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tions of architecture, qualities, moreover, that are sometimes adjusted to each other with so much nicety, and combined with so much skill, that, however powerful may be their joint result, they themselves are apt to be overlooked, or are not to be detected, except by careful analysis. On the subject of form, as distinct from proportion, this book of "Elements" contains nothing; on that of Congruity and Fitness, nothing; on Unity, on Composition, just as much; on Composition and Harmony, ditto; on Simplicity, Richness, Contrast, Variety, Character, Expression, Quantity, Quality, Detail, Effect, Light and Shade, &c. ditto and again ditto, that is, positively nothing.

These, it must be owned, are rather numerous-we leave it to Mr. Gwilt himself to judge, whether important-omissions; and, for our own part, we cannot help thinking that he has treated those who shall apply to his book, with the view of learning from it how they may become all at once adepts in orthodox architectural criticism, scurvily and stingily. At the same time we are ready to admit that, unless he could have furnished them with something more to the purpose and less fanciful than what he says on the subject of proportion, the loss is not very great, and consequently the omissions we have pointed out altogether immaterial. According to him—and, coming from so thorough and stanch a partisan of the Italian school, the doctrine is doubly startling it is doubtful whether there be really more than one order, as genus, which is subdivided into five, or three, species. By way of elucidating the general principle of proportions as practised by the ancients, he gives a diagram of an hexastyle portico, of which the six columns are equal to the five intercolumns, and also to the entablature and pediment; that is, measured superficially by the elevation, the supports, the voids between them, and the parts resting on the supports, all agree as to quantity. Yet, since he immediately afterwards confesses that in practice this principle admits of infinite variety, we do not perceive that it amounts to much more than a curious speculation, because the latitude with which it is applied is likely to be no less infinite than the variety. It allows of, after all, and relates merely to one particular kind of proportion, which has very little to do with what is generally understood by the term, else would the Parthenon and the Pantheon differ very little from each other in regard to it,—and that, too, according to Mr. Gwilt's own showing, for in a note at page 13, he produces some comparisons of the kind taken from ancient buildings, by which it appears that in the Parthenon the supports are to the weights, as 1: 1.19; and in the Pantheon, as 1: 1.10. Surely he has brought forward this fact somewhat inadvertently, because it rather makes against the value of his own theory,

limited as it is to nearly proportion alone, since it proves how very much besides remains quite unaccounted for by it. Nay, it may unluckily mislead some to imagine that between the two buildings mentioned there exists as slight a difference in regard to taste, expression, and effect, as there does between the decimal parts set down against them. Now, if his work was really intended to correct the public taste, Mr. Gwilt does not, by any means, understand what kind of elementary knowledge the public require, for while he goes into nice and abstruse points, into which persons in general can hardly be expected to enter at all, he omits all that can properly be termed elementary information, imagining, perhaps, that his readers will have provided themselves with it beforehand, elsewhere.

But, leaving others to search for that information which may serve them as a clew of criticism, and help to direct them aright, where ignorant and presumptuous reviewers have led them astray, let us attend to the lesson which in this place Mr. Gwilt addresses to ourselves. We had observed that," supposing the attention bestowed by us upon Greek architecture to have been to any purpose at all, we must surely have been convinced, ere this, that the doctrine so long maintained in regard to proportions ought to be discarded as untenable, or at least, requires to be amended and remodelled;" whereupon Mr. Gwilt affirms that we exhibit a very slender knowledge of the philosophy of the art. Whether it be through ignorance or perverseness we do not know; but he certainly puts a very odd construction upon our meaning, although taken with the context it is obvious enough; namely that, contrary to the laws laid down by Vitruvius and his modern followers, who would establish a fixed standard for each order, to which they assign certain undeviating proportions, the ancients allowed themselves great freedom in this respect without violating the character belonging to each distinct class or order. What says Mr.Gwilt himself? "Two examples-than which, in appearance, it is impossible to produce specimens of greater apparent dissimilarity will show how the ancients were guided by certain laws, which, notwithstanding the restraint which the reviewer wants to shake off, admit of a variety which, on comparing them, will be obvious to the least educated. These are the orders (both Doric) used in the Hypethral Temple at Pæstum, and the Portico of Philip. In the former, the columns are only 4 diameters, in the latter 6535, and yet the heights of the whole entablatures in terms of their diameters vary only of that diameter." Most assuredly Mr. Gwilt is a very extraordinary person; for he quarrels with us for holding the same doctrine, and to convict us of absurdity, actually brings forward a very strong instance proving

that the ancients did not put upon themselves that restraint which modern lawgivers in matters belonging to the orders have imposed on themselves and their school. He is correct enough in saying, that we wish to see such restraint shaken off; but all the rest appears to be a piece of mystification; because, although in both the examples he refers to, the columns and entablature may be nearly similarly proportioned to each other, every one, himself excepted, will be of opinion, that a column only four times as high as its lower diameter, is not of the same proportions as one which is six times as high. Nevertheless, he will have it that the proportions of both are virtually the same, although the difference between them is so obvious-that is, the difference occasioned by the proportions themselves. Surely this is merely playing at cross-purposes, and childishly holding out on the strength of a term to which he chooses to assign another meaning from that usually understood by it, rather than not seem to make out something of a case against us; for we really cannot believe but that he himself sees that his own view of the matter does not at all affect what we said; or if it does, it must also upset nearly all that has been written upon the subject by professional men themselves. In fact, notwithstanding that it may serve his purpose on this particular occasion to confine himself just to that particular view of proportion, he would find it rather awkward to be obliged to adhere to it invariably, to the entire exclusion of all proportions of detail; which are precisely those which constitute much of that variety in different examples of the same order, and which may be very dissimilar, although the general proportions are the same. Of two columns, for instance, of the same order, and precisely alike in regard to height as measured by the lower diameter of their shafts, there may be a striking dissimilarity in the proportions of their component parts and details. Not only may the base and capital of the one be in this respect very unlike those of the other, but the proportions of the details of these subdivisions may likewise vary materially. Or, we may illustrate the matter more effectually by referring to the pediments of the Parthenon and Pantheon, two buildings which, as already seen, differ very little as to that particular ratio upon which Mr. Gwilt's theory is founded; and ask whether there be not a most prodigious discrepancy between the proportions of their pediments?

Perhaps we are bestowing too much notice on this particular point-a very prominent one, however, in these "Elements"there being so much else that has equally strong claims upon our notice. Had we space for such purpose, we should very willingly discuss-whether the arch and dome be really so incompatible with Grecian composition as Mr. Gwilt considers them

That he should do so is all the more strange, inasmuch as it is difficult to reconcile such very strict scrupulousness in maintaining the Grecian style within its original limits with his predilection for Italian architecture. We rather suspect that his preciseness in this respect is occasioned chiefly by the desire to keep the arch and dome as the peculiar property of the Roman and Italian styles; and, by depriving the Grecian of the advantages that might accrue to it by a judicious appropriation of those features, to render it comparatively ineligible—at least for many purposes. This conjecture on our part grows almost into certainty when we read that, "the truth is, the arrangements which Greek architecture requires, in order to produce effect, are unsuitable to modern habits." Most assuredly, if we are not to be permitted to aim at other effect with it than that belonging to its own temples—if all its spirit and character must inevitably evaporate unless presented to us in the express forms to which it was restricted by those who originated and perfected it; then, indeed, Grecian architecture must be discarded by us almost in toto, as by far too scanty and limited for our present wants and purposes. Scarcely can it be employed for modern churches, without forfeiting more or less of its original expression; even windows infringing upon the atticism of its idiom hardly less than the dome and arch would do, perhaps in some instances far more than these latter would; because, although authorities for windows and their forms are to be met with in Grecian architecture, it furnishes no precedent for the frequency, nor for the same arrangement, of such apertures as the nature of our own buildings renders almost unavoidable. The truth is, even where we aim at being exclusively Greek, our buildings are, for the reason just mentioned, in a certain degree, Italian, with the Greek orders and Greek detail. It would, therefore, be merely stretching the point a very little more, to adopt the arch and dome likewise; on the condition, however, of their assuming the costume and external character of that style, and becoming what we may conceive the Greeks themselves would have rendered them. To such course, however, Mr. Gwilt is decidedly opposed; he insists upon our making our

* While we would admit the arch, we would restrict its application chiefly to interiors, suffering it to appear very seldom externally, and then only where its span would exceed that of an architrave from column to column. We therefore hold arched windows to be inadmissible in combination with columns disposed after the Grecian mode; the bad effect of which is apparent in the Bourse at Paris. Not only is it contrary to classical precedent, but likewise to reason; because, if an horizontal architrave can be carried from one column to another, surely the narrower apertures of doors and windows can be terminated horizontally also without difficulty. On the other hand, in the large niches within the portico of the Pantheon, the arch is had recourse to for adequate and obvious reason, those recesses being about equal to two intercolumns.

election between Greek and Italian, and abiding by it. If, therefore, we choose to return to the latter, we must take it up again just as we left it, without attempting to infuse into it aught of Grecian taste, or correcting its details and profiles. We, however, would say, let us be Greek as far as we can,-not to the exclusion of Gothic, but whenever we employ columns and entablatures; yet not pedantically so, on the one hand reducing design to the mere copying of antique edifices; nor, on the other, affectedly classical in those features of our buildings which can be applied directly from the antique, while all the rest is offensively the reverse; but where we find the Greek stops short, and affords no direct precedents for our guidance, let us have recourse to Roman, or even Italian, for hints upon which we may work. It is not every one, we grant, who can attempt this successfully; but those alone who, besides having thoroughly imbued themselves with Grecian taste, as it displays itself in the works which have come down to us, are gifted with some degree of genius. Yet, if architecture be one of the fine arts as well as a science, such must be the case; for in none of the arts so called will plodding diligence, although it may raise a man to a passable degree of proficiency in it, supply the place of, or enable him to compete with, genius.

Although, being nearly all of one class and exceedingly simple and unvaried in their general plan, the Greek edifices we are acquainted with present little more than columns, entablatures, and pediments, that the style itself is exceedingly plastic, and contains within itself the germs of infinite diversity and inexhaustible combinations, admits of no doubt, when we come to study the different examples of the few ornamental features which their structures supply, and perceive how tastefully they are varied, apparently without effort, and always without contravening the respective fundamental types. By way of something like an instance, let us take antefixa, and we may boldly challenge any one to produce from Italian sources any kind of embellishment at all comparable either for the exquisite taste or the fertility of invention they display-all so varied, and manifesting a spontaneity for admitting fresh ideas. In those things wherein the Italian exhibits either wearisome monotony, or merely fantastic caprices, Grecian archtecture manifests invention, directed by taste and study; and each architect appears to have treated his work in the true spirit of an artist; not like a mechanic, following an express pattern, but genially and consistently throughout, even to its minutest details. Few as the examples actually are which we have of the Grecian Ionic, they suffice to convince us of the great freedom and ductility of that style, and show more of true architectural invention than all the examples of the Italian orders put together.

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