12 Architecture in the United States. 



objects rather to be reverenced than rivalled. The Doric order was 

 at first universally employed, and nearly all the ancient monuments 

 now remaining in that country are of this. The Ionic is a beautiful 

 order, but its introduction seems to have marked the first downward 

 step in Grecian taste, which had perhaps grown careless from success, 

 perhaps was weary of the hard labor necessary for these pure produc- 

 tions; and which at all events, seems to have lost confidence in itself : 

 ornament was called in to act on the senses, and from this time may 

 be dated the retrograde progress of the art. I shall say more of this 

 hereafter. The Ionic, however, provided ornament with a sparing 

 hand ; but the course once begun, they could not be expected to stop 

 here, and the Corinthian with its gay and rich adornings was next 

 introduced. There are however few monuments of this order in 

 Greece : before it could fairly establish itself, the country was brought 

 under the Roman power, and Grecian artists began to carry their 

 skill to a more profitable market in Italy. 



The Romans, up to this time, had been too much engaged in war 

 to give any great attention to building, and both private dwellings and 

 temples were of the rudest kind. Marcellus made some attempts at 

 improving their taste, but it was not till after the close of the My- 

 thridatic war that architecture received any encouragement. Sylla, 

 in his progress through Greece, was struck with its beautiful temples 

 and porticos ; his soldiers and officers shared his admiration ; an im- 

 pulse was given to the art at Rome, 'and in a short time Italy was 

 covered with structures whose richness and splendor surpassed every 

 thing that had yet been any where seen. Every traveller, however, 

 who has an opportunity of comparing the remains of these edifices with 

 those in Greece, is struck with the great inferiority of the Roman 

 taste. " To a person who has seen the ruins of Rome," writes Dr. 

 Clarke, " the first suggestion made by a sight of the buildings in the 

 Acropolis, is that of the infinite superiority of the Athenian architec- 

 ture." " Accustomed as we were," says Stuart, in speaking of the 

 Parthenon, " to the ancient and modern magnificence of Rome, and by 

 what we had heard and read, impressed with an advantageous opin- 

 ion of what we were come to see, we found the image our fancy had 

 preconceived, greatly inferior to the real object." The causes of 

 this deterioration will be considered in their proper place : at present 

 we will content ourselves with following the progress of the art. 

 Rome was then in the height of its power. The most distant na- 

 tions looked to it for laws, and took from it their character in the arts 



