MERGE TO GYRENE. 
44.5 
the forms, of buildings, were adopted in imitation of early custom ; 
and this circumstance will alone sufficiently account for the uni- 
formity, in point of colour, of one building with another ; and may 
be considered as a reason why fancy or caprice were not allowed, 
in these instances, to have their usual weight among a people 
who were strenuously attached to the practices and customs of 
their ancestors. “In imitation of these early inventions, and of 
works executed in timber,” (says Vitruvius, in the words of Mr. 
Wilkins, his English translator,) “ the ancients, in constructing 
their edifices of stone or marble, adopted the forms which were 
there observed to exist. It was a general practice among the 
artificers of former times to lay beams transversely upon the 
walls; the intervals between them were then closed, and the 
whole surmounted with coronm and fastigia of pleasing forms, 
executed in wood. The projecting parts were afterwards cut 
away, so that the ends of the beams and the walls were in the 
same plane ; but the sections presenting a rude appearance, tablets, 
formed like the triglyphs of more modern buildings, and covered 
with blue wax, were affixed to them, by which expedient the ends, 
which before offended the eye, now produced a pleasing effect. 
Thus the ancient disposition of the beams supporting the roof 
is the original to which we may attribute the introduction of 
triglyphs into Doric buildings.” (Wilkins’s Vitruvius, vol. i. p. 
63 , 4 .) 
Whatever may be the truth of these remarks of Vitruvius respect- 
ing the origin of the triglyph, it is singular that there should be so 
