ARCHITECTURE. 



preserve them unimpaired by the hand of 

 ignorant barbarism, so peculiar to Mussel- 

 men and Frenchmen : for which his zeal 

 and judgment, in literally robbing a 

 church, has received the warmest ac- 

 knowledgments of the British artists, who 

 still suffer him to keep an Italian merce- 

 nary in Greece, destroying and pilfering 

 what is termed the " Elgin Marbles." 



Such inconsiderate love of the arts, con- 

 trasted with the laudable exertions of the 

 scientific Stuart, is truly disgusting. This 

 ingenious traveller was indefatigable in 

 drawing, measuring, and accurately de- 

 scribing these interesting works of anti- 

 quity, and devoted seven years in the ac- 

 complishment of a work that does honour 

 to the British arts, by transmitting to pos- 

 terity the genius and taste of the Greeks, 

 under the influence of Pericles and Ad- 

 rian ; in the perusal of whose pages we 

 may exclaim, " There was a time, when 

 Greece, when Athens existed : now nei- 

 ther is there an Athens in Greece, nor is 

 Greece itself any longer to be found." 

 And when we search for architecture, we 

 may find it buried in its own ruins. 



The Romans were humble copyers of 

 Greek Architecture in every thing but 

 its simplicity ; they laboured in compli- 

 cated forms, and dressed out the chaste 

 orders into unmeaning frivolities. Co- 

 lumns were coupled, and piled on co- 

 lumns, enormous basements were erected 

 on the tops of porticoes, crushing all be- 

 neath with the superincumbent weight, 

 plane surfaces were intersected with flut- 

 ed pilasters, and the intermediate space 

 filled up and enriched with tablets of 

 festoons, and perforated with stories of 

 small windows. 



The Romans acquired all their know- 

 ledge of the arts by the prowess of their 

 arms; and, not possessing any native taste, 

 acquired by the unremitting attempts of 

 rival artists, they could not be supposed 

 to select the most chaste features, but 

 eagerly seized upon the Corinthian, be- 

 ing the most sumptuous of the Greek 

 orders, and applied it in their public 

 buildings, almost to the total exclusion of 

 all others, inventing an order still more 

 rich and profuse, called the Composite, 

 which is compounded of the Corinthian 

 leaves, surmounted by the ionic Echinus 

 and Volutes. 



The edifices erected during the repub- 

 lican state of the country are known by 

 their simplicity and usefulness, while 

 those of the emperors are remarkable for 

 ornament. The emperor Adrian jour- 

 neyed over all his provinces, building- and 



restoring cities and public edifices. At 

 Athens he built the immense Temple of 

 Jupiter Olympus, repaired the gates of 

 the city, which by inscription he claimed 

 as his own. He built the aqueducts that 

 supplied the city of Corinth with water, 

 and the great wall across the Island of 

 Great Britain, from New-Castle to Carlisle, 



The emperor Augustus said he found 

 Rome composed of brick, but he had 

 changed it into marble. Among the 

 numerous edifices constructed during his 

 reign were, the Temple and Forum of 

 Mars the avenger; Jupiter Tonans in the 

 capital pantheon, dedicated to all the 

 gods ; and a temple to Minerva, compos- 

 ed entirely of brass ; and he brought the 

 Aqua Virginis to Rome through an aque- 

 duct 14 miles in length. 



Dioclesian reared the stately Corinthian 

 in the ancient city of Tedmor in the wil- 

 derness, built by Solomon, and called by 

 the Romans Palmyra. 



Throughout the Roman dominions the 

 Corinthian was the prevailing order. The 

 Ionic appears to have been the favourite 

 order in Asia Minor ; the Corinthian in 

 the colonies of Rome ; and the sober Do- 

 ric, every where the most ancient and 

 lasting of them all. 



At Palmyra and Bulbec their rectangu- 

 lar temples are very extraordinary in 

 point of extent ; and the superb style of 

 decoration to which their arts were carri- 

 ed the immense sie of the materials in 

 the temple atBalbec is perhaps greater 

 than any employed in Egypt. In the 

 quarry without the walls of the city lies 

 a stone 70 feet in length, and 14 feet 

 square, in the shape of aparallelopipedon, 

 containing 14,128 cubic feet, and weigh- 

 ing upwards of 1130 tons. 



Although the Romans can claim but 

 little merit of originality in what relates 

 to civil architecture, the modern world is 

 very much indebted to them for a very 

 important feature in the science of build- 

 ing : that is, the invention of the arch, 

 which was entirely unknown to the 

 Greeks previous to the Roman conquest. 

 The utility and grandeur of this impor- 

 tant invention is fully demonstrated in 

 the extensive vaults, domes, bridges, and 

 aqueducts, with ^hich their most superb 

 edifices were construcied and adorned, 

 the judicious arrangement of which never 

 fails to produce the most pleasing effects, 

 particularly when constructed on an ex- 

 tended span. 



The profuse introduction of arches in 

 the facades of edifices generally destroys 

 the effect of other features, composed of 



