PREFACE.
It is important that an elementary treatise,—more particularly if it profess to be a popular one, intended for the use of beginners as well as for professional students,—should not only give rules, but explain principles also; and unless the latter be clearly defined, the memory alone is exercised, perhaps fatigued, owing to the former being unsupported by adequate reasoning. To confine instruction to bare matter-of-fact is not to simplify, much less to popularize it; since such mode entirely withholds all that explanation which is so necessary for a beginner, who will else probably feel more disheartened than interested. Any study which is presented in its very driest form by being divested of all that imparts interest to the subject, will soon become dry and uninteresting in itself, and prejudice may thus be excited against it at the very outset.
Those who pursue the profession of Architecture must of course apply themselves to the study of it technically, and acquire their knowledge of it, both theoretical and practical, by methods which partake more or less of routine instruction. Others neither will nor even can do so. If the public are ever to become acquainted with Architecture,—not, indeed, with its scientific and mechanical processes of construction, but in its character of Fine Art and Design,—other methods of studythan those hitherto provided must be furnished, as it appears to have been assumed that those alone who have been educated to it professionally can properly understand any thing of even theArtof Architecture,—a fatal mistake, which, had it clearly perceived its own interest, the Profession itself would long since have attempted to remove; it being clearly to the interest of Architects that the public should acquire a taste and relish for Architecture.
The study of Architecture, it may be said, has of late years acquired an increased share of public attention; but it has been too exclusively confined to the Mediæval and Ecclesiastical styles, which have consequently been brought into repute and general favour,—a result which strongly confirms what has just been recommended, namely, the policy of diffusing architectural taste as widely as possible. As yet, the taste for Architecture and the study of it, so promoted, has not been duly extended; for next to that of being acquainted with the Mediæval, the greatest merit, it would seem, is that of being ignorant of Classical Architecture and its Orders; which last, however ill they may have been understood, however greatly corrupted and perverted, influence and pervade, in some degree, the Modern Architecture of all Europe, and of all those countries also to which European civilization has extended. Nevertheless, no popular Manual on the subject of the Orders has yet been provided,—a desideratum which it is the object of the following pages to supply.
W. H. Leeds.