The frieze, architrave, plinths of the columns, and the archivolt, are totally plain, which afford an agreeable relief to the rustic-work of the other parts of the arch. Some have attributed this design to Palladio (who had been dead twenty-eight years before its erection), and others to Scamozzi; and if we leave out of the question the objections above mentioned, it would certainly do no dishonour to either.

Several villas without the walls of the city, beside those we find in Palladio's works, are still conjectured to be from his designs; but as there is no authentic account of them, the name of the architect must ever remain in doubt. At all events, if they were not immediately by him, they may fairly be said to have proceeded in an indirect manner from his genius and comprehension. Nor does it argue any want of talents in an artist, when, with a nicely discriminating mind, he selects the best ideas from renowned men who have preceded him, and converts them to his own practical use and advantage. All the invention that can possibly take place in architecture, amounts to little more than a few fanciful. alterations in old-established forms and confirmed

methods. Every modern portico in Europe most probably derived its origin from that of the Pantheon; thus, whether four, six, or more columns be employed to support an entablature and a pediment, it makes scarcely any difference in the general figure; and if an artist has acquired the mere knowledge of the various orders of architecture, there can surely be no great invention in applying either the one or the other. He who aims at absolute novelty ought to be a heaven-born genius; for if he should not associate with it an uncommon degree of excellence, he will have the mortification to experience that his works have only excited the ridicule and contempt of the judicious. Painting and sculpture, being more intimately connected with the animal world, admit of a much greater fertility of invention, in regard to dispo sition, than an art which has only to do with the application of dead matter: yet even in regard to the first of these, it has been observed, that when Raphael was at the head of his profession, so far was he from aiming at what the vulgar call novelty, that he often composed a whole picture from an individual model. The change of attitudes, opposition in form, and difference of character and expression, were certainly dictated by his own prolific mind and feelings; at the same time they were only so many accidental alterations from a single figure, under the impulses of opposite passions. By this restraint of judgment and strict adherence to the truth of nature, he has left behind him compositions, rather than inventions, that have immortalised his name, and will as long as

they last be preferred by artists of sterling sense and unsophisticated ideas, as examples infinitely more deserving their study and imitation than all the wild new-fangled and licentious productions which proceed from a diseased and vehement thirst of creating, without end, new objects and new forms. And notwithstanding in the gratification of such a passion nature becomes outraged, all true drawing set at defiance, and the laws of order subverted, yet, painful to reflect! the unthinking multitude are ever prone to regard these spurious and distorted works, because they are unlike every thing else, as the spotless and legitimate offspring of a sublime, intrinsic, and unparagoned genius. When spurning at novelty, I do not mean that which only appears so to those whose profession, habits, and situation in life, have never led them in the slightest degree to the study of the liberal arts; and which, in reality, is so far from being the description of novelty I have alluded to, that it is nothing less than an unexpected and joyful revival of ancient objects and primeval principles, after having been immured for ages in the womb of oblivion unheeded by man, but at length, either owing to extraordinary sagacity, abstracted study, or foreign researches, they have been accidentally discovered, and reanimated, as it were, into a new and modern existence from the mouldering sepulchre of antiquity, in full possession of all those excellent properties and attributes which stamped them with inestimable value in the day of their origin, and which can never admit of vicissitude or change, either from

caprice or other motives, without material detriment to that specific system of which they may be said to form essential and concomitant parts.

Further, we are told that the Venus de' Medici is only a compound of the most beautiful parts and members separately selected from a variety of the most beautiful women, for the purpose of uniting them together in a single statue, so as to produce a perfect whole; and therefore it is, that in this figure we have the satisfaction and pleasure of beholding such matchless form, elegance, and proportion, as were never assembled by nature in the person of any individual female whatever. The same method of selection for similar ends may very successfully be resorted to in the composition of architecture of every description, which would open a broad and sure avenue to fame, and operate as a much stronger evidence of the judgment and taste of the designer than could possibly be derived from a thousand flimsy, whimsical, and incoherent inventions, whose only merits consist in not being sanctioned by any approved model or admired archetype in any of the principles by which they are regulated. Thus Mr. Dallaway, in his Observations on English Architecture, informs us, that a French critic in Gothic architecture used to say, that if he had to compose a church on the best principles of that style of building, he would select the portal and western front of Rheims, the nave of Amiens, the choir of Beauvais, and the spires of Chartres; hoping, from a conjunction of so many excellences, to acquire universal approbation. From analogous

principles, had he been employed to design a church or temple in the Grecian style of architecture, so as to conform with the religious ideas of people on the continent, he might perhaps have adopted, with equal success and advantage, the plan of St. Genevieve at Paris, the nave and interior dome of St. Peter's at Rome, the outside of the cupola of St. Paul's, London, and the portico of the Pantheon of Agrippa; increasing or diminishing their several dimensions as might be found necessary for the harmony and consistency of the aggregate composition, but scrupulously adhering to the relative proportions of each of the distinct parts. But here let it be remembered, that there must be a perfect unity and concordance in the characters of the buildings from which the selection is made, whether they be of the Gothic, Grecian, or any other, class of architecture.

The house in which Palladio is said to have resided is still remaining: it is in front about twenty-five feet in length, and three stories in height. In the centre of the lower story are two Ionic columns bearing an entablature; immediately above them are two Corinthian pilasters with their entablature; over them are two small square windows, and then the building finishes with a cornice. Between the Ionic columns below is a handsome archway, on each side of which is a doorway; and above them, in the first story, are windows to light the apartments. What is very extraordinary in this elevation is, that both the Ionic and Corinthian orders have the Tuscan base; which, as I have before observed, is the case with