402 



Very obvious purpose : it might suit some few 

 specimens of the gothic style, but is totally inap- 

 plicable to any thing that at all deserves the name 

 of Grecian architecture. 



This is what occurred to me on my own ideas : 

 I now am enabled to speak more fully and parti- 

 cularly on the subject ; and from the following 

 account, which I am persuaded may be entirely 

 depended upon, the reader will judge whether the 

 sculpture, though of the richest kind, be not even 

 less, instead of more in quantity, than is usual in 

 similar buildings. The capitals of the columns 

 (a very essential feature) are peculiarly ornamented 

 with large flowers of the lotus, but they are of 

 less height, and so likewise is the entablature, 

 than is common in the Corinthian order. The 

 rest of the sculpture, with the exception of the 

 flowers, &c. in the soffit between the columns 

 and the circular cell, is confined to the frize, 

 which is superbly adorned with bulls' heads, pa- 

 .teras, and festoons of fruit and flowers : but the 

 mouldings of the cornice and the architrave, which 

 in most of the high finished Roman buildings are 

 richly carved with beads, echini, foliage, &c. in 

 tins are plain, without any enrichment whatever ; 

 and this plainness, as my judicious informer ob- 

 serves, admirably sets off the richness of the frize. 

 What very different ideas the builder of the tem- 

 ple seems to have had, from those imputed to 

 him by Mr. Knight I when, instead of making it 

 all over rough with sculpture, he has left those 



