precisely that which also resulted from the arrangementraost 

 conducive to the stability of the work. By placing the columns at 

 short intervals, an intricate and shadowy effect was produced, at the 

 same time that the stones of the architrave were just sufficient to 

 support the weight of the frieze and cornice above. Further to lessen 

 the bearing of these stones, the upper part of the column was ex- 

 tended, and became the capital. To improve the outline of the mass, 

 and to throw off the water, the sides of the roof were inclined from 

 the centre, and were formed in parallel lines down to the projecting 

 cornice. 



The theory to which we have adverted was first broached by 

 Lebrun (Theorie de V Architecture Grccqm et Romaine), and has 

 been proved by Mr. Gvvilt to be by no means fanciful. In five examples 

 of celebrated edifices, "the superficies of the columns, cut through 

 their axes vertically by a plane parallel to the front of the building, 

 are compared with the area of the entablature and pediment of each 

 respectively. The weights of each being as the cubes of the square 

 roofs of the areas, these areas will equally represent the supports and 

 ■weights in either of the terms. 



In the Parthenon, the supports are to 

 the weights as ld4G : 1843 or 1 : M9 



But if the steps be reckoned, the ratio 

 will be as 2183 : 1843 or 1 : 0-84 



In the Doric Portico, the supports are 

 to the weights as 4070 : 3990 or 1 : 0-9S 



Inthe Pseudo-dipteral templeat Poes- 

 tum, the supports are to the weights as 1090 : 1103 or 1 : I'Ol 



In the temple of Erectheus, as . . 2G40 : 2800 or 1 : 1-07 



In the Pantheon at Rome, as . . 156G : 1723 or 1 : 1-10. " 

 (GwUCh Chambers' Civil Architecture, note, page 160.^ 



Thus we see the impropriety of our monumental columns, which, 

 designed for a proportionate weight of entablature, sustain nothing 

 but a vase or a statue in most sweet communion with larks and crows ; 

 which have not even a decorated shaft, to render less striking in each, 

 its resemblance in form, and its contradiction in end, to a column from 

 a Roman portico. The Roman triumphal columns were not fac- 

 similes from one temple or from another ; they were not even of any 

 particular order, and their shafts were made the means of exhibiting 

 to posterity a history of the events they were erected to commemorate. 

 Amid the beautiful decorations of the Trajan and Antonine pillars, we 

 forget the impropriety of an isolated column, and look upon them as 

 relics, handing down to us, through the stream of time, the most vivid 

 picture of Roman greatness. 



Deeply impressed as we are with the love of Athenian architecture, 

 for its intrinsic beauties, and for the charms with which it is sur- 

 rounded by association ; removed from aland where sunset gilds "with 

 one unclouded blaze of living light," "Egina's rock and Idra's isle;" 

 rather using a portico to shelter from the elements, than to retire from 

 tlie heat of the sun; it is impossible, that our attenuated copies of the 

 fronts of Grecian temples, can strike us with other feelings than those 

 of disappointment and regret. We have no peristyles hung with gar- 

 lands and crowded with admiring votaries; our imitation is all but 

 limited to an entrance portico, attached to the middle of a building, 

 wholly different in character, and with which it ought to have no 



connexion whatever. Our buildings stand in crowded streets, and are 

 splashed with their mud, instead of crovi-ning the "marbled steep" of 

 a promontory, or the summit of an Acropolis. Stories of sashed 

 windows riddle the frout, and pots and pipes of every imaginable 

 contortion rise from the roof. No sculpture decorates the metopes 

 or the pediment ; no colours glitter in the sun. The wall at the back 

 of the columns seldom recedes, as in the temple of Theseus, and in 

 that on the Ilyssus, neither are there internal columns to produce 

 depth or intricacy. The National Gallery is one of the few buildings 

 of modern times in which these points are attended to, and it does 

 not, therefore, deserve all the censure it has received. In the Royal 

 Institution at Manchester, Mr. Barry has not omitted these all-impor- 

 tant features. The greatest fault of the National Gallery is in not 

 placing its portico upon a bold fhglit of steps, but, instead, upon a 

 podium, a thing never done by the Greeks, and never by the Romans in 

 the main front. We see Grecian buildings — the main lines of which 

 are horizontal — piled one above another to form steeples, whose lines 

 oucht to be perpendicular. The Gothic is the only style, capable of 

 modern application, in which the diminishing steeple can with perfect 

 propriety be employed; for however beautiful an outline at a distance 

 may be, a near inspection of details, formed by many horizontal lines, 

 seldom fails to displease. It must, however, be granted, that some of 

 the steeples of Wren are so extremely beautiful in their outline, that 

 we are compelled to pass over their other faults. The least beautiful 

 examples of Athenian buildings are copied with even more fidelity 

 than the temples, the Propylaea, and the monument of Lysicrates; 

 while the victor's wreaths from the Choragic monument of Thrasyllus 

 are employed on the fronts of buildings with which they have no 

 character in common. 



But whilst we are making all these objections to the modern imita- 

 tion of Grecian architecture, it may well be asked— Ought the sublime 

 structures of Greece, and the labours of Revett and Stuart, to have no 

 influence on our style ? Undoubtedly they ought. But whilst we have 

 at our disposal the funds of individuals instead of states, and whilst 

 our modern wants require conveniences, which would at once, if intro- 

 duced, destroy the character and synchronism of a Grecian building, 

 let us not attempt that, which the first step will show is at war with 

 the soundest principle of architectural taste, viz. that all decoration 

 should have its origin in, or show the semblance of, utility. While 

 the Grecian style is quite unfitted, the Italian style is well fitted, to 

 the wants of our climate and manners. It is capable of every varia- 

 tion; it may be used without orders, or may be combined with, and 

 influenced by, the Grecian, without any violent anachronism being 

 apparent. In the style of the Italian palaces, where the orders do not 

 form an important feature in the front, we possess fine examples in 

 the Reform Club House, and in the Manchester Athenaum, both by 

 Mr. Barry. So much has this beautiful style given place to the bad 

 imitation of another unsuited to our wants, that we might suppose our 

 modern architects deemed the presence of a gigantic order, essential 

 to the existence of beauty in a building. Who must not confess, that 

 the most beautiful buildings of Sanmicbele, of Vignola, of Palladio, 

 and, in our own country of Chambers, of Burlington, of Talman,* owe 

 an effect to their boldly projecting cornices, to their decorated doors 

 and windows, quite equal to that of the orders, which form so subdued 

 a feature in their fronts ? And are not these gazed on with equal 

 delight with the beautiful works of Wren, of Vanbrugh, of Gibbs, and 

 of Hawksmoor, all of whom employed the orders on a large scale, but 

 who used them with more judgment than we have in later times, with 

 all our knowledge of Grecian buildings. But, if the orders are essen- 

 tial, why not, with the classic feeling of the Germans, engraft upon 

 the Grecian a style, which shall be suited to our wants, and yet shall 

 be Greek in feeling and in character— in which we shall recognize no 

 indifferent copies of orders and porticos, showing by contrast the 

 presence of parts necessitated by our climate— in which the spirit of 

 a Grecian architect shall appear to pervade the whole, rather than 

 that the orders should appear the work of an artist, and the doors and 



The talented architect of Chatsworth House, Derbyshire 



