412 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECTS JOURNAL. 



[December, 



serpents, with outstretched wings extending over the centre intercoUimnia- 

 tion of the facade, and seemingly a being of another world. Admitted be- 

 neath this porch, the minds of the worshippers are prepared for the gloomy 

 inner penetraHa, where every object was mysterious and emblematic. Nu- 

 merous doorways closed by curtains succeeded each other, and led from 

 vestibule to vestibule, which hindered the eye from penetrating with sacri- 

 legious gaze into the inmost sanctuary, all access to it being forbidden to the 

 multitude. To these vestibules the light of day was denied, and the mind 

 was subdued by the gloom of the spot : for the attention was absorbed by 

 the contemplation of the sacred mysteries of the place, and by the effects 

 produced on the attention by the huge incongruous figures of granite — mon- 

 strous reflections of the gloomy minds of the religious inhabitants of the 

 sacred precinct, who sought to deify matter and the animal instincts. IIow 

 sad a contrast, that they, who by their mental powers could command such 

 mechanical forces and make such progress in art, should be so debased as to 

 worship the human form distorted by the addition of the head of a bird, of 

 a cat, of a ram, or some such brute object. 



We thus see the impressions which Egyptian architecture is calculated to 

 produce, reahzing the delinition of beauty given by Aristotle, who says that 

 it consists in magnitude and order. — To yap KaAof fv fieyeBei nat Ta^ei (n. 

 Poet. p. 2, 5 i- One of the temples of Thebes exceeded 800 ft. in length 

 by nearly 300 in breadth exclusive of the avenues which led to it. This 

 vastness of extent in the plan; — gigantic grandeur in the ponderous 

 masses; — colossal proportions in the details;— a rapid succession of similar 

 objects ; — the brilliancy of the gold, purple, scarlet, azure, green, and every 

 splendid colour that shone upon the surfaces of the stone ; — liable as all this 

 may be to the charge of monotony, yet a series of lively impressions must 

 have been extorted by the grandeur, the pomp, and profusion, which these 

 imposing edifices offer to the bewildered attention. * * 



Who would brave the sandy wastes of Syria, unless impelled by a glowing 

 love for that sacred volume which records the history of the favoured race to 

 whom were confided the oracles of divine truth, were it not to visit the De- 

 capolis still profuse with architectural remains, almost unexplored, certainly 

 unillustrated. Would the traveller quit the fertile and sublime valley of 

 Baalbec, whither comparative ease and comfort have hitherto accompanied 

 him. Would he plunge into the dangerous track of ancient commerce, beset 

 with hordes of .A-rab robbers, deprived of every convenience and means of 

 subsistence, hut that which he carries with him, were not his privations, his 

 anxieties and his perils to be rewarded by the sight of that which was once 

 Tadmor of the desert, the Palmyra of Zenobia and Longinus. These vast 

 piles of ruins seem the works of those days when " Giants were on the 

 earth " rather than the production of a race like ourselves. Temples en- 

 closed in courts seven or eight hundred feet square, surrounded by circum- 

 ambient porticos of colossal dimensions — now inhabited by a score or two 

 of wretched families in their mud cottages — avenues of columns, miles in 

 length — a profusion of triumphal arches, lofty towers and tombs, and marble 

 beams in single blocks of 70 feet in length attest the mechanical skill, if 

 not the pure taste of its ancient merchants — for it was a race of merchants 

 who dwelt in this emporium of the commercial traffic from the East, at that 

 time forming the hahing place for the caravans, which poured forth the 

 riches, the refinements and the productions of India to gratify the craving 

 appetite for variety and luxury of the pampered nations of Europe. 



But let us accompany the traveller in his circuit of these shores and exa- 

 mine with him the coast of Caramania, and we shall find it abounding in a 

 profusion of architectural embellishments. But as soon as he reaches 

 Gnidus, sacred to the queen of love, monuments of the refined taste of the 

 most refined periods again offer themselves, and the ruins of temples, pro- 

 pylea, theatres and in fact every species of edifice offer themselves to notice 

 in Halicarnassus, Miletus, Priene, and Magnesia and the numberless cities 

 which peopled each side of the Micander, the Nile of Asia Minor. Still 

 further north, Teos and Smyrna, Pergamus and Sardis show how truly ar- 

 chitecture flourished under the fostering generous splendour of the great 

 Alexander and his successors. 



But the traveller, whose mind is imbued with all those associations con- 

 nected with the study of the literature of Greece, visits Athens as the zealot 

 does the shrine of his saint. When Europe was roused from barbarism her 

 first thought was directed to Athens — " What is become of .\thens ?" was 

 the universal cry, " and when it was known that her ruins still existed, the 

 learned and ingenious tlocked thither as if they had discovered the lost 

 ashes of a parent." (Chateaubriand : Voyages.) When the traveller treads 

 the soil, which had been for so many centuries polluted by the presence of 

 the Moslem, all his feelings arise witli double force. He thinks that he now 

 breathes the same pure air, fixes his glance upon the same enchanting 

 scenes, contemplates the same noble monuments, as once did Pericles, 

 Socrates, Demosthenes, Xenophon, Thucydides, Sophocles, and Plato. Pos- 

 sessed however as are his feelings with such thoughts, his attention is more 

 than divided by these majestic ruins, which throw around the spot an air of 

 sanctity. Here Phidias has still his chefs-d'a?uvre, here the genius of Ictinus 

 St. 11 reigns preeminent, and the space encircled by the walls of the Athenian 

 Acropolis maybe termed the if pof of architecture, containing temples, altars, 

 statues, groups, trophies, chapels — the spoils of their enemies and the 

 plunder of their allies and friends. 



See how much .\thens gains upon the affections of every people, 

 of every age, by her architectural ruins. Not a traveller visits Greece 

 whose chief purpose is not centred in the acropolis of Minerva. How dif- 



ferent from this the renown derived from arms alone. " While the name of 

 .Athens is in every mouth," exclaims Chateaubriand, " Sparta is totally for- 

 gotten. Sparta in arms the rival of Athens — the cradle of warriors— the 

 school of hardihood and all the sterner virtues of humaiiifv. But she dis- 

 dained the accessories of our art, and not our art only, but of everv other, 

 for she never offered the smallest incense in the temple of geniusj nor on 

 the altar of the arts. !u fact, to use the words of one of Sparta's warmest 

 panegyrists, the Lacedemor.ians drove away from her walls literature, 

 science and the arts, and now not a single monument arrests the steps of the 

 traveller. Civilization is now as far distant from the Eurotas as in former 

 times, and he hurries from tlie unfriendly spot having cast a rapid glance 

 upon a plain, where nothing records the existence of former times, and a 

 mound at best reminds one, that here has been a city. Even the haughty 

 spirit of the Romans bowed before the mighty influence of the superiority 

 of Athens in art, science, and literature. When Greece was conquered by 

 Rome, Sparta became a mere province, but Athens although depressed, a 

 slave and helpless, without her Pericles, her Phidias, her Ictinus, her Demos- 

 thenes, her Sophocles, still asserted her mental superiority, and held in 

 slavery the proud spirits of Rome her conqueror. 



" Grxcia capta fernm victorem cepit, ct artes 

 Intulit agresli Latio." — Horace Kpist. lib. 2, cp. 1. 



What trial can equal this of the fine arts. ! could the Spartans of old 

 have thus looked into futurity, and they would have emulated that bright 

 love of art to which ancient and modern Athens now owes so much of her 

 perennial glory — for as the refined and accurate Barthelemy has justly and 

 eloquently observed, " the history of the monuments of this people is the 

 history of their exploits, their gratitude and their religion." 



But perhaps the attention is wearied by dwelling so long on this portion 

 of the subject, and yet it is impossible to omit all reference to Rome as she 

 is. It is there that a willing homage is yielded to the architecture of ancient 

 periods. The soil which time has accumulated upon her ancient pavements 

 is now being cleared away. Each excavation brings to light some precious 

 fragment, some interesting object connecting antiquity and modern times. 

 Her fora, her temples and circuses ; her triumphal arches and lofty sculp- 

 tured columns ; her aqueducts and baths; her palaces and amphitheatres are 

 now minutely investigated by the antiquary, the scholar, and the artist. 

 Hundreds flock annually, less to witness her pomp of religious worship than 

 to imbibe, at the very fountain head, a true love for achitecture and a re- 

 fined taste to appreciate all the excellencies with which the eternal city 

 abounds. 



Nor shall Pompeii be altogether unnoticed — hid for centuries from the 

 view of man — her site questioned and her very existence almost doubted as 

 the fable of historians, the ashes are now removed from the tomb in which 

 she had lain for above 15 centuries, and the traveller fancies as his footsteps 

 are echoed through the tenantless fabrics, that the next moment he will see 

 her ancient citizens emerge from the courts of her dwellings, from the shops 

 of her insulae, or from the baths, which still preserve traces of almost recent 

 occupation. It seems as though it were but yesterday that her thousands 

 flocked to the fora, temples, and theatres; and the spot brings us in almost 

 immediate contact with the inhabitants of the olden times. * * 



Such then are the emotions inspired by the ruins of the ancient monu- 

 ments of architecture, and such the claims she has upon the gratitude of 

 ancient and modern times, as forming one of the main links, that unites us 

 with those, who have gone before us. Languages become obsolete, but the 

 language of architecture endures for ever. The pages of history may be lost 

 or destroyed, but who can for a moment admit the thought that time can 

 obliterate, although he may deface her monuments. The pyramids and 

 temples of Egypt are imperishable. The habits, the customs, the re- 

 ligion, the wants, the luxuries of man change with each century and with 

 each clime, but for all and every new necessity and fresh desire architecture 

 amply provides. 



But in thus rendering the homage due to ancient art it were unjust to 

 pass without notice those sublime edifices due to the genius of our fathers. 

 It is now unnecessary to enter upon the question, whether the first ideas 

 of Gothic architecture were the result of a casual combination of lines or a 

 felicitous adaptation of form derived immediately from nature. But graceful 

 proportion, solemnity of efi'ect, variety of plan, playfulness of outline and 

 the profoundest elements of knowledge of construction, place these edifices 

 on a par with any of ancient times. Less pure in conception and detail, 

 they excel in extent of plan and disposition, and yield not in the mysterious 

 effect produced on the feelings of the worshipper. The sculptured presence 

 of the frowning Jove or the chryselephantine statue of Minerva were neces- 

 sary to awe the Heathen into devotion. But the presence of the godhead 

 appears, not materially but spiritually, to pervade the whole atmosphere of 

 one of our Gothic cathedrals. 



This style, which has aptly been termed Christian architecture, has produced 

 edifices of all descriptions, not only ecclesiastical but civil, evincing great 

 variety and originality; so numerous that we cannot but feel surprised at 

 the public spirit, the devotion and liberality, which could contribute the 

 means recpiisite for such vast buildings, and at the skill that could, with a 

 hardihood verging on infatuation, so daringly sport with danger, and yet in- 

 spire confidence in the wildest flights of Gothic fancy. 



