bars of a light cage, all give to the houses the effect of pavilions. Even the palaces, which are of vast extent * and of corresponding magnificence, cannot be said to have varied essentially in design from the primitive model. The courts of the palace at Pekin are intersected by canals spanned by marble bridges; the walls are raised on marble platforms, and the gateway adorned with marble columns decorated with dragons; the courts contain sculptured lions seven or eight feet in height; yet the roof rests on wooden columns, and only four feet in height of the encompassing wall is of brick-the upper portion being wholly of bamboo covered with transparent paper.†

The various styles hitherto commemorated, though worthy of note in connection with the history of architecture, have had little bearing on its development as a fine art. It is in the third class, although its origin be equally rude, that we find the germ of that architecture which is recognized as the type of artistic perfection. The Gothic temple, with its pointed archways, its long-drawn aisles, and its spires pointing heavenward, may stand unrivalled for sublimity; Rome, with its vast domes and triumphal arches, may exceed all cities in grandeur; but when beauty, perfect and unalloyed, is mentioned, the mind of the artist instinctively reverts to Athens. It may be that the log sides of the hut suggested the column, the beam and sloping rafters the pediment, and the rough ends of the joists the triglyph, while the frieze and the metopa were mere open spaces, not until a later period closed in for protection against the weather. These rude beginnings gave rise to the noblest

* The palace at Pekin occupies an area of 3,600 feet by 3,000, exclusive of outer courts.-Gwilt, p. 45.

+ Cousin, De Génie de l'Architecture, p. 26.

In the Iphigenia in Tauris, Pylades advises Orestes to introduce himself into the temple by means of one of the metopæ.

Ορα δε γ' εισω τριγλυφων οποί κενον

Δεμας καθείναι.

Ιφιγενεια εν Ταυρις, 118.

TR.-See the empty space between the triglyphs, where the body

can enter.

style of architecture that the mind of man has conceived, and for whose adornment was invented a class of sculpture which still remains unsurpassed.

The Grecian cities are the earliest of whose architecture we can form an idea as a whole. The temples and pyramids of Egypt arise among undistinguishable masses of ruins; the remains of Nineveh and Babylon are dug out of heaps of superincumbent earth. In Athens, on the contrary, the tem ples may be in a ruinous condition, but the ground-plan of the ancient city remains, and there are sufficient indicia to enable us in imagination to reconstruct the city of Pericles. The traveller, ascending the western slope of the Acropolis, still sees the portico of the Propylæum built of Pentelican marble with its six Doric columns thirty feet in height, its Ionic corridor, and its five doorways where once were the great doors of bronze; the Parthenon, rising above all the surrounding buildings elevated on a platform; and the Erechtheum with its portico of statues of Athenian virgins. Descending he passes by the Cave of Aglauros, the Grotto of Pan, the Fountain of Clepsydra, and the Temple of the Winds, to where the Theseum, standing on an isolated platform, overtops the surrounding structures. Through the Pnyx and the Agora, once filled with statues and altars and temples, through the Royal Colonnades and the Painted Porch, and through the Gate (so called) of Hadrian, he comes out on the great Theatre of Athens, where were performed the tragedies of Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides; thence through the street of the Tripods, so-called from the row of temples to Bacchus which lines it,* he emerges on the Odeon and thence proceeds to the vast and elevated platform where stands the Temple of the Olympian Jupiter, one of the seven wonders of the world. The Corinthian columns of Pentelican marble which decorated its front are still standing, but the sculptured pediment which they supported is gone.†

* These temples bore on their summits tripods dedicated to Dionysus or Bacchus, the patron deity of the drama.-Wordsworth, p. 215.

† An admirable description of Athens in the days of Pericles is given by Dr. Wordsworth in his work on Greece, pp. 192–216.

It will be seen that the ancient Athenian dwelt in an atmosphere of art. His daily walks led him through streets lined with temples, whose every surface presented groups of sculpture, the works of the chief artists of that or any day. In whatever direction he turned his eyes, the Parthenon, the Erechtheum, the Theseum, or the Temple of the Olympian Jupiter, on their elevated platforms, rose conspicuously above the surrounding mass of marble. On either hand were groups which embodied the history or mythology of his country, or the principles of his religion. And all this art was in its way perfect. Even in the entasis or swelling of the column, and the carefully studied deviation of the ground-lines from the exact horizontal, the Grecian architect conferred a grace to which his modern imitators have vainly aspired. It is not, therefore, remarkable that the Athenian should have been, above all men of his time, intelligent, cultivated, and refined.

It should be remembered, however, that the beauties of Grecian architecture were designed strictly for external effect. The temple was not itself so much the place of worship as the shrine of the divinity to whom worship was rendered. For these reasons it stood on an elevation-the priest and the altar stood generally before it, and the worshippers assembled on the broad platform or on the steps by which it was ascended. Requiring no windows, the whole external surface presented one unbroken line of ornament. The columned portico, the sculptured metope, the tympanum adorned with what might be styled a picture in stone, were all addressed to the outside observer, and intended to enhance the veneration of the multitude. These considerations show the utter unsuitableness of the Grecian temple for modern purposes, and especially for Christian worship. A single glass window introduced into such a building destroys its symmetry, and jars on the beholder with a sense of unfitness. When windows take the place of metopæ, and fill the intervening space between every pilaster, the apparent solidity of the building is gone, and it appears tasteless and unmeaning. What shall we

* Another element of unsuitability lies in the fact that the Grecian temple was essentially a framework for sculpture. The sculptures of the

say, then, of the modern architects, who, by way, we suppose, of christianizing the style, have elevated spires from pointed pediments?

Of their domestic

This peculiarly external character of Greek art was pre-eminently illustrative of the nation. They were not a domestic people. Their enjoyment, their occupation, their daily life, were all for the outer world. life we have comparatively little record. Women took no part in the social intercourse; and, while the outdoor life of the Athenian is associated with the idea of intellect and refinement, his indoor life presents little beyond a picture of dissipation and self-indulgence.

It is a commonly received opinion that the Romans derived the most of their art, and especially their knowledge of architecture, from Greece; and that, while by the mixture of styles they vitiated the purity of its taste, the improved knowledge manifested by their great works, and especially by their arches, bridges, and cloace, was the result of their own discoveries. Researches in Etruria have, however, established the fact that, long before the Romans were familiar with Grecian art, long even before Romulus laid the foundation of his city, a people existed in Italy who had attained a degree of civilization to which in some respects that of Greece itself was secondary. Of these people no trace exists beyond their architectural remains; but these show that they were well acquainted with the higher principles of masonry, and were the true source whence the Romans derived their knowledge of architecture. Unlike the rude polygonal masses which form the walls of Mycena and Tiryns, the walls of the Etruscan cities were built of rectangular blocks laid in courses and skilfully chiselled. The cities have disappeared, but traces of the walls remain. It was from the Etruscans that the Romans derived their knowledge of the arch, of

Greeks were intimately associated with their religion and their history. Grecian mythology is, however, unmeaning in modern architecture, and to furnish suitable ornaments modern architects are reduced to the trite and barren commonplaces of allegory.

The

which they were, if not the inventors, at least the earliest. people on whose buildings it distinctly appears. Of the arch the Grecians and the Egyptians were probably ignorant, for the vaulted roof of the treasury of Athens at Mycenae is merely a rude dome formed by converging horizontal courses of stone, and the arch at Thebes (the only genuine specimen found in Egypt, for that of Saccara is a simple lining of the rock), bears strong evidence of Roman workmanship. Etruscans, however, preserved the arch in perfection-witness the gate of Hercules at Volterra,† and the gates of the theatre of Ferrento at Viterbo. But their use of the arch was not confined to gateways. Bridges still exist spanning the rivers and ravines of Etruria, on which the stalactites formed indicate an antiquity far exceeding that of Rome, and traces of aqueducts and vaulted sewers, which must have in the first instance suggested the mighty works of the same character at Rome. In the neighborhood of their ancient cities are found traces of paved roads long anterior to the Via Appia; and they have left still more remarkable evidences of their advancement in the tunnels (cuniculi) with which they penetrated the solid rock, and the conduits (emissarii) with which they drained their overflowing lakes, || and diverted the courses. of their rivers.T

It is remarkable that, from the remains left by these people, we are enabled to form some idea of their cities. These suggestions are found in their necropoleis, or cities of the dead, which, unlike the sepulchral monuments of Greece and Rome, are, as in Egypt, hewn from the solid rocks. These necropoleis, from their uniform plan, were evidently constructed on the model of their living cities. Not only are the rocky tombs arranged in regular streets, but at intervals en

Mrs. H. Gray, p. 289.

* Gwilt, p. 34. + lb., p. 74. 8 The cloaca maxima is attributed by Pliny (xxxvi., 24) to Tarquinius Priscus, and by Livy (i., 38) to Tarquinius Superbus; both of whom were natives of Etruria.

Niebuhr, i., 132.

VOL. XXX.-NO. LIX.

Pliny, iii., 20.
2