FIG. 131. Perpendicular Tower, All Saints, Derby 132. Debased Window, Ladbrooke 133, 134. Debased Windows, S. Mary's Hall and Wadham College, Oxford 135, 136. Italian Windows 141. 142. Modern Italian Doric Order, with Mutules 143. Modern Italian Ionic Order Modern Italian Corinthian Order 144. 213 147. Capital and Section of Arch, S. Leonard's, Shoreditch 239 A RUDIMENTARY MANUAL OF ARCHITECTURE. CHAPTER I. EARLY HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. RCHITECTURE is the art of constructing buildings upon correct and scientific principles, in which strength, utility, and beauty are combined, and the development of this art in any country may be generally measured by its civilisation. Increased attention to architecture is also the sign of prosperity in a nation, for this art can be cultivated only by those who have a certain amount of wealth; it is also the sign of peace, for proper attention cannot be paid by a nation to its advancement, or to the erection of noble buildings, during the havoc and exhaustion of war. Architecture is the noblest of the arts, as press B ing all other arts into its service, for those of the sculptor and painter occupy but a subordinate part in producing the general result. Having its origin merely in the shelter which our forefathers sought from the weather, or the protection they needed from enemies, the log-constructed hut of the earlier inhabitants of Europe has expanded itself into the Parthenon of Athens, and the Minsters of York and Cologne. Good architecture is always truthful: i.e. it will always be what it seems to be both in construction and material, conveying an impression of power or grandeur, as well as beauty and variety of form. It has also an historical character, making a building show on its face, by its arrangement and ornament, the age in which it was built, as plainly as if that date was carved upon the surface. The original types of the various styles of architecture may be in a measure traced back to the very earliest times, and were mainly determined by the habits of life of the tribes who originally peopled the various countries of the globe. Those who subsisted by hunting were mostly content to coil themselves up at night in the skin of a slain beast in some cave or hollow in the earth; those who led a nomadic life, who were constantly moving about from place to place to obtain fresh pasture and water for their flocks, dwelt in tents, which were easy of removal, while those who cultivated the soil, and lived upon the fruits which their industry extracted from it, built themselves more substantial and permanent dwellings near the scene of their labours by means of logs of timber cut from the forest. In the cave, the tent, and the log-hut, therefore, are seen the original types of construction of Egyptian, Assyrian, Indian, Chinese, and Greek architecture. The heavy massiveness and tomblike forms of Assyria and Egypt, as also the remains of large temples of unknown date in Central India, which are excavated out of the solid rock, bespeak their descent from the cave hollowed out of the earth. The fairy-like lightness and tent-like forms of Chinese pagodas, which have been built in a similar manner for the last three thousand years, show that the tent was the habitation of the races from whom that ancient people sprang. It is scarcely necessary to say that in Chinese architecture, as in their other arts, everything retains its original form, seeming never to have advanced beyond its first phase of development. The glorious fabrics of ancient Greece, ruins of many of which are still in existence, exhibit in their decay more plainly than ever the principle of the wooden uprights or trunks of trees with the horizontal beam laid along the top, in other words, the elements of the timber structures of the early Hellenic races; each style named showing thus plainly the rudimentary forms from which they were respectively developed. Two great principles of mechanical construction pervade all architectural works, and practically divide the architecture of all ages and countries into two styles. These are the principles of the ENTABLATURE and the ARCH, Two upright bodies, walls, posts, or pillars require to be connected at the top to form a proper architectural work, and in the method of effecting this connection consists the real difference of construction between all the various styles of architecture. The Entablature effects this union by simply laying a horizontal piece on the tops of the uprights, which, when of stone, are placed, as Mr. Pugin says, 'just so far apart that the blocks laid on them would not break by their own weight.' The principle, however, is the same, whether the material employed consist of wood or stone. The necessity for habitations of some sort is so universal and imperative, that the art of building must be developed in some shape or other by all races as soon as they are sufficiently civilised; and |