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inquiries whence it proceeds, that, in the same quantity of superficies, one manner really seems great and magnificent, while the other is poor and trifling; the reason appears uncommon. I say then, that to introduce into the architecture of public buildings this grandeur of manner, we ought so to proceed that the divisions of the principal members of the entablature may consist of but few parts, that they may be all great and of a bold and ample rilievo, so that the eye may behold nothing little and mean, and that the imagination may be more vigorously touched and affected with the work. For example, in an entablature, if the crown moulding and planceer of the cornice, the modillions and dentils, make a noble show by their graceful adjustment; and if we see none of that ordinary confusion which is the result of little cavities and shadows, produced by small quarter rounds, little astragals, trivial beads, and many other insignificant intermingled members sometimes introduced, which produce no effect in great and massy works, but very unprofitably take up space to the prejudice of the principal members, it is not certain that this manner will appear solemn and great; on the contrary, it will have a poor and mean effect where there is a redundancy of those little members, which divide and scatter the angles of the sight into such a multitude of rays, so pressed together that the whole will appear but a mass of confusion.

As simplicity is greatness, so the whole mouldings in an entablature should not be enriched, but some alternately left plain for the eye to repose on; two or more carved mouldings together in a cornice always occasion confusion; and to be great there must be no little parts: simplicity also in other parts of the building must likewise be observed, to contrast with ornament. And there should be but one order and one cornice, and that cornice running all round and unbroken, so that it may appear to bind the building together.* The cornice must also be prominent; the windows not to be too numerous nor too large; and the niches properly placed, where sculptured statues of founders, patrons, heroes, or illusive deities and symbols from the heathen mythology are to be introduced.+ And whenever greatness is required, all little angles and broken lines, as well as encumbering, whimsical, and unmeaning ornaments, and twisted and tortured curves, must be avoided. Among all the members or mouldings in architecture, which amount but only to a few, such as the round, the hollow, and the square, there are none that have a greater character or produces a better effect than the concave and the convex ;‡ and we find in all ancient and classic architecture, that round columns, cavetto cornices, vaulted roofs, and domes, formed the greatest part of those buildings which were designed for pomp, splendour, and magnificence. The reason some imagine to be, because in these figures we generally see more of the body than in those of other kinds. There are indeed figures of bodies where the eye merely takes in two-thirds of the surface; but as in such buildings the sight must split upon several angles, it does not take in one uniform idea, but several ideas of the same kind. Look upon the outside of a dome, your eye half surrounds it; look upon the inside, and at one glance have all the prospect of it; the entire concavity falls upon your eye at once, the sight being as the

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A building which has but one order, and where the pillars go up the whole height of the edifice, including the cornice and blocking-course, in the Grecian style, is far grander than the Italian, where there are two tiers of pillars one over the other. And where the entablature is not extended along the sides, but cut off at the returns, the whole edifice appears made up of patchwork.—(A.)

+ It appears to have been a principle with the Greek architects in the formation of their temples, that all the chief lines should be horizontal and the subordinate ones vertical, excepting such as partake of a diagonal character, which merit distinct consideration; also that the leading lines should have the effect of undisturbed continuity, whilst the secondary lines should be decidedly and sometimes even abruptly intercepted.-(Papworth's Essay.)

The Greeks used mouldings generated by the ellipsis, the parabola, and the hyperbola; consequently they preserved what the painters term middle tint, and had broad quantities of light relieved by striking depths of shadows and sparkling effects, for which the forms of their mouldings were carefully designed. The Romans invariably composed their mouldings of circles, either simple or compound, in equal portions from equal radii, thus producing similar quantities of middle tint, light and shadow, but which is not so imposing in effect as that of the Greeks.(N.)

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centre that collects and gathers into the lines of the whole circumference. In a square pillar, the sight often takes in but a fourth part of the surface, and in a square that is concave, the eye must and down to the different sides before it is master of the inward surface. But on reverting to the practice of the ancients-" inventas qui excoluere per artes"-the young architect, let it be remembered, should travel, and, when studying any celebrated classic public edifice with advantage, he should at the same time measure the component parts, and well consider the general design and purpose of the building, and then examine freely how far, according to his own judgment, the purpose is answered in this structure. He will thus establish in himself a custom of judging by the parts as well as the whole. And, considered in this light, the student will also improve his knowledge and taste by such contemplation and study, for he will find how greatly the designer thought, and how judiciously he has done many things, which, but for such examination, would have passed in his mind unnoticed, or at least not understood.* Possibly when he has thus made himself master of the designer's ideas he will see wherein it might have been improved. Now that he understands the work he will have a right to judge; and what would have been presumption in one who knew not the science, or another who had not well considered the building, will be in him the candid and free use of that knowledge he has attained in examining the art. Therefore never let the student in architecture check those sallies of his fancy; but, with due endeavour, and a modest sense of his own rank in the science compared with him whose work he has studied, indulge in his remarks freely, yet still considering himself, nevertheless, as a "dwarf placed upon a giant's shoulders,❞—as seeing, not with his own eyes singly, but with a borrowed light of some great master. The young architect will now be at liberty to select from these prototypes, and to combine and accommodate such parts to his own design as he may see fit; but this must be so embodied as not to appear copied, and the whole seemingly his own; while only the component parts and those beyond invention, or "a grace snatched beyond the rules of art," are known to himself to be borrowed; he will have, and deservedly, the credit of novelty, while there is nothing in his design but what may be supported by the remains of antiquity.†

The architect, it must be confessed, labours under a disadvantage not known to the painter, as he can at pleasure remove mountains if any such objects in his composition do not exactly please him not so with the architect; after his building is commenced he cannot do this so easily, and

The greatness of the Roman edifices and their beauty alone may well deserve our attention; but they are rendered more interesting by two important circumstances which connect the agreeable history of the art with the more useful history of men and manners of that period. It is reasonable to suppose the greater number as well as the most considerable of these edifices were raised by the emperors, who possessed so unbounded a command both of men and money. The Colosseum, which is of an elliptical form, the major axis being six hundred and twenty feet, the minor axis five hundred and thirteen feet, and occupying a space of nearly six acres; was commenced by Vespasian. Cassiodorus affirms it cost as much as would have been required for the building of a capital city; but many of these works, be it remembered, were erected at private expense, and almost all were intended for public benefit. Augustus lived in a mean habitation, while he expended his large income in the erection of public buildings.-(Gibbon's Fall of the Roman Empire.)

+ In designing public buildings some have gone to extremes, like Baromini, a modern Italian architect, by indulging the fond hope of excelling the ancients, deviating from their footsteps, and discovering, as they think, some new beauty in the most absurd forms and proportions unknown to them; thus introducing and varying the outlines, and studying the effect of the most endless and heterogeneous combinations. Unfortunately for the advancement of design in architecture, it is too generally supposed that in every part it is wholly confined and directed by absolute and established rules; that the five orders, as they are called, are precise canons from which it would be heresy to depart; and that the architect has little more to consider than to follow the rules laid down in books, and to copy the ancient portico, (which a skilful builder might equally do,) or by an easy transposition make new designs from them in a way quite as dependent on the fancy as the judgment; when, in fact, his duty is to explore the treasures with which the vestiges of antiquity and the best works abound, viewing them not as documents and patterns merely, but as invaluable manifestations of mind, in which may be read the very thoughts of the authors, and where may be found the reasoning upon which they acted; thence producing principles and rules for controlling and directing those exuberances of fancy with which he who reasonably hopes to become a great architect should be gifted.-(Essay on a Design.)

when once erected, however some parts may offend his eye, so they must remain, to his utter mortification and disgrace; and, although he may have had a model of the whole edifice before he commenced operations, yet many parts may deceive him, if he has not attended to the laws of optics and perspective, as many of those parts which were seen in the model and added to its beauty, may be entirely lost or disappear from the eye when erected, causing the structure to look distorted and unsightly. Here is the perplexity; and the only assurance the architect can obtain with certainty as to the appearance of his edifice when finished, is by making a perspective drawing of the building from the most conspicuous point of view before he commences his erection.

Of all the noble arts, the study of architecture is perhaps one of the most delightful, where there is an innate genius to conceive, and a mind well stored with images of splendid buildings; for by changing and varying the modes, there will always spring up new ideas, new scenes for the imagination to work upon. The fancy of the designer may thus invariably be extended, as the different styles of architecture will constantly furnish him with something of an amusement, and gratify the eye as well as the understanding of an inventive genius.† All the pleasure the man of fine genius takes in his pursuit after knowledge of this kind is inexpressible; and in any other laudable pursuit it is equally the same. The astronomer stands in his observatory, and soars from one planet to another and from one region to another, till the mind is lost in infinite space. The geographer in his private room travels from one country to another, through various climates, over sea and land, till he encompasses the whole earth in his imagination. The painter in his studio also forms beautiful and picturesque landscapes, lively groups of figures, terrific and craggy precipices, and silent glades, all diverting and diversifying his ideas. The poet, with his "eye in a fine phrenzy rolling," sits in his sylvan bower, and with all the harmony of numbers, imagines to himself beautiful hills and verdant lawns, pleasing vales, meandering rivers, and purling streams gliding through some gloomy dell, with all the wonders of the fairy world. In like manner the architect comprehends and forms in his mind's eye, as if in a vision or dream, his design, with many pleasing structures, beautiful and well proportioned. So Dr. Johnson sat and conceived the idea of his Palace of Rasselas in the Happy Valley, Chaucer his Temple of Fame, and Addison the House of Vanity, seated on the clouds between heaven and earth; Milton his Pandemonium, Ovid his Palace of the Sun, and the author of the Arabian Nights his Palace of Abdallah-and all these formed with a regular and seeming symmetry and just exactness. The sculptor also imagines and ideally views in a block of marble

* In this predicament was situated the late John Nash, Esq., an architect eminent for the grand and the picturesque, who stated to the Committee of the House of Commons, that he had been deceived as to the appearance of the dome on Buckingham Palace when he remodelled that edifice, little expecting that object would look so inelegant as it did, seen rising from the garden front, and peering over the summit of the roof, which to the spectators in the park at a distance appeared like an egg in a cup, and when near like a balloon just rising over the building. Now the laws of optics would have pointed this out to him had it been previously considered, or if Mr. Nash had but applied its rules to the design before the dome had been erected. It has since been removed, but more detracting from than improving the palace. The attic base of the dome should have been raised so as to have been seen, and the dome itself crowned with a lantern. Buildings intended to be noble should always appear to possess magnitude; thus we may observe, that if a public edifice is designed to be erected where there are no accompanying objects, it will appear less than when surrounded with houses or other objects. All bodies when viewed so as to be immediately opposed to space, appear to be less than those seen in connexion with other substances, and hence the grandeur of St. Peter's at Rome, where the whole cycloid of the dome seems surrounded by the clouds.-(A.)

"Invention," says Sir Joshua Reynolds, "at least what is generally so called, is chiefly the child of imitation; for it is in vain to endeavour to invent without materials on which the mind may work, and from which invention must originate. Nothing can come of nothing." (Discourse VI.) "A fine invention," says Sir E. Lytton Bulwer, "is nothing more than a fine deviation, or an enlargement from a fine model; imitation if noble and general, ensures the best hope of originality." (The Disowned, chap. xxv.) Dr. Johnson says, "The genius to invent is a quality without which the judgment is cold, and knowledge inert; it is that energy which collects, combines, amplifies, and animates.”—(Rambler.)

a beautiful statue, which only requires the care and skill of his nice hand to take away the gross particles of stone which enclose it, whereby others may view it with equal pleasure as himself. In this way and manner the architect must study, conceive, imagine, and figure to himself in his mind's eye, and then commit his ideas to paper by lines, shades, and colours.*

No style of art, it must be remembered, is held in estimation in which the character is not correspondent with a great or worthy object, and which does not require the operation of a highly cultivated mind, both as relates to the theory and the employment of the principles of science. That the useful and agreeable form the groundwork upon which the early architects engrafted that which has become acknowledged beauty is very evident. The Greeks became solicitous to give importance to their works, but not by means of magnitude alone, which they had seen in Egypt, created by heaping stone upon stone or piling mass upon mass, to constitute supposed grandeur, such as may be seen in England in that ponderous and heterogeneous structure the Mansion-house in London, which brings to our mind the pile reared by the giants or furies of the earth when they waged war against Jove the celestial god.

"Thrice their strained strength had Ossa on Pelion laid,
And heaved on Ossa all the Olympian shade:
But Jove indignant as the structure grew,
Thrice thund'ring thrice the mountain mass o'erthrew."
VIRGIL, Georgic 1.

In conclusion, as to the situation of our public buildings, many of them in cities are unfortunately seen only as façades, their flanks or sides being concealed by adjoining houses, and not being sufficiently detached; therefore they fail to interest by this rigid economy, which if placed in open situations, would strike the beholder with astonishment.+ A spacious square, or a radiating panoptican site formed by the junction of four or six streets, as the public buildings are situated at St. Petersburg, would give room for elegance and design; here the public edifices have been so placed as to be seen from different streets, converging towards them like the arms of a windmill, which places are called perspectives, because from all points of view they afford a prospect of the public edifice. Where a proper distance is wanting to view a public building, such objects frequently appear a distorted figure, a sort of anamorphosis.§ If you desire to see the proportion of a public statue elevated on a pedestal, you would surely go so far distant as to take the whole of the figure in the eye at one coup d'œil or glance of sight. Buildings require the same optical distance, and their respective mouldings to be optically inclined towards the eye, both those which are placed above and below the horizon; but as this requires some stated angle, it will be necessary perhaps to lay the same before the young architect. Where then the distance can be obtained, it should be at

*He that has observed most, says Dr. Johnson, it is reasonable to expect knows most; and those, adds Horace Walpole, who have been so situated as to have had noble and elegant models before them, are best qualified for designing public buildings. For it must be from the storehouse of the mind that the materials are to be drawn and the design formed. And the materials must be collected from others, as Sir Joshua Reynolds has shown, when he tells us that invention, strictly speaking, is nothing more than a new combination of those objects which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory. Yet the composition of the building itself must be the architect's own arrangement. We do not mean that servile counterfeiting of an original, so much the practice of some of our modern third-rate architects, who copy the very lines and profiles of the object, when they ought only to compose in the spirit of the original.—(A.)

+ Goldsmiths' Hall, a noble edifice in the Roman-Italian style, lately designed and erected in London, at the back of the new Post-Office, by Mr. Hardwicke, a decidedly popular architect, ought to have had a better situation.—(B.)

Capt. Jones's Journey to St. Petersburg.

ŝ The external parts of a building at a proper distance are circumscribed by the retina of the eye: the internal parts terminate by rays of light which strike on the retina, and circumscribe them within the focus or point of sight by a reverberation of rays, so that all external objects are more distinctly and more intelligibly viewed and considered by having a proper distance assigned.-(F.)

such an angle that the whole building may be seen without turning the eye in the head, first to look at one part and then at another. This required angular view may be found by making the point of distance from the centre of the building equal to half the length and half the height of the building added together. For example, supposing the front to be one hundred feet in length and the height forty feet, now half of each of those dimensions added together will make seventy feet, which measure will be found to be a proper distance for the point of sight, or place of the spectator from whence to view the whole building distinctly and with advantage: a greater distance may be taken ad libitum.

ON THE PRINCIPLES OF DESIGNING PRIVATE DWELLING-HOUSES.
"No art without a genius will avail,

And parts without the help of art will fail."-OLDHAM.

Rural architecture is not only one of the most pleasing of the useful sciences, which has been termed the "art of necessity," but it may be esteemed the most extensive in fancy and design, requiring great taste and good judgment to compose the parts of which it consists, either in respect to a regular systematic uniformity or a picturesque composition, and to harmonize and combine the different masses with the surrounding scenery or local objects on the spot. To be enabled to design rural residences with true taste and judgment, the architect is required to have previously inspected many fine mansions and country villas, both at home and in various countries; and to have made useful as well as critical remarks on the combination and appearance of each in connection with their appropriate scenery. He must also have a mind well stored, and possess a fertile imagination as well as a playful fancy, to enable him to diversify the effect by light, shadow, and middle tint, and to preserve the analogy of his design so as to give pleasure to the eye, either in its natural simplicity, or when it is more elegantly decked with ornaments.‡

Variety in the tout ensemble of a rural residence, when built on a choice and well-selected situa

* Architecture has been termed the art of necessity, in contradistinction to sculpture and painting, which have been distinguished as the offspring of elegance and luxury.-(Dr. Memes.)

A house that is composed of regular parts on each side of a centre, is said to be uniform and systematically designed. When a house is composed of dissimilar parts both in mass and detail, as if it were the work of chance and not design, then it is said to be picturesque. Symmetry is an essential part of beauty, though not of the picturesque, for that object can rarely excite agreeable sensations which is formed of dissimilar parts on each side of its centre. It is necessary however to observe that this symmetry is only required where the whole house is seen from one point of view; it would even be improper in an architect to bind himself to an uniformity of design in all the fronts of a country-house when these fronts are to be seen successively; such a repetition would be wearisome, and the spectator would lose that source of pleasurable sensation which arises from the variety exhibited in the different fronts or the exterior. It is not sufficient that the parts of a mansion should be symmetrically disposed; there should be some one part which forms the principal object, and to which all the others should be subordinate; this constitutes what is called unity in an edifice, for it reduces all the parts under one system, and makes that an entire body which otherwise might be taken for a collection of independent members.—(E.)

Superior ideas may be obtained by studying those sublime and beautiful edifices seen in prints from pictures of the great painters, particularly Nicolo Poussin, the French Raphael. This talented man formed his style at Rome, having studied in that seat of learning for more than twenty years, where he became acquainted with all the antique buildings and villas of the Romans, as well as conversant with suburban scenery. The characteristics of his works are classical grandeur, his historical figures, his flowing luxuriant and ornamental trees, and his detached and perfect suburban buildings, placed along the sides of the mountains and on the summits of the Pincine Hills; and others again near the margin of the river Tiber have all an air of majesty. In the rich choice of his subjects and manner of representing its incidents, Poussin has few equals and no rivals. In his pictures too there is always a most charming harmony of thought; the mountain scenery intermingled with temples rising up, and some crowning the very summits; and likewise villas enamelling the undulating slopes, embosomed in suitable scenery, and the long horizontal parapeted bridges striding over the wide river, accompanied with majestic and lofty flowing trees on the margin of the meandering streams; groups of figures dancing or in conversation under the wide-spreading shady branches, and sylvan statues placed on pedestals, coupled with his masterly style of handling, have all a grandeur and antique air transporting the imagination into an ideal world. Hence of all those who have made the attempt, Poussin has best succeeded in classical composition and in allegory.—(B.)

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