THE
Repository
OF
ARTS, LITERATURE, COMMERCE,
Manufactures, Fashions, and Politics,
For MAY, 1809.
The Fifth Number.
The suffrage of the wise,
The praise that’s worth ambition, is attain’d
By sense alone, and dignity of mind.
HISTORY OF THE USEFUL AND POLITE ARTS.
(Continued from page 201.)
OF THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE GREEKS AND ROMANS.
To no nation that ever existed has architecture been indebted for so many improvements, as to the Greeks. What furnished them with the first hints for these improvements, we have not, at this remote period, the means of ascertaining. The nations whom we have already mentioned, were ignorant of the method of constructing arches; the roofs of all their halls were flat, and covered with stones of such prodigious size, that a single one was often sufficient to cover a whole room. Their manner of building was also destitute of what we call taste; the columns were ill proportioned, and their capitals executed in the most wretched manner imaginable.
This was observed by the Greeks,
who improved upon the proportions
formerly used, and were the
inventors of three of the five orders of
architecture, the Doric, the Ionic,
and the Corinthian. The origin of
the two first is related by Vitruvius;
in addition to whose account
it may be observed, that the volutes,
which are the peculiar ornament of
the Ionic capital, are by some said
to represent natural curling down
of a piece of bark from the top of a
beam, which is supposed to have
been the first kind of column. The
Corinthian order was not invented
till long after the others, and is
reported to have taken its rise from the
following accident: A basket had
been set upon the ground, and
covered with a square tile. A plant
No. V. Vol. I. Nn
