BENGAZI. 
385 
diminish either the simplicity, the grandeur, or the elegance of the 
whole. When the attention is turned from the general mass to the 
subdivisions, every portion, however small, is observed to have a 
meaning, in both styles of architecture here alluded to ; and there is 
seldom any part of the ornament, either in Egyptian or in Gothic 
examples, which we wish to have removed from its place. In the 
capitals and shafts of Egyptian columns, (which are usually com- 
posed of different parts of the lotus, the leaves, the stalks, the 
open flower, or the bud, so combined and arranged as not to 
interfere with the simple and, generally, graceful outhne of the 
whole,) the detail gives a lightness to the general mass which 
tends to improve its effect ; and the simplicity of the general 
form exhibits the decoration to advantage: but in the later pro- 
ductions of Greece and Kome, a profusion of unmeaning orna- 
ment is employed, which rather gives an air of heaviness to the 
detail, than any appearance of lightness to the mass. The general 
forms are not, in fact, sufficiently important of themselves to create a 
favourable impression ; and it w ill usually be found difficult, if not 
impossible, to make amends for this fault by decoration. We do not 
mean to assert that there are no examples of good taste at Ptole- 
meta ; but it appears to us that by far the greater part of the build- 
ings now remaining have been constructed since the place became a 
Roman colony ; and that there are none to which a higher antiquity 
may be safely assigned (with the exception of some of the tombs) 
than the period at which the country was occupied by the Ptolemies. 
3D 
