great variety, from those of the temple of Jupiter Stator in the Forum, to those of the peripteral temple at Tivoli'. The ancient Egyptian columns furnish a probable derivation of the capitals of the Corinthian order: it is known that the foliage of the lotus (the type of the Nile) and palm leaves were employed in the capitals of the columns of the temples of Egypt; the use of the latter is supposed to have arisen from a prevailing opinion that the tree rose under any weight in proportion to the degree of depression. At Rome, laurel and olive leaves

1 Sir Uvedale Price says, the temple at Tivoli has as much of the chief principles of general beauty as the particular principles of architecture will allow it is circular, and surrounded by columns detached from the body of the building it is light and airy; of a delicate frame; in a great measure free from angles, and comparatively small. As a further proof of its beauty, Claude has repeated it much more frequently in his landscapes than any other building.-Essay on the Picturesque, vol. ii. p. 273.

:

2 Forsyth gives it as his opinion that the Corinthian order can be traced in the Egyptian ruins of Koun Ombos and of Esné, which are older than the Greek story of the Basket and Tile.-Remarks on Italy, p. 313.,

were used, as well as those of the acanthus, of which the capital was most usually formed; the cornice of the Corinthian order is distinguished in the best examples by modillions or mutules, small brackets under the corona. The tasteful character of the order is preserved in the portico of the Pantheon of Hadrian at Rome; but the finest specimen of the Greek Corinthian is the choragic monument of Lysicrates, and the most ancient is the temple of Apollo Didymæus.

The Bishop of Salisbury, in one of his earliest productions, has given a very beautiful definition of the three several styles by their poetical analogy.

Amongst the Dorians, says the learned author, architecture carried with it the austerity of their national character which displayed itself in their language and music. The Ionians added to its original simplicity an elegance which has excited the universal admiration of posterity. The Corinthians, a rich and luxurious people, not contented with former im

The

provements, extended the art to the very verge of vicious refinement. And thus-so connected in their origin are the arts, so similar in their progress and revolutions-the same genius produced those three characters of style in architecture, which one of the most judicious critics of Greece remarked in its language. Dorians exhibited an order of building like the style of their Pindar, like Eschylus, like Thucydides. The Corinthians gave their architecture that appearance of delicacy and effeminate refinement which characterizes the language of Isocrates; but the Ionians struck out that happy line of beauty, which, partaking of the simplicity of the one without its harshness, and of the elegance of the other without its luxuriance, exhibited that perfection of style which is adjudged to their great poet and his best imitators. Such an art, amongst such a people, could not but produce the most exquisite models of beauty and magnificence'.

1

Essay on the Study of Antiquities, 8vo, 1782, p. 10.

Referring to the period of Roman history between the reigns of Caracalla and Diocletian, it is generally admitted that buildings, as to their general plan, exhibited only the remains of the great and magnificent ideas which pervaded those of a previous date. They were indeed gigantic as to proportion; yet in detail may be discovered, amidst cost and ornament, poverty of design and meanness of execution1. The description of the palace erected by order of Diocletian in Dalmatia, about seven miles from Salona his native town, will convey some idea of the state of domestic architecture at that period. The edifice, with its detached buildings, covered an extent of ground consisting of between nine and ten English acres. The ground-plan was quadrangular, and the building was flanked by sixteen towers. Two

See Gunn's Inquiry into Gothic Architecture, p. 3. 2 Diocletian voluntarily resigned the imperial crown on May 1st, A. D. 304, at Nicomedia in Asia Minor, and retired to Salona, where he resided as a private gentleman during nine years after his abdication.

of the sides were nearly six hundred, and the other two nearly seven hundred feet in length'. The whole was constructed of a beautiful freestone, little inferior to marble itself. Four avenues intersecting each other at right angles divided the several parts of this edifice, and the approach to the principal apartments was from a stately entrance, still denominated the Golden Gate. The approach was terminated

1 This mansion was erected for an emperor's retirement, and did not possess the stately dimensions of an imperial palace. Two houses of English noblemen in Buckinghamshire almost equal it in extent. Stowe House, built by Sir Richard Temple, K.B. who died in 1697; the central part of this edifice extends 454 feet, but including the wings, added by his son Lord Cobham, 916 feet. The front of Ashridge, erected by John William seventh earl of Bridgewater, between 1808 and 1817, includes a length of above 1000 feet. Wentworth House, in Yorkshire, consists of an irregular quadrangle enclosing three courts, with å principal front extending in a line upwards of 600 feet. At Blenheim, in Oxfordshire, the house built to perpetuate the memory of the military services of John duke of Marlborough in 1704, consists of a central edifice connected by colonnades with two quadrangular wings, each containing an open court, the whole being in extreme length 850 feet, and covering seven acres of ground.