Page:Fineartasketchi01wyatgoog.djvu/58

well investigated by Mr Penrose and Mr Watkiss Lloyd; neither can I enter upon the masterly introduction of sculpture into structure, and the perfection in arranging contours of mouldings, so as to heighten, by judicious management of light and shade, the effect of those sculptures, which have engaged the attention of men like the late Mr Cockerell, and one well known at Cambridge, both as an architect and a scholar, Mr Wilkins. I can only upon the present occasion invite the student who may desire to realise how far human ingenuity may go in producing an unerring effect of delight from the contrivance of architectural form, to give his most serious attention to the laws which appear to have guided the Athenians in the days of Pericles. The masterpieces of Mnesicles and Ictinus must ever command the highest admiration so long as human art retains its sway over men's minds.

From such a height it would be only mournful to trace the subsequent fall. I may however utter the treason that it was through the luxurious graces of the Corinthian order that the declension first manifested itself. I am far from underrating the beauty of a monument such as that of Lysicrates, but I cannot but trace in it Ionian beauty past its flowering time, and just running to seed. That seed we shall subsequently find fructifying on Roman soil, and by transplantation acquiring a vigour it never attained on Attic ground.

We have thus seen that what are familiarly known as "the orders" of Classical Architecture found their origin in Greece, so far at least as the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian are concerned. These three orders were retained in modified forms by the Romans, who added to them two others, namely, the Tuscan, which was a simplification of their form of the Doric, and the Composite, which was but a union of Ionic and Corinthian.

In Greece two orders were not used in the same structure, but the Roman practice was different, inasmuch as they did