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not hesitate to superpose them in some of their most excellent buildings. They always however preserved a relative succession from the soil upwards, based upon the comparative substantiality of the parts and proportions which were the attributes of each order. Thus, on the ground-floor of the Coliseum they used the Doric, above it they placed an Ionic, and above that again a Corinthian story, with a top story of irregular proportions, but distinguished in the capitals of its columns by ornaments of a Composite character.

In Egypt the soil retains only now of ancient buildings remains of such as had been erected for the clergy or for the service of God and the king. In Greece we meet with temples and theatres; in Etruria with little else than tombs; but in Rome we recognize a people carrying a system of polity to a great extent of refinement, and using magnificent structures, not for purposes of worship or residence only, but for every variety of civic use, from the basilica to the bath.

Nowhere do we better form an idea of the municipal and social system of the Romans, for every department of which they availed themselves of the ministrations of art, and every function of which found its appropriate structure, than within the narrow limits of the marvellously preserved city of Pompeii. There we find in well contrasted juxtaposition the ruins of the original and early buildings, with their strongly marked Grecian imprint, and those of the later buildings, down to those scarcely completed at the date of the submersion of the beautiful little city in the fiery waves which poured down upon it from Vesuvius. These remains illustrate a social system but little differing from our own, and artistic wants not far removed from such as might exist among us even at the present day.

Roman Architecture was especially remarkable for five characteristics:

1. The admirable stability and ingenuity of its structure.