To such an extent buildings of this type run on for miles with their rows of animal figures, their Memnons, their immense doors, their walls and colonnades of the most stupendous dimensions, some of greater breadth, some of less, their isolated obelisks and much else, that while we wanderwithin works so huge and so calculated to excite our surprise, which in part possess merely a more restricted purpose in the diverse activities of the system of culture to which they belong the question is irresistible, what these masses of stone have to tell us of the Divine they secrete. For on closer inspection symbolical meanings are everywhere in-woven in these constructions in that the number of Sphinxes and Memnons, the position of columns and passages have relation to the days of the year, the twelve signs of the Zodiac, the seven planets, the great periods of the lunar cycle and other phenomena. To some extent we find here that sculpture has not yet freed itself from architecture; and in some degree again the really architectonic aspect of measure, interval, number of columns, walls, steps, and so forth is so treated, that the real object of these relations is not to be found in their own intrinsic character, that is, in their symmetry, harmony, and beauty, but is referable to their symbolical definition. And in this way all this work of construction asserts itself independently as an object in itself, as itself a cultus, in which both nation and king are united. Many works, such as canals, the lake Maeotis, and generally waterworks have a particular relation to agriculture and the floods of the Nile. An example of this we have in the statement of Herodotus[51]to the effect that Sesostris had the entire country, which up to this time had been ridden and driven over, cut up into canals to provide drinking-water, and in this way made horses and wagons useless. The main constructions, however, remained those buildings with a religious purpose, which the Egyptians instinctively piled up much as the bees do their cells. Their property was regulated[52], their other social conditions equally so, the soil of the country was extraordinarily fruitful, and required no laborious cultivation, so that we may almost say their agriculture merely consisted in sowing and harvest. We hear little of other interests and exploits, such as are common to nations, and, with the exception of the tales of the priesthood with reference to the maritime undertakings of Sesostris, we have no account of sea voyages. Speaking generally, the Egyptians restricted their efforts to this workof construction within their own country. It is, however, what we have called self-substantive and symbolical architecture which forms the fundamental type of their imposing works and for this reason that the human ideal, the spiritual in its aims and external forms, has not as yet come to self-knowledge, or constituted itself the object and product of its free activity. Self-consciousness has not as yet ripened in the fruit, is not yet independently secured, but is restless, seeking, surmising, ever for producing without absolute satisfaction, and consequently without repose. It is only in the form that is commensurate with Spirit that mind essentially at home with itself finds satisfaction and finds its true definition in what it produces. The symbolical work of art on the contrary remains more or less indefinite. Among such creations of the Egyptian art of building we may include the so-calledlabyrinths, courts with columned approaches, circumambient paths between partitions, which entwine about in a mysterious fashion, but whose confusing intricacy is not constructed with the puerile object to make the means of exit a problem, but to create for the senses an intricate mode of motion that is dominated by mysteries of symbolical import. For these paths, as we have already indicated, imitate in their course that of the heavenly bodies and embody the same for imagination. They are in part constructed above the ground and in part underneath it, and in addition to their passages are furnished with chambers and halls of enormous size, whose walls are covered with hieroglyphics. The largest labyrinth which Herodotus himself saw was not far from the lake Maeris. He affirms[53]that its size exceeded his powers of description, and it surpassed the pyramids themselves. The building he ascribes to the twelve kings, and he describes it in the following terms. The entire building surrounded by one and the same wall consisted of two stories, the one above and the other beneath the level of the ground. Taken together they enclosed three thousand chambers, each story containing fifteen hundred. The upper story which alone Herodotus was able to see was divided into twelve adjacent courts[54], with doorsplaced opposite to each other, six facing the North and six the South, and every court was engirt with a colonnade, constructed of white and carefully worked stone. From these courts, Herodotus continues, you have ingress to the chambers, and from these into the halls, and from the halls into other chambers, and from these chambers into the courts. According to Hirt[55]Herodotus only so far defines this latter relation to the extent that he places in the first instance the chambers in juxtaposition to the courts. With regard to the labyrinthine passages, Herodotus states that the numerous passages through the roofed-in chambers and the multitudinous incurvations between the courts had filled him with infinite astonishment. Pliny[56]describes them as obscure and tedious for a stranger on account of their windings, and when their doors were opened there was a noise in them like thunder; we also learn from Strabo, an evidence of importance, for he was an eye-witness no less than Herodotus, that the labyrinthine passages encircled the court spaces. It was the Egyptians who mainly built such labyrinths: but we find in imitation of Egypt a similar one in Crete, though of smaller extent, and also, too, in the Morea and Malta. Taking into consideration the fact, however, that, on the one hand, an art of building of this kind in its chambers and halls already approximated to the dwelling type, while, on the other, according to the delineation of Herodotus, the subterranean portion of the labyrinth, an entrance into which was forbidden him, had for its definite object the sepulchre of the founders of the building and sacred crocodiles—so that here the essential characteristic of the labyrinth was entirely the symbolic import in an independent sense—we may find in such works a point of transition to the form of symbolical architecture, which in its own constituent parts begins already to approach the classic type of building.
However stupendous in size the construction we have just considered are the subterranean architecture of Oriental peoples such as the Hindoos and Egyptians, which offer many features of resemblance, are still more imposing and calculated to excite our wonder. Whatever aspect of grandeur and nobility is in this respect discoverable above ground presents no parallel to that which among the Hindoos is presented us beneath the earth in Salsette, which faces Bombay, and in Ellora, that is, in Upper Egypt and Nubia. In these extraordinary excavations what we have in the earliest examples exposed is the immediate necessity of anenclosure.The fact that mankind have sought protection in caves, and made their dwelling there and that entire peoples have possessed no other mode of dwelling is due to the compelling force of their needs. Caves of this kind existed in the land of Judaea, where in works of many stories there was room for thousands. There were also in the Harz mountains in the Rammelsberg near Goslar chambers, into which men crept for cover, and used to bring their provisions for safety.
(a) Of an entirely different type, however, are the Hindoo and Egyptian subterranean constructions to which we have alluded. In some degree they served as places of assemblage, subterranean cathedrals, and are constructions whose object was to excite religious wonder and concentrate the communion of spiritual life; they are united to designs and suggestions of a symbolical character, colonnades, sphinxes, Memnons, elephants, colossal images of idols, which, hewn from the bare rock, were as fully left a component growth of the formless stone as the columns in such excavations were made to stand out in isolation from it. In front of the walls of rock these buildings were here and there wholly exposed to the light, in other parts they were entirely devoid of it, and illuminated merely with torches, while in other portions light was introduced from above.
Relatively to the super-terranean constructions these excavations appear as prior in time, so that we may regardthe enormous spaces laid out above the soil as an imitation and efflorescence of similar tracts of land beneath it. In excavations there is no positive building, but we have rather a given material taken away. And to nest thus in the ground, to excavate is more natural to man than to seek for a material, and with it to construct and inform a mass of buildings. In this respect we may assume the cave to be utilized prior to the hut or dwelling. Caves are the extension of spatial covering instead of a limitation of such, or an extension which grows up as a limit and enclosure, in which the enclosure is already present. The subterranean construction consequently inclines to start with what is already present, and, in so far as it leaves the fundamental material as it finds it, is not erected with the freedom applicable to a configuration raised above the surface of the soil. In our view, however, these constructions already belong to a further stage of the art of building, however much they may also have features of a symbolical type, because they no longer are placed there as independently symbolical, but already possess the aim or purpose of an enclosure, a partition, a roof, within which more symbolical figures as such are set up. That which is connoted under the conception of temple and dwelling, both in the Greek and more modern use of the terms, we have here in their most natural form.
We may include in the above class the caves of Mithras, although we find them in a very different locality. The worship and ritual of Mithras originates in Persia. A cultus, however, of a similar kind was also promulgated in the Roman Empire. In the Paris Museum we find a very famous bas-relief, which represents a youth in the act of striking an ox with a steel weapon. It was discovered in the Roman Capitol in a deep grotto beneath the temple of Jupiter. In these Mithras caves vaults are also met with, and passages which on the one hand appear definitely to symbolize by suggestion the course of the stars, and from another point of view also (precisely as still in our own time takes place in our free-mason lodges, where people are conducted through many passages and have to see dramatic scenes and much else) the ways, which the soul must pass through in its purification, albeit it may be true enoughthat this fundamental meaning is more fully and directly expressed in sculpture and other work than in architecture simply. In a connection somewhat similar we may also mention the Roman catacombs, the fundamental idea of whose construction was certainly something quite other than that of being subservient to aqueducts, sepulchres or any system of drainage.
(b) In thesecondplace we may seek for our present use a more definite point of transition from the architecture of independent type in those constructions which have been raised ashousings of the dead, partly in the form of excavations beneath the ground, and partly as buildings above it. More particularly among the Egyptians this kind of construction, whether subterranean or super-terranean, was associated with a realm of the dead, just as in general among the Egyptians it is a realm of the invisible which in the first instance receives a habitation and is placed before us. The Hindoo burns his dead, or suffers their bones to lie and moulder on the earth. According to the Hindoo's point of view mankind are, or become, god or gods, whichever way one cares to put it, and we are unable to find in their case this assured distinction between the living and the dead regarded as dead. Hindoo constructions, consequently, so far as they do not originate in Mohammedanism, are not dwellings for the dead, and appear generally to belong to an earlier period as we assumed was true of the astonishing excavations described. In the case of the Egyptians, however, the contrast between living and dead asserts itself predominantly. That which is spiritual begins to separate itself essentially from what is material. We have here the resurrection of spirit in concrete individuality, the movement of that process. The dead are therefore retained fast as personality[57], and are secured and preserved securely above the conception of dissolution into Nature, that is into universal evanescence, flood and extinction. Singularity is the principle of the spiritual in its notion of independence, because spirit is only able to exist as individuality, that is personality. Consequently this honour paid to and preservation of the dead can only appear to ourselves as a first and important element in the definition of the existence ofspiritual individuality, since it is here that singularity is asserted as maintained rather than abandoned, inasmuch as the body at any rate is treasured and respected as this Nature's own mode of individuality. Herodotus assures us, a fact we have already noticed, that the Egyptians were the first to declare that the souls of men were immortal, and despite the fact that the grasp on spiritual individuality is in their case very incomplete, in so far as in their view the deceased must for three thousand years pass through a whole series of animals belonging to land, water, and air, yet for all that in this conception, and in the embalming of the body, we find fixedly the notion of bodily individuality, and of the independent self-existence as separate from that body.
It is therefore also of importance in the arts of building that in these the separation of the spiritual, no less than the ideal significance, which[58]is independently represented, be carried into effect while the corporeal shell is set round it as a purely architectonic environment. The dwellings of the dead of the Egyptians constitute for this reason the earliest examples of the temple type. The essential feature, the central core of worship is a subject, an individual object which appears of significance by itself, and expresses itself as distinct from its dwelling, which is thereby interpreted as purely a subservient covering. And no doubt it is not an actual man, for whose requirements a house or palace had to be built, but deceased objects that are without such needs, kings, sacred animals, around whom immeasurable constructions are enclosed.
Just as agriculture fixes the wandering of nomads in the stable possession of a definite locality, we may say that generally sepulchres, monuments, and the service of the dead unite mankind, and even offer to those who possess no States, no limitations of property, a place ofrendez-vous, sacred places which they defend and refuse to have taken away from them. As an illustration we may cite the case of the Scythians, a nomad people, who retired everywhere, according to the narration of Herodotus[59], before Darius. And when Darius sent an embassage to them with themessage that if their king deemed himself strong enough to offer resistance he should come forth to battle, but if he did not he ought to recognize Darius as his lord, Idanthyrsus met the same with the reply that they possessed neither cities nor tilled land, and had nothing to defend for the reason that Darius had nothing to ravage; if, however, Darius made a point of having a fight they possessed the sepulchres of their fathers, let him therefore dare to advance against these, he will then discover whether they will fight for their sepulchres or not.
The most ancient and imposing monuments erected to the dead we find in Egypt. They are the Pyramids. What most excites our wonder at first sight of these astonishing constructions is their extraordinary magnitude, which at once makes us reflect upon the duration of time, the variety, superabundance and persistence of human energies which is inseparable from the completion of such colossal buildings. From the point of view of form there is nothing in them to protract attention: in a few minutes we have surveyed and taken in the entire effect. With this simplicity and uniformity of their form in view their object has ever been a subject of controversy. It is true that even the ancients, as for example Herodotus and Strabo, adduced the aim, which they subserved; but for all that both in former and more recent times, travellers and writers have contributed much that is fabulous and unwarranted in their reflections. The Arabs endeavoured to effect entrance by force, hoping to discover treasure in the interior of the Pyramids; such assaults, however, beyond disturbing much, have failed in their object to reach the actual passages and chambers. Europeans of a later date, among whom we may mention in particular for distinction, Belzoni, a native of Rome, and Caviglia of Genoa, have at last succeeded in ascertaining more accurate information with respect to the interior of these fabrics. Belzoni discovered the royal sepulchre in the Pyramid of Chephren. The entrances to the Pyramids were closed in the securest way by square blocks of stone, and it appears that Egyptians endeavoured in their construction so to effect matters that the entrance, even when discovered, could only be followed up and opened with the greatest difficulty. This proves to us thatthe Pyramids remained closed and could not be again used. Within their interior explorers have found chambers, passages, which point by suggestion to the ways, which the soul undertakes after death in its course and transmigration, great halls, channels beneath the earth at one time descending, at another mounting up. The royal sepulchre of Belzoni runs on in this way hewn out of the rock for a mile. In the principal hall stood a sarcophagus of granite, sunk in the ground; but all that was discovered in it was the remains of animal bones of a mummy, probably that of an Apis. The whole, however, proved beyond a doubt that the object in view was that of being a dwelling for the dead. The Pyramids differ in age, form, and size. The most ancient appear to be stones piled on one another in a more or less pyramidal shape. The more recent ones are constructed with uniformity; some are somewhat flattened out at the summit, others run up entirely to a point. On others have been found deposits, an explanation of which may be gathered from the description Herodotus[60]gives us when referring to the Pyramid of Cheops of the manner in which the Egyptians carried out such works, so that Hirt includes such among the Pyramids which remained unfinished[61]. In the older Pyramids according to the latest evidence of Frenchmen the chambers and passages are more winding; in the more recent ones they are simpler, but entirely covered with hieroglyphics, to interpret which throughout will take several years.
In this way the Pyramids, despite all the wonder they arouse of their own accord, are really nothing but crystals, mere shells, which enclose a kernel, that is a departed spirit, and serve as custodians of his still consistent bodily presence and form. In this departed and deceased person, who secures an independent reproduction, we fail to find consequently any significance[62]; the architecture, however, which up to this point independently possessed its significance in itself as architecture, is now divided in its aim, and in this division issubservientto something else, whereas sculpture receives the function to give body to the genuineideal aspect, although in the first instance the individual figure in its unique and immediate natural shape is retained. We find consequently, on a general survey of the Egyptian art of building, on the one hand, the self-subsistent symbolical buildings; on the other, however, and more particularly in everything which is attached to the monuments of the dead, the specific determination of architecture to be an enclosure and nothing more, already clearly asserts itself. It is an essential concomitant of this, that architecture not only be limited to the construction of excavations and caves, but attest itself as an inorganic Nature built by human hands on the spot where men have actual need of it, and for a definite purpose will it to be.
Other nations have raised monuments of the same kind, sacred buildings as dwellings of the dead bodies, over whom they happen to be erected. As examples we may instance the mausoleum in Curia, and of more recent date that of Hadrian, the still existing Englesburg in Rome, a palace of careful construction raised in honour of a dead person, all of which were even in antiquity famous works. According to the description of Uhden[63]we may also mention in this connection a type of mortuary, which in its arrangement and environment imitated in its smaller aspects temples dedicate to gods. A temple of this kind possessed a garden, arbours, a spring, a vineyard, and moreover chapels, in which portrait statues of gods were placed. More particularly in the time of the Roman Empire were such monuments to the dead built with statues of the deceased under the image of gods such as Apollo, Venus, and Minerva. Figures like the above, no less than the entire construction, consequently received during that age the significance of an apotheosis and a temple in honour of the dead man, just as also among the Egyptians the process of embalming, the emblems placed thereby, and the sarcophagus attest that the deceased was treated as a god-like Osiris[64].
The most imposing and least complex constructions of this kind, however, are the Egyptian Pyramids. In this type we have the peculiar and essential line of the art of building, that is the straight one, and in general terms the uniformityand abstract simplicity[65]of forms. For architecture, as merely enclosure and inorganic Nature, or Nature that is not itself vitally and essentially suffused by the indwelling spirit in an independent mode, is unable to possess form except as one which is external to itself; external form, however, is not organic, but abstract and purely referable to the organs of sense[66]. However much the Pyramid already begins to receive the determining characteristics of the dwellings, yet the rectangular principle is still not throughout predominant, as it is in a real dwelling-house; it has still an independent determinacy, which is not merely of service to the purpose for which it is erected, and consequently closes up of itself by a process of gradation directly from the foundation to the apex.
(c) It is from this point that we may make the transition from the independent type of building to that of an art of construction, which is serviceable of apurpose.
There are two points of departure to this later type. There is on the one handsymbolicarchitecture, and on the other practical necessity and theimpulse of purposeto subserve that necessity. In the case of symbolical forms, as we have already had occasion to observe, architectonic purpose is merely an incidental feature, merely an external mode of co-ordination. The dwelling-house, on the contrary, erected as necessity itself, requires posts of wood, or just walls standing up straight with beams, which are laid across them at right angles, and a roofing, and constitutes, the other extreme. There can be no question that the necessity of this real and effective expediency makes its appearance as the result of its own demand. The distinction that may be raised, however, in answer to the question, whether genuine architecture—as we shall shortly have to consider it as the classic art of building—takes its rise solely in this necessity, or is to be deduced from independent and symbolical works, which conducted us of their own accord to buildings devoted to service, is the point in essential dispute.
(α) It is the force of circumstances which brings to the foreforms in architecture which are wholly stamped with a useful purpose, and the abstract deductions of science, such as the rectilinear line, the right angle, and the smooth surface. For in serviceable architecture that which constitutes the real object, is, in its independence, as a statue, or more closely as human individuals, that is community, a people, brought together for objects of general significance, which no longer have as their aim the satisfaction of physical wants, but are such in a religious and political sense. In a special degree the need asserts itself to shape an enclosure for the image, the statue of the gods, or generally for that which is independently placed before us and actually present as sacred. Memnons, Sphinxes, and the like stand up in the open, or in a grove, that is in the external environment of nature. Images of this kind, however, and still more human images of gods, are borrowed from another realm than that of immediate Nature. They belong to the world of imagination, and come into existence through the artistic powers of mankind. The purely natural environment is therefore not sufficient; they require for their external frame a ground and an enclosure, which shall be derived from the same source as their own, in other words, such as are the product of the imagination, and have received their form by means of artistic effort. It is only in an environment created by art that the gods find themselves at home[67]. In such a case, however, this external frame does not possess its object in itself, but it subserves something other than itself, and is subject to the principle of purpose or expediency.
If, however, these, in the first instance, purely serviceable forms are exalted to an expression of beauty they are unable to persist in their original abstract mode, and are forced to accept, in addition to what is merely symmetrical and harmonious, that which is organic, concrete, essentially itself conclusive and varied. And because this is so men are forced to reflect over distinctions of determinating form, no less than the express emphasis to be made on certain aspects of form, which is wholly superfluous where the question is only one of a definite purpose to be attained. A beam, for example, is from one point of view that which iscarried forward in a straight line; at the same time, however, it terminates at both extremes. In the same way a post which has to support either rafter or roof stands on the ground and reaches its terminating point where the rafter rests upon it. The architecture of service asserts distinctions of this kind and gives form to them by means of art; an organic design, on the contrary, such as a plant, or a human being, ay, whether we look at such above or below, but in any case throughout, has to be organically embodied, to be differentiated in the latter case consequently by feet and head, or in the former by roots and corona.
(β) Conversely symbolic architecture takes its point of departure more or less from organic forms of this kind, as we see is the case with sphinxes, memnons, and so forth; yet it is also unable wholly to exclude in its walls, doors, beams, obelisks, and the rest, the principle of the straight line and uniformity, and is generally obliged to accept the assistance of such principles appertinent to the genuine art of building as equality of size, interval of relative position, rectilinear progression of rows, in short, order and regularity when it proposes to place in a series and to set up in accordance with architectural design the colossal sculptured figures to which we have referred. By doing so it unites in itself both principles[68], whose union brings for result an architecture, the beauty of which is promoted along with the object to which it is subservient, albeit in the symbolic type these two aspects[69]still lie in separation side by side instead of being fused in unity.
(γ) We may therefore so conceive the transition that on the one side the art of building, hitherto self-subsistent in type, is forced to modify under scientific principles[70]the forms of organisms in the direction of regularity, and to pass into the province of proposed expediency; while conversely what is entirely such intended purpose in the form moves in opposition to the principle of the organic world. Where these two extremes come together, and mutually pass into one another, we get what is really beautiful classic architecture.
We may recognize this union, as it actually arises, clearly in the transformation now introduced of that which we already have met with in the architecture which was anterior under the form of columns. In other words, it is true that from one point of view walls are necessary to make an enclosure; but walls, too, can stand up independent, as we have already proved with examples, without making the enclosure complete, to which a roofing, no less than an enclosure of the sides, essentially contributes. But a roofing of this kind has to be supported. The simplest way of doing this is by columns, whose essential and, at the same time exclusive, rationale consists here in being simplysupports.For this reason walls are really a superfluity is so far as it is only a question of support. For supporting is a mechanical relation, and belongs to a province of gravity and its laws. And in this[71]gravity the weight of a particular body is concentrated in its point of gravity, and must be assisted at this centre in remaining horizontal without a fall. This is precisely what the column does, so that with it the power of support appears to be reduced to the minimum limit of exterior means to effect this. What a wall at great cost[72]effects, is equally effected by a few columns. It is a very beautiful characteristic of classic architecture not to set up more columns than are actually necessary to carry the weight of the rafter and that which reposes thereon. In genuine architecture columns, for purposes of mere decoration, are not truly beautiful. For the same reason also columns which stand up entirely alone do not perform their true function. No doubt triumphal columns have been erected, such as the famous ones in honour of Trajan and Napoleon: but these, too, are really but a pedestal for statues, and moreover covered with sculptured reliefs to commemorate and glorify the hero, whose image they carry. In the case of the column, then, it is of exceptional importance to see how in the course of architectural development it is compelled to divest itself of the concrete form of Nature before it can secure its more abstract form,the form, that is, which is as compatible with a definite object as it is with beauty.
(αα) Independent architecture, on account of the fact that it starts with organic images, makes use of human shapes, as, for example, we find in Egypt figures in some measure at least human, such as Memnons and the like, are utilized. This is, however, a mere superfluity, in so far, that is, as a definition of this character is not the true medium of support. We find among the Greeks that Caryatides are used in another mode and under a more severe obedience to rule to support superimposed weight, but such cannot be extensively employed. Moreover, we can only regard it as a misuse of the human form to crush it together under such burdens, and it is for this reason that Caryatides receive the character of the oppressed; their drapery suggests a state of slavery under which it is a degradation to carry such burdens.
(ββ) The more natural organic form for pillars and supports which have to bear a weight is consequently the tree, plant-life generally, a stem, a thin stalk which strives upwards in a vertical direction. The hole of a tree already carries of its own nature its crown of branches, the blade of corn the ear, the stem the flower. These forms, too, the Egyptian art of building, which has not as yet attained the liberty of viewing them in their abstract intension, borrows directly from Nature. In this respect the grandiose quality which we discover in the style of Egyptian palaces or temples—the colossal proportions of its rows of columns, the huge number of them, and withal the imposing mutual relations of the entire structure, has ever filled the spectator with wonder and astonishment. In these colonnades we do not find that all columns have the same form; they alternate between one, two, or three types. Denon, in his work on the Egyptian expedition, has collected a great number of such types. The combined effect is not as yet any uniform shape based on abstract principles of selection; rather the foundation is the shape of an onion, a reed-like efflorescence of leaf from the bulb, or, in other examples, a compression together of the root-leaves according to the manner of several kinds of plant. From this base, then, the thin stem breaks upwards straight, or mounts as column withtwisted coils, and the capital is also a separation of leaves from branches which suggests the process of a flower. The imitation, however, is not true to Nature, but the plant-like forms are drained off under the architectural impulse, and made to approximate to circular, geometrical, and regular forms, or straight lines, so that such columns, in their entirety, resemble what are usually described as arabesques.
(γγ) This is not the place to enter into a general discussion of thearabesquefor the reason that notionally it marks precisely the transition from the architecture which adopts as its basic form the natural organism to that which by its adoption of a more severe regularity is more strictly architectonic. When, however, the art of building has become free in its definitive character it relegates arabesques to the function of decoration and ornament. They are then pre-eminently forms of plants strained off, so to speak, or forms which originate from plants together with entwined forms of animals and human beings, or forms of animals in their passage over to plant-life. In so far as they purport to authenticate a symbolical significance the transitional passage between the different spheres of the animal kingdom hold good for it. Apart from such an interpretation they are simply the play of the imagination in the selection, combination and articulation of the most diverse forms of Nature. For architectural ornamentation of this kind, in the invention of which the imagination finds scope for its activity in the most varied creations of every kind, not even excluding utensils and drapery, the fundamental determinant and type is this, that whether it be plants, leaves, flowers, or animals, all are made to approximate to the abstract figures of science, in other words the inorganic. For this reason we frequently find arabesques to be stiff, untrue to organic life; and it is on this account that they are not unfrequently condemned and art is blamed for the use of them. This is exceptionally true of painting, though Raphael himself did not scruple to paint arabesques in great profusion, characterized with the highest charm, nobility of feeling, variety, and grace. No doubt arabesques are an antithesis to nature, whether we compare them with organic forms or the rigid laws of mechanics; but an opposition of this kind is not merely a right of art generally, but even an obligation under whicharchitecture is bound. It is only by this means that living forms in other respects unfitted for the art of building are made adaptable to the truly architectural style and brought into harmony with it. Such an adaptability is offered in an exceptionally close degree by vegetable Nature, which is also in the East utilized to an extravagant extent in arabesques; in other words plants are not as yet individual objects which possess feeling, but naturally present themselves as adapted to architectural design, by virtue of the fact that they form coverings and protection against rain, sunlight, and wind, and, generally speaking, do not possess the free oscillation[73]of lines which breaks forth from the regularity of scientific conceptions[74]. Architecturally used the regularity of leaves already present is yet further subjected to rule in the definition of rondure and straight line, so that by this means everything which it is possible to regard as distortion, unnaturalness, or stiffness in the plant-forms is fundamentally to be considered as a transformation adapted to the requirements of what is genuinely architectural.
In some such way in the column the real art of building passes from that which is purely organic imitation to the definite purpose of scientific rule, and from this to a position which again approximates to the organic result. We find it necessary to draw attention to this twofold point of departure from the actual necessities and the purposeless self-subsistency of architecture, because the true type unites both principles. The beautiful column originates in the natural form, which is then transformed into the post, that is, it submits to the uniformity and scientific precision of form.
The art of building, when it has attained the position peculiarly its own and adequate to its notional content is subservient in its products to an end, and a significance which it does not itself essentially possess. It becomes an inorganic environment, a whole that is co-ordinated and built conformably to the laws of gravity, whose configurations are subject to that which is severely regular, straight, rectangular, circular, the relations of definite number and quantity, that which is essentially limited measure and strict conformity to rule. Its beauty consists in this very relation to purpose, which, in its freedom from direct[75]admixture with what is organic, spiritual, and symbolical, and despite the fact that it subserves an end, nevertheless combines in an essentially exclusive totality, which suffers its own aim to appear through all its modifications, and in the harmonious co-ordination of its relations clothes that which is purely adapted to purpose in the forms of beauty. Architecture, however, at this stage[76]corresponds to its real notion, for the reason that it is not in a position to endow that which is in the most explicit sense spiritual with a fully adequate existence, and is consequently only able to inform what is external and devoid of spirit in its contrasted appearance with that which is spiritual.
We propose, in our consideration of this art of building, in which the relation of service is as truly a characteristic as that of beauty, to adopt the following course of argument.
In thefirstinstance we have to establish thegeneral notionand character of the same.
Secondly, we shall have to adduce theparticularfundamental determinants of the architectonic types which are deducible from the ulterior purpose which the classical work of art is erected to subserve.
Thirdly, we propose to survey the concrete reality which results from the development of classical architecture.
I do not, however, propose in discussing any of the above relations to enter into detail, but will limit myself to points of most general significance, a restriction more easy to observe in the present case than it was in that of the symbolical type of building.
(a) In conformity with the principle I have already more than once adverted to the fundamental idea of the genuine art of building consists in this, that the spiritual import is not exclusively reposed in the work of construction itself, which by this means becomes an independent symbol of ideal signification[77], but, with the converse result, that this significance secures its free existence outside the limits of architecture. This existence may be of a twofold character, to the extent in other words that another art of extensive range—I refer, above all, to the art of sculpture of the true classical type—sets before us and gives independent form to the significance, or the individual man in himself receives and gives effect to the same in the active verity of his life. Apart from this[78], these two aspects may still appear together. When, therefore, the Oriental architecture of the Babylonians, Hindoos, and Egyptians, on the one hand, gave symbolical form, in images of independent consistency, to that which was reckoned among these people as the absolute and true, or, from another aspect, enclosed, despite its external natural form, that which was conserved after death—in contrast to this what we find now is—whether we regard it relatively to art's activity, or to the life of actual existence—that the spiritual isseparatedfrom the work of constructioninindependent guisefor itself, and architecture becomes thevassalof what is spiritual, which constitutes the real significance and the determinating end. This end is consequently predominant. It controls the entire work; it determines the fundamental form of the same no less than its external skeleton, and neither suffers the material nor the individual's imagination and caprice to assert their independence in a self-substantive way, as was the case in symbolical architecture, or to develop, over and beyond the true purpose of the work, a superfluity of manifold parts and configurations, as is the case in the romantic type.
(b) In considering a construction of this character we have, then, first to ask ourselves not merely what are the circumstances under which it was erected, but what is its aim and purpose. To make its construction compatible with such considerations, to have a due regard for climate, position, and the environing landscape, to create a whole, one in spontaneous co-ordination, by a regard for all these aspects as subservient to one purpose, this is the task stated broadly, in the entire fulfilment of which the instincts and genius of the artist will appear conspicuous. Among the Greeks we find that it is public buildings, temples, colonnades, and halls utilized for the ordinary rest and commerce of the day, approaches, such as the famous ascent of the Acropolis in Athens, which are pre-eminently the objects of the builder's art. Private residences, on the other hand, were of a very simple character. With the Romans, on the contrary, it is the luxurious character of private houses, especially villas, which becomes prominent; and we may say the same thing of imperial palaces, public baths, theatres, circuses, amphitheatres, aqueducts, and springs. Buildings of this type, however, the utility of which throughout remains the commanding and directing principle, are merely able to accept beauty in a more or less decorative sense. The object most compatible with freedom of treatment in this sphere is that of religion—the temple-house as the enclosure of an individual which itself is appropriated by fine art, and placed before us by sculpture as the statue of the god.
(c) In the pursuit of aims such as those above mentioned, then, genuine architecture appears to be more free than thesymbolic type of the previous stage, which seizes on the organic forms from Nature, nay, more free than sculpture, which is compelled to accept the human form it finds, and unites itself with them and their general relations as presented it. Classical architecture rather invents its forms and their configuration, so far as the content is concerned, from ends of spiritual import and in respect to form from human reason without any prototype. This greater freedom must, in a relative sense, be admitted; but the province in which it is exercised remains restricted, and the treatment which belongs to the classical art of building, on account of the rationality[79]of its forms is, taken as a whole, somewhat of an abstract and dry character.
Frederich von Schlegel has described architecture as a frozen music; and in truth both these arts repose on a harmony of relations, which admit of being referred to number, and are consequently readily grasped in their fundamental characteristics. In our own case the fundamental determinant for these essential traits and their simple, more serious and imposing, or more charming and elegant relations is supplied by the dwelling-house, that is, walls, columns, beams brought together in the wholly crystalline forms of scientific deduction. What the relations are we are not permitted to reduce to the bare determinants of number and measure. But an oblong, quadrilateral figure with right angles is more pleasing than a square, because in the case of the oblong we are more thus affected both by equality and inequality[80]. If the one dimension, namely breadth, is half as large as the other, we have a relation which pleases; with an oblong which is long and narrow the reverse is the case. Along with this the mechanical relations of support and being supported must likewise be maintained in their genuine measure and law; a heavy entablature, for instance, cannot rest on slender and delicate columns, or conversely great structures be prepared in order after all to lay on them something very light. In all these mutual relations, such as that of the breadth to the length and height of thebuilding, the height of the columns to their thickness, the intervals and number of the columns, the character and variety or simplicity of decorations, the size of many plinths, borders, and so forth, a secret principle of rhythm[81]prevails among the ancients, which the instinct of the Greeks before all others has discovered; from which he may no doubt now and again deviate in points of detail, but the fundamental relations of which he is in general bound to preserve in order that he may not fall away from beauty.
(a) We have already alluded to the old controversy whether the material of wood or stone is to be accepted as the point of departure in building, and whether also it is from this difference of material that the architectural types proceed. For the real art of building at least, in so far as it lays emphasis on the aspect of ultimate purpose and elaborates the fundamental type of the dwelling on the lines of beauty we may accept wood as the more original of the two.
This is the conclusion of Hirt, following in this respect Vitruvius, and his conclusion has been much disputed. I will in a few words offer my own view on the matter in dispute, In the ordinary course of such reflections we seek to discover the abstract and simple law for a concrete result assumed as already present. It is in this way that Hirt looks for the basic model of Greek buildings, in like manner the design[82], the anatomical framework, and finds it, so far as form and the material connected with it is concerned, in the dwelling and building of wood. No doubt a house as such is built mainly as a dwelling, a protection against storm, rain, weather, animals, and human beings, and requires an enclosure that is complete, in order that a family or a larger community of men may collect in independent seclusion and may look after their necessities and pursue their avocationsin such seclusion. The house is a structure throughout with a definite purpose, a creation of mankind for human objects. For this reason we find him occupied upon it in many ways and with many objects, and the structure is articulated in an aggregate pile of all kinds of mechanical ways of mutual interlacement and imposition[83]in order to hold in position and secure, according to the laws of gravity, what men are compelled to look after, that is, the making stable what is erected[84], the closing it in, the support of what is superimposed, and not merely in the way of support, but, where the structure rests horizontally, the preservation of it in such a position, and, further, the uniting of all that clashes together at nooks and corners and so on. Now it is quite true that the house makes it necessary that the enclosure should be complete; and for this walls are most serviceable and safest; and from this point of view the building of stone appears most to answer the purpose. We may, however, with equal ease construct our fence with posts standing in juxtaposition, upon which then beams will rest, which at the same time both bind together and secure the perpendicular posts. Finally we come to the cover of all and roofing. In the temple house, moreover, the fact of enclosure is not the main fact of importance, but the feature of support and being supported. For this mechanical result the wooden structure is obviously the nearest to hand and the most natural. For the post, as that which supports, which at the same time requires a means of conjunction, and suffers the same to weigh on it in the shape of the cross-beam, constitutes here all that goes to the root of the matter. This essential division of parts and connection as well as the association of these aspects for a definite purpose belongs to the very nature of a wooden structure, which has its necessary material directly supplied it by the tree. In the tree we find already, without working upon it to any considerable or laborious extent, both post and beam, in so faras, that is, the wood already by itself possesses a definite form and consists of separate lengths, more or less in the straight line, lengths which can be brought together into rectangular corners no less than those which are acute or obtuse, and in this way provide corner pillars, supports, cross-beams and roof. Stone, on the contrary, never at any time possesses a form so definite. In contrast to the tree it is a formless mass, which first must be intentionally isolated and worked upon, in order that it may fit in juxtaposition to or superposition on other pieces and so once more be brought together with such. It requires, in short, several processes before it receives the form and serviceableness which wood already possesses independently. Moreover, stone material, when it is used in great masses, invites rather excavations and generally speaking, beingab initiorelatively formless, is capable of every kind of form, for which reason it is rather the congenial material for the symbolical as also the romantic types of building, while wood, by reason of its natural form of straight stems, is demonstrably without mediation more serviceable to that more severe type of purpose and observance of rule, which is the fountain-head of classical architecture. In this respect the structure of stone is mainly predominant with the self-substantive type of building, although even among the Egyptians, in their colonnades bordered with plinths, other considerations supervene, which the structure of wood is able more readily and in the first instance to satisfy. Conversely we do not find that classical architecture restricts itself entirely to buildings of wood, but, on the contrary, where it is elaborated in conformity with beauty, executes its buildings in stone; but in such a way, however, that we are from a certain point of view still able to recognize in the architectural forms the original principle of the wood structure, if also from a further one definite relations attach which do not belong to that kind of building as such.
(b) The points of fundamental importance, which emphasize the dwelling-house as the basic type of the temple, may be in all essential particulars enumerated as follows. If we consider with closer attention the house in its mechanical relation to itself we shall find, in accordance with what we have already stated, on the one hand, masses of architecturalform which serve assupportand, on the other, those thatare supportedboth being united for stability and security. Thirdly, we have before us the definite aspect of enclosure and limitation according to the three dimensions of length, breadth, and height. A construction, moreover, which, by the fact of its being a mutual correlation of definite aspects distinct from each other, is a concrete whole, is bound to declare this unity in its constitution. So we find here that essential differences arise which perforce assert themselves no less in their division and specific elaboration than they do in their rationalconnexus.
(α) Of first importance in this respect to consider is the aspect of service in the way ofsupport.When we speak of masses that support we commonly, under the influence of every-day needs, think of the wall as the most secure and reliable means of support. Support as such, however, as we have already seen, is not the exclusive principle of the wall; for the wall serves essentially as a means of enclosure and connection, and for this reason is a predominant feature in the romantic type of building. What is the peculiarity of Greek architecture is this, that it gives direct form to the principle of support by itself, and for this object employs columns as a fundamental contribution to the purpose and beauty of its architecture.
(αα) The aim of the column is to support and only this; and although a series of columns set up in a straight line make a boundary, such an enclosure falls short of a secure wall or partition, and is, in fact, expressly cancelled by the genuine partition and placed in a position of free independence. Owing to this exclusive object of support which pertains to the column, it is of first importance that it should display the aspect of such a purpose relatively to the weight which rests upon it. Consequently it should neither be too strong nor too slender, nor again too compressed, not mount upwards to such a height and with such ease as though the weight upon it was not treated seriously.
(ββ) And just as this column is thus differentiated from the enclosing wall, or fence, it is further from another point of view distinct from the merepost.In other words, the post is fixed directly in the ground and ceases with like directness at the precise point where a weight is reposedupon it. For which reason its determinate length, its commencement and termination equally appear as a negative limitation by means of something else, as a determinacy which is the result of chance, which it does not possess in its own right. Commencement and termination, however, are defining characteristics, which are part of the very notion of the supporting column, and consequently must declare themselves in it as the conditions[85]of its own substance. This is the ground of the fact that architecture, in the elaboration of its beauty, assigns to the column a base and a capital. In the Tuscan order, no doubt, we find no base; the column springs immediately from the ground. This being so, however, the length appears to the vision as something accidental. We are ignorant whether the column has not been to some undefined extent driven into the soil by the superimposed weight. In order that its commencement must not expose this undefined and accidental appearance it must with intention have the foot assigned to it, on which it stands, and which expressly enables us to recognize the commencement as in reality such. Art will therefore affirm as part of its function that the column begins at a certain place and for the rest it will make the security, and stable subsistence obvious to the eyes, and set the vision at rest in this respect also. For similar reasons our column should terminate in a capital, which is quite as much evidence of the real function of being a support as it is an affirmation of the fact that the column terminates here. This conception of a commencement and conclusion which are both deliberate is what affords us, in fact, the profounder explanation of base and capital. An analogous case is that of a cadence in music, which requires a secure resolution, or that of a book which should terminate without a full stop, or should start off without a capital letter, in the making of which, however, especially in the Middle Ages, large illuminated letters have been employed, with similar decorations at the work's conclusion, in order to bring prominently before the mind the facts of commencement and termination. However much, therefore, both base and capital appear to exceed what is obviously required we must notregard them as a decorative superfluity, or think of simply deducing them from the example of Egyptian columns, which still imitate the type of the vegetable kingdom. Figures of organic design, such as are represented by sculpture in animal and human form, begin and terminate in the free outlines they themselves present, for it is the rational organism itself, which gives outline to the form working thereon from its own intrinsic nature. Architecture, on the contrary, possesses for the column and its shapes nothing beyond the mechanical relation of support, and the spatial distance from the ground to the point where the weight that is supported terminates the column. Art, however, is bound to emphasize and disclose the particular aspects which lie together in this determinate relation for the reason that they are essential features of the column. Its precise length and its twofold boundary both above and below, that is, no less than its relation as support, must consequently not appear as coming to it incidentally and by virtue of something else, but must also be represented as immanent in its very being.
With respect to the form of column other than its base and capital, it is in the first place round, circular-shaped, for it has to stand up in free and independent self-seclusion. The most essentially simple, securely exclusive, rationally defined[86], and most regular line is in fact the circle. For this reason the column already proves from its shape that it is not adapted to form an even surface when placed in adjacent rows, as is the case with adjacent posts which are squared to the rectangular corner, and so present walls and partitions, but it has merely the object to offer a support under its own self-limitation. Moreover the columnar structure is ordinarily reduced in size gradually, as it ascends from one-third of its height, it becomes less in circumference and thickness, because the portions beneath have to carry that above, and it is felt necessary to emphasize and make obvious also this mechanical relation of the several parts of the column itself. Finally, we frequently find that columns are grooved; thereason of this is twofold, first, essentially to diversify the simple form, and secondly to make the columns appear more thick by means of such a division where this is necessary.
(γγ) Although, then, the column is set up in independent isolation it has none the less to make it appear evident that it is not placed there for its own sake, but as subservient to the mass which it is erected to support. In so far as the house requires a boundary on every side the singular column is therefore not sufficient, but others have to be placed adjacent to it, in other words we come upon the definite conception of a diversity of columns placed in aseries.And when several columns support the same weight this common service is at the same time that which determines the equal height which they all possess and which unites them together, in other words the beam. This marks the transition from the aspect of support to the opposed object supported.
(β) That which columns support is theentablaturesuperimposed. The relation of most importance to be considered here is that ofrectangularity.Not merely in its relation to the ground, but also in that to the entablature the supporting structure must be rectangular. For the horizontal position is by the laws of gravity that which is alone intrinsically the most stable and fitting, and the right angle the only definitely secure one. The acute and obtuse angles are, on the contrary, indefinite, and both vary in their degree and are subject to contingency.
We may differentiate between the component parts of the entablature as follows:
(αα) Thearchitrave, that is, the main beam, rests immediately upon the columns which stand adjacent in a direct line of equal height; this unites the columns together and places on them a weight shared equally. As beam, and nothing more, it merely requires the form of four level surfaces mutually related as rectangular in all three dimensions and their abstract regularity. Owing to the fact, however, that the architrave as to one part of it is supported by the columns, and in another constitutes the stay of the rest of the entablature, and it is from this latter again that itself receives the necessary relation of being a support, progressive architecture also places in external relief thistwofold aspect of the main beam by emphasizing in the upper portions of the aspect of support by means of jutting plinths and so forth. In this respect therefore the main beam is not merely related to the columns which support it, but in like degree to other burdens which repose upon it.
(ββ) These in the first instance constitute thefrieze.The border or frieze consists in one part of it of the tops of the joists[87], which rest on the entablature, in another part of the spaces between the same. For this reason the frieze contains more essential differences than those distinguishing the architrave, and is bound to emphasize them more sharply, especially in the case where architecture, although executed in stone materials, follows more stringently the fundamental type of the wood construction. This is supplied us by the distinction between triglyphs and metopes. In other words triglyphs are the tops of the beams which are divided into three spaces, the metopes are the rectangular spaces between the separate triglyphs. In former times they were in all probability left bare, in later, however, they are filled up[88], nay, even covered over and decorated with reliefs.
(γγ) The frieze, moreover, which rests on the entablature, carries thewreathorcornice.The function of this is to support the roof, which completes the whole upwards. Here we at once meet with questions of what form this final limitation is to be. For we may have in this respect two kinds of termination, either the horizontal and rectangular, or the one inclined to an acute or obtuse angle. If we look at the mere question of natural necessity we shall see that Southerners, who suffer little from rain and storm, merely require protection from sunlight; in their case a horizontaland rectangular roofing of house is likely to suffice. Northerners, on the contrary, have to protect themselves against inevitable showers of rain, against contingency of snow, that the weight may not prove too great; they require inclining roofs. At the same time, in the case of a fine art of building, mere necessity is not only of account; as art it has also to satisfy the profounder requirements of what is pleasing and beautiful. What mounts upwards from the ground must be conceived with a base, a foot, on which it stands and which serves it forsupport; and in addition to this columns and the partitions of genuine architecture supply us visibly with themeans of support.That which closes all above, the roofing, has no longer to support a weight, but merely to be supported, and is bound to declare in itself this definite aspect that it no longer supports anything. In other words, it must be so constructed that it is actually unable to support, and consequently fine down to an angle, whether it be acute or obtuse. Ancient temples have in consequence no horizontal roofing, but two roof surfaces which meet at obtuse angles, and it is out of consideration for beauty that the building is thus terminated. In short, roof surfaces that are horizontal do not give us the appearance of a building entirely complete; a horizontal flat may always add further weight to its height; this the line in which inclining roof surfaces terminate is no longer able to do. To take an analogous case in the art of painting, it is the pyramidal form in the grouping of figures which best satisfies artistic taste.
(γ) The final determining factor which we have to consider is that of theenclosing, thewalls, andpartitions.Columns no doubt support and form a boundary, but they do not enclose; they are, on the contrary, as such boundary, incompatible with the interior which is hemmed in by walls. If we require such an absolute enclosure we must have also thick and solid dividing walls erected. This is actually the case in temple construction.
(αα) We have nothing further to add with respect to walls except the fact that they must be built in a straight and even line and perpendicularly for the reason that walls that rise obliquely to acute and obtuse angles present the threatening aspect of collapse, and possess no directiononce and for all securely defined; it can merely appear as a matter of chance that they are reared in whatever more acute or obtuse angle it may happen to be. The demand of scientific rule and purpose alike is here also once more for the right angle.
(ββ) Owing to the fact that walls act as enclosures no less than as means of support, while we restricted the true function of the column to that of mere support, we approximate to the conception that where we have to satisfy these two distinct needs of support and enclosure columns may be set up and may be united to one another by means of thick walls in such partitions; it is thus that we gethalfcolumns.In this way, for example, Hirt, following Vitruvius, makes a start in his original type of construction with four corner-posts. If the necessity of an enclosure is to be satisfied no doubt our columns, if we are obliged to include such, must be walled up and it is not difficult to prove that half columns date from remote antiquity. Hirt, for instance[89], affirms that the employment of half columns is as old as the art of building itself, and deduces their origin from the circumstance that columns and piers supported and carried the roofing and other superimposed structures, but at the same time rendered partition walls necessary as a protection against sun and inclement weather. Since, however, the columns already supported the main building in a sufficient manner, it was not necessary to erect partition walls of either so thick or firm a material as the columns, and consequently this latter, as a rule, abutted on the exterior of the building. This theory of their origin may be correct, but for all that half columns are repugnant to a rational view of them; we have, in short, here two ends standing side by side inopposition, and essentiallyconfounding each other, without any law of necessity being disclosed. It is of course possible to defend half columns, if the point of departure in considering even the column is so strictly that of the structure of wood, that we regard their essential function to be that of an enclosure. Placed in thick walls, however, the column has lost all its significance; it is degraded to the mere post. The true column is in its nature round, essentially complete, and expresses by this very trait of exclusiveness in avisible way that it is antagonistic to an even surface, and, consequently, every inclusion in a wall. If, therefore, we desire to have the support of walls such must be even, not circular columns, but surfaces which can be extended evenly in a wall.
As far back as 1773 Goethe exclaimed with spirit to the like effect in his youthful essay, "On the German Art of Building": "What does it matter to us, you philosophical art-critic of the latest French school, that original man, spurred on by his needs to invent, drove into the ground four trunks, then fastened four poles on top and covered the whole with branches and moss. And after all it is wholly false to say that this hut of yours was the first begotten on earth. Two poles that cross each other at their ends, two behind and one stuck diagonally above in forest fashion is and remains, as you may any day see for yourself in the huts of the fields and the vineyard slopes, a far earlier discovery from which it is quite impossible for you to deduce a principle for your pig-stye." In other words Goethe seeks to prove that columns enclosed in walls placed in buildings whose essential object is that of mere enclosure have no meaning. This is not because he would not recognize the beauty of the column. On the contrary, he is loud in its praise. "But take good care," he adds, "not to employ them improperly: it is their nature tostand up free.Woe to the wretch who has soldered their slender growth in blockish walls." It is from such a point of view that he proceeds to consider the building art of the Middle Ages and our own time and affirms: "The column is of no value as a constituent feature of our dwellings: it rather contradicts the essence of all our buildings. Our houses do not consist offour columnsin four corners; they consist offour wallson four sides, which standin the place of all columns, totally exclude such, and where they are thrust in they are a burdensome superfluity. This applies to our palaces and churches, subject to one or two exceptions, which it is not necessary to particularize." We have in the above statement, which is the result of independent observation of the facts, the principle of the column correctly expressed. The column must place its foot down in front of the wall and appear in complete independence of it. In our more modern architecture no doubt we find pilasters freelyused; architects, have, however, regarded them as the repeated adumbration of previous columns, and made them flat rather than round.