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Title: A History of Architecture in all Countries, Volume 1, 3rd ed.

Author: James Fergusson

Editor: Richard Phené Spiers

Release date: November 1, 2017 [eBook #55871]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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Transcriber’s Note

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in
the public domain. Scale bars marked '1 in.' have been added to
illustrations for which a scale is given (e.g. 50 ft. to 1 in.) to
indicate the size of the image as printed in the original book.
Ditto marks have been replaced by the text they represent. Some
corrections have been made to the printed text. These are listed in
a second transcriber’s note at the end of the text.

ELEVATION OF FAÇADE OF
COLOGNE CATHEDRAL.

A

HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE

IN ALL COUNTRIES,

FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE PRESENT DAY.

By JAMES FERGUSSON, D.C.L., F.R.S., M.R.A.S.,
FELLOW ROYAL INST. BRIT. ARCHITECTS,
&c. &c. &c.

Section of the Parthenon, showing the Author’s
views as to the admission of light.

IN FIVE VOLUMES.—Vol. I.

THIRD EDITION.

Edited by R. PHENÉ SPIERS, F.S.A.,
FELLOW ROYAL INST. BRITISH ARCHITECTS.

LONDON:
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET,
1893.

The right of Translation is reserved.

FERGUSSON’S ARCHITECTURE.

Third Edition, with 330 Illustrations, 2 vols., medium 8vo, 31s. 6d.

A HISTORY CF THE MODERN STYLES OF
ARCHITECTURE.
By the late JAMES FERGUSSON, F.R.S.

A New Edition, Revised and Enlarged. With a Special Account of the
Architecture of America.

By ROBERT KERR, Professor of Architecture at King’s College, London.

BY THE SAME.

New and Cheaper Edition, with 400 Illustrations, medium 8vo., 31s. 6d.

A HISTORY OF INDIAN AND EASTERN
ARCHITECTURE.

LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.

EDITOR’S PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.

A sketch of the life of the late Mr. James Fergusson, and an article by Prof.
Kerr on the peculiar qualifications with which he was endowed for the
position he took as an architectural historian, having appeared in the preface
of the third edition of the “History of the Modern Styles of Architecture,”
published in 1891, it is not necessary to do more than refer to them. A brief
summary, however, of the several works he published on the History of the
Architectural Styles may possibly be of some interest here as a record.
Mr. Fergusson’s first work dealing with the History of the Styles of
Architecture was a large octavo volume, published in 1849, under the title
of “An Historical Enquiry into the True Principles of Beauty in Art, more
especially with reference to Architecture.” About one-third of the volume
was devoted to an introduction, to which Mr. Fergusson attached so much
importance that, in his preface he stated he considered it to be the text, and
the rest of the work (viz., the description of the various styles) merely the
illustration of what was there stated. The pith of this introduction was
subsequently published in his later works, and a valuable chapter added to it
on “Ethnography as Applied to Architecture.” The work contained only the
history of the Early Styles from Egyptian to Roman, but it had been the
intention of its author to treat of the Christian, Pagan, and Modern Styles of
Architecture in subsequent volumes.
This intention was never carried out, but the book formed the basis of
another work published in 1855, entitled, “The Handbook of Architecture,”
which included the history of the Indian, Chinese, Assyrian, Egyptian,
Greek, Roman, Sassanian, and Saracenic Styles, in the first volume, and of
Christian Art in the second. A second edition, a reprint only of this,
appeared in 1859, and shortly afterwards, in 1862, a third volume was
published, dealing with the History of the Modern Styles. On the revision

and expansion of the work in 1873, this third volume became the fourth as
hereinafter explained.
In 1865 and 1867 the materials of the “Handbook” were rearranged to
form an historical sequence, instead of a topographical one, and a new work
was published under the title of the “History of Architecture”; the first part
devoted to Ancient Architecture from Egyptian to Roman; the second to
Christian; and the third part to Pagan Architecture, including Saracenic,
Indian, Chinese, and Mexican.
In 1874 a second edition of this work appeared (from which the whole of
the Indian and Chinese sections were omitted and published separately in
1876 as a third volume, under the title of “Indian and Eastern
Architecture”), and many additions were made to the Assyrian and
Byzantine chapters.
In the present edition (1893), which constitutes the third edition of the
“History of Architecture,” the editor has endeavoured to the best of his
ability to follow the course which Mr. Fergusson himself adopted in
publishing new editions, viz., to rewrite those portions which subsequent
discoveries had proved to be either incorrect or doubtful. For instance, in
Egyptian Architecture the accurate measurements of the pyramids made by
Mr. Flinders Petrie, and his correction of Lepsius’s theories as regards the
Labyrinth, have placed information at the editor’s disposal which was
unknown to Mr. Fergusson. Corrections of this kind are inserted in the text.
On the other hand, absolutely nothing new has appeared on Assyrian
Architecture, and, therefore, Mr. Fergusson’s theories respecting the
restoration of the Assyrian palaces have been retained; the tendency of the
opinion of archæologists having, however, developed rather in the direction
of vaulted roofs to the principal halls, footnotes have been appended giving
the views of foreign archæologists on the subject, between which and Mr.
Fergusson’s views the student is left to judge.
In Persian work the accuracy of Mr. Fergusson’s views respecting the
arrangement of the plans of the Persian palaces, which were first
promulgated in 1855, has been confirmed by later explorations at
Persepolis, Susa, and Pasargadæ, and footnotes giving the records of the
same are appended.
The results of recent discoveries in Greece and Italy have been recorded,
sometimes in the text, sometimes in footnotes; and changes have been made

in the chapter on Parthian and Sassanian Architecture, M. Dieulafoy’s
photographs having enabled the editor to correct some of the woodcuts
copied from Coste’s illustrations.
Important changes have been made in the Second Part, devoted to
Christian Architecture; the Byzantine style has been placed first, not only
for chronological reasons as the first perfected Christian style, but from the
impossibility of otherwise following the development of the Early Christian
styles in Italy during the fifth and following centuries.
The Romanesque, or Early Christian, style in Italy has been included in
Book II., together with the later developments of style in that country; this
has enabled the editor to bring the description of St. Mark’s, Venice, into the
first chapter under Italy, to which chronologically it belongs, instead of
placing it after the Pointed Italian Gothic style. The Italian Byzantine
chapter has been omitted, and the two or three buildings described under it
transferred to the Byzantine-Romanesque chapter. By the new arrangement
it is possible now to follow almost chronologically the various phases of
style in Italy.
In the Book on the Byzantine style, some of the examples in Jerusalem
ascribed to Constantine have been transferred to Justinian’s time; but this
has naturally followed another very important change—the description of
the so-called Mosque of Omar, the Dome of the Rock, has been transferred
to the Saracenic style. It is well known that Mr. Fergusson had few
supporters in his theories respecting the builders of this structure, and Prof.
Hayter Lewis’s work has now removed all doubt as to its having been the
work of the Caliph Abd el Melik and his followers. This change has
necessitated a complete revision of the description of the Holy Sepulchre,
for which Prof. Willis’s and Prof. Hayter Lewis’s works have furnished the
chief authorities.
Various corrections have been made in the dates ascribed to the Mosques
in Cairo, and the French Expedition in Tunis has enabled the editor to add a
plan and view of the great Mosque of Kerouan, the most sacred
Mahomedan edifice after that of Mecca, and the one great early example of
which scarcely anything was known.
About forty woodcuts have been specially prepared for this new edition,
half of which are of subjects not before illustrated, the remainder replacing

those which were defective or absolutely incorrect. In addition to these,
various alterations where required have been made to other woodcuts.
The several authorities consulted have been acknowledged in the course
of the work, but the editor desires here to express his obligations to Mr.
Fitzroy Doll, Mr. G. H. Birch, and Mr. Arthur Hill for advice on the
German, English, and Irish sections respectively.

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION.

During the period that has elapsed since the first edition of this work was
published,[1] no important work on the History of Architecture has appeared
which throws any new light on either the theory or practice of the art, and,
except in India, no new buildings have been discovered and no monographs
published that materially add to our general stores of knowledge.
The truth of the matter appears to be that the architectural productions of
all the countries mentioned in these two volumes have been examined and
described to a sufficient extent for the purposes of the general historian. A
great deal of course remains to be done before all the information required
for the student of any particular style can be supplied, but nothing of any
great importance probably remains to be discovered in the countries of the
Old World, nor anything that is at all likely to alter any views or theories
founded on what we at present know.
The one exception to this satisfactory state of things is our knowledge, or
rather want of knowledge, regarding the history of the ancient architecture
of the New World, treated of in the last few pages of this work. No
important addition has lately been made to the little we knew before, and it
is now to be feared that Mr. Squier’s long-expected work on the Antiquities
of Peru may never see the light, at least not under the auspices of its author,
and the Count de Waldeck’s work adds very little, if anything, to what we
knew before. What is really wanted is that some one should make himself
personally acquainted with all the various styles existing between the upper
waters of the Colorado and the desert of Atacama to such an extent as to be
able to establish the relative sequence of their dates and to detect affinities
where they exist, or to point out differences that escape the casual observer.
Photography may in the next few years do something towards enabling
stay-at-home travellers to do a good deal towards this, but photography will
never do all, and local knowledge is indispensable for the exact

determination of many now obscure questions. The problem is in fact
identical with that presented to Indian antiquaries some thirty years ago. At
that time we knew less of the history of Indian architecture than we now
know of American, but at the present day the date of every building and
every cave in India can be determined with almost absolute certainty to
within fifty, or at the outside one hundred, years; the sequence is
everywhere certain, and all can be referred to the race and religion that
practised that peculiar style. In America there are the same strongly marked
local peculiarities of style as in India, accompanied by equally easily
detected affinities or differences, and what has been done for India could, I
am convinced, easily be accomplished for America, and with even more
satisfactory and more important results to the history and ethnography of
that great country.
The subject is well worthy of the attention of any one who may undertake
it, as it is the only means we now know of by which the ancient history of
the country can be recovered from the darkness that now enshrouds it and
the connexion of the Old world with the New—if any existed—can be
traced, but it is practically the only chapter in the history of architecture
which remains to be written.
Notwithstanding this paucity of new material, the completion of M.
Place’s great work on Khorsabad, Wood’s explorations at Ephesus, Dr.
Tristram’s travels in Moab, with other minor works, and new photographs
of other places, have furnished some twenty or thirty woodcuts to this work,
either of new examples or in substitution for less perfect illustrations. More
than this, the experience gained in the interval from reading, and personal
familiarity with buildings not before visited, especially in Italy, have
enabled me to add considerably to the text and to correct or modify
impressions based on less perfect information. These, with a careful
revision of the text throughout, will, it is hoped, be found to render this
edition an improvement to a considerable extent over that which preceded
it.

As mentioned in the preface to the volume containing the History of the
Modern Styles of Architecture, the scheme of the present edition is that the
two volumes now published shall contain a description of all the ancient

styles of architecture known to exist either in the Old or New world, except
India.
In the first edition the Indian styles occupied about 300 pages, and were
illustrated by 200 woodcuts. In the present one it is proposed to double the
extent of the text and to add such further illustrations as may be found
requisite fully to illustrate the subject. When this is done it will form a
separate volume, either the third of the general History of Architecture, or a
complete and independent work by itself, and sold separately. If nothing
unforeseen occurs to prevent it, it is expected that the work will be
published before the end of next year (1875).
The History of the Modern Styles of Architecture, published last year,
will then form the fourth and concluding volume of the work, or may be
considered as a complete and independent treatise, and, like the volume
containing the History of Indian Architecture, will be sold separately.
As stated in the preface to the first edition, it was originally intended that
chapters should be added on what were then known as Celtic or Druidical
remains. When, however, the subject came to be carefully looked into for
that purpose, it was found that the whole was such a confused mass of
conflicting theories and dreams, that no facts or dates were so established
that they could be treated as historical. The consequence was that the
materials collected for the purpose were, in 1872, published in a separate
volume, entitled ‘Rude Stone Monuments,’ in the form rather of an
argument than of a history.
As was to be expected, a work of that nature, and which attacked the
established faith in the Druids, has been exposed to a considerable amount
of hostile criticism, but nothing has yet appeared that at all touches the
marrow of the question, or invalidates any of the more important
conclusions therein arrived at. On the other hand, everything that has since
come to light has tended to confirm them in a most satisfactory manner.
Colonel Brunon’s researches, for instance, at and around the Madras’en, in
Algeria, have proved that the tumuli in that cemetery belong to Roman
times.[2] In India sculptured and inscribed dolmens have been dug up and
photographed, so that their age is no longer doubtful, and others, as archaic
in form as any, are found belonging to reigning families of chiefs, and still
used by them. Last, not least, Dr. Schliemann’s explorations at Hissarlik
have deprived the prehistoric advocates of one of their most plausible

arguments. At a depth of 81⁄2 metres from the surface he found the remains
of a walled city, with paved streets, and rich in gold, silver, and copper, with
their alloys electron and bronze, and every sign of a high civilization.
Above this, through four or five metres of successive deposits, indicating
probably a duration of twice as many centuries, no trace of metal was
found, but, as he expresses, an “ungeheure menge,” and, in another place, a
“kolossale menge,” an unlimited number of rude stone implements of every
sort. Above this again, the remains of the Greek city of Ilium Novum.
If this were the case in Asia Minor in historic times, it is in vain to argue
that, when the imported civilization of the Romans passed away, the Britons
may not have returned to their old faith and old practices, and adhered to
them till a new conquest and a new faith led to their being finally
abandoned. It may, or it may not, have been so, but till some better
argument than has yet been brought forward is adduced to prove that it was
not so, the à priori argument of improbability will not now avail much.
Whenever the facts, as stated in the ‘Rude Stone Monuments,’ are admitted,
or any better set of conclusions substituted for them, their history may be
added as a fifth volume to this work. Till then, people must be content with
the hazy nihilism of the prehistoric myth.

FROM THE PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

Although the present work may in some respects be considered as only a
new edition of the ‘Handbook of Architecture,’ still the alterations, both in
substance and in form, have been so extensive as to render the adoption of a
new title almost indispensable. The topographical arrangement, which was
the basis of the ‘Handbook,’ has been abandoned, and a historical sequence
introduced in its place. This has entirely altered the argument of the book,
and, with the changes and additions which it has involved, has rendered it
practically a new work; containing, it is true, all that was included in the
previous publication, but with a great deal that is new and little that retains
its original form.
The logical reasons for these changes will be set forth in their proper
place in the body of the work; but meanwhile, as the Preface is that part of
it which should properly include all personal explanations, I trust I may not
be considered as laying myself open to a charge of egotism, if I avail myself
of this conventional licence in explaining the steps by which this work
attained its present form.
It was my good fortune to be able to devote many years of my life to the
study of Architecture—as a fine art—under singularly favourable
circumstances: not only was I able to extend my personal observations to
the examples found in almost all the countries between China and the
Atlantic shore, but I lived familiarly among a people who were still
practising their traditional art on the same principles as those which guided
the architects of the Middle Ages in the production of similar but scarcely
more beautiful or more original works. With these antecedents, I found
myself in possession of a considerable amount of information regarding
buildings which had not previously been described, and—what I considered
of more value—of an insight into the theory of the art, which was certainly
even more novel.

Believing this knowledge and these principles to be of sufficient
importance to justify me in so doing, I resolved on publishing a work in
which they should be embodied; and, in furtherance of this idea, sixteen
years ago I wrote a book entitled ‘The True Principles of Beauty in Art.’
The work was not—nor was it intended to be—popular in its form. It was
an attempt of a young author to do what he thought right and best, without
consulting the wishes of the public on the subject, and the first result, as
might have been—and indeed was—anticipated, was that no publisher
would undertake it. In consequence of this, only the first volume was
published by Longmans in 1849, and that at my own expense and risk. The
event proved that the booksellers were right. The book did not sell, and it
became a question whether it was worth my while to waste my time and
spend my money on a work which the public did not want, or whether it
would not be wiser to abandon it, and wait for some more favourable
opportunity. Various circumstances of no public interest induced me at the
time to adopt the latter course, and I felt I could do so without any breach of
faith, as the work, as then published, was complete in itself, though it had
been intended to add two more volumes to the one already published.
Some years afterwards a proposal was made to me by Mr. Murray to
utilise the materials collected for the more ambitious work in the more
popular form of a Handbook of Architecture. The work was written in a
very much more popular manner than that I had previously adopted, or than
I then liked, or now think worthy of the subject; but the result proved that it
was a style much better suited to the public demand, for this time the work
was successful. Since its publication in 1855 a large number of copies have
been sold; the work has now for some years been out of print, and a new
edition is demanded. Under these circumstances the question arose, whether
it would be better to republish the Handbook in its original form, with such
additions and emendations as its arrangement admitted of, or whether it
would not be better to revert to a form nearly approaching that adopted in
the ‘True Principles,’ rather than that followed in the composition of the
Handbook, as one more worthy of the subject, and better capable of
developing its importance.
The immense advantages of the historical over the topographical method
are too self-evident to require being pointed out, whenever the object is to
give a general view of the whole of such a subject as that treated of in these
volumes, or an attempt is made to trace the connexion of the various parts

to one another. If the intention is only to describe particular styles or
separate buildings, the topographical arrangement may be found more
convenient: but where anything beyond this is attempted, the historical
method is the only one which enables it to be done. Believing that the
architectural public do now desire something more than mere dry
information with regard to the age and shape of buildings, it has been
determined to remodel the work and to adopt the historical arrangement.
In the present instance there does not seem to be the usual objection to
such a rearrangement—that it would break the thread of continuity between
the old and the new publication—inasmuch as, whichever method were
adopted, the present work must practically be a new book. The mass of
information obtained during the last ten years has been so great that even in
the present volume a considerable portion of it had to be rewritten, and a
great deal added. In the second volume the alterations will be even more
extensive. The publication of the great national work on Spanish antiquities,
[3]
of Parcerisa’s ‘Beauties, &c., of Spain,’[4] and, above all, Mr. Street’s
work,[5] have rendered Spanish architecture as intelligible as that of any
other country, though ten years ago it was a mystery and a puzzle.
Schulz’s[6] work has rendered the same service for Southern Italy, while the
publications of De Vogüé[7] and Texier[8] will necessitate an entirely new
treatment of the early history of Byzantine art. The French have been busily
occupied during the last ten years in editing their national monuments; so
have the Germans. So that in Europe little of importance remains to be
described. In Asia, too, great progress has been made. Photography has
rendered us familiar with many buildings we only knew before by
description, and both the Hindu and Mahomedan remains of India are now
generally accessible to the public. Colonel Yule’s[9] work on Burmah and M.
Mouhot’s[10] on Siam have made us acquainted with the form of the
buildings of those countries, and China too has been opened to the
architectural student. When the Handbook was written there were many
places and buildings regarding which no authentic information was
available. That can hardly be said to be the case now as respects any really
important building, and the time, therefore, seems to have arrived when
their affiliation can be pointed out, if it ever can be, and the study of
architecture may be raised from dry details of measurements to the dignity
of an historical science.

In the present work it is intended that the first two volumes shall cover
the same extent of ground as was comprised in the two volumes of the
‘Handbook,’ as originally published, with such enlargement as is requisite
to incorporate all recent additions to our knowledge; and chapters will be
added on Celtic—or, as they are vulgarly called, Druidical—remains
omitted in the ‘Handbook.’ The ‘History of Modern Architecture’ will thus
form the third volume of the work; and when—if ever—it comes to be
reprinted, it is intended to add a Glossary of architectural terms, and other
matters necessary to complete the book. When all this is done, the work will
be increased from 1500 pages, which is the number comprised in the three
volumes as at present published, to more than 2000 pages, and the
illustrations will be augmented in at least an equal ratio.[11] Notwithstanding
all this, it is too evident that even then the work can only be considered as
an introduction to the subject, and it would require a work at least ten times
as large to do full justice even to our present knowledge of the history of
architecture. Any one at all familiar with the literature of the subject can see
at once why this is so. Viollet le Duc, for instance, is now publishing a
dictionary of French architecture from the eleventh to the sixteenth century.
The work will consist, when complete, of ten volumes, and probably 5000
illustrations. Yet even this will by no means exhaust the history of the style
in one country of Europe during the five centuries indicated. It would
require at least as many volumes to illustrate, even imperfectly, the
architectural history of England during the same period. Germany would fill
an equal number; and the mediæval architecture of Italy and Spain could
not be described in less space.
In other words, fifty volumes and 20,000 woodcuts would barely suffice
to complete what must in the present work be compressed into 500 pages,
with a like number of illustrations.
Under these circumstances it will be easily understood that this book is
far from pretending to be a complete or exhaustive history of the art. It is
neither an atlas nor a gazetteer, but simply a general map of the
architectural world, and—if I may be allowed the small joke—on
Mercator’s projection. It might with propriety be called an abridgment, if
there existed any larger history from which it could be supposed to be
abridged. At one time I intended to designate it ‘An Historical Introduction
to the Study of Architecture, considered as a Fine Art;’ but though such a
title might describe correctly enough the general scope of the work, its

length is objectionable, and, like every periphrasis, it is liable to
misconstruction.
The simple title of ‘History’ has therefore been adopted, under the
impression that it is entitled to such a denomination until at least some
narrative more worthy of the subject takes its place. Considering the limits
it thus became necessary to impose on the extent of the work, it must be
obvious that the great difficulty of its composition was in the first place to
compress so vast a subject into so small a compass; and next, to determine
what buildings to select for illustration, and what to reject. It would have
been infinitely easier to explain what was necessary to be said, had the
number of woodcuts been doubled. Had the text been increased in the same
ratio a great many things might have been made clear to all, which will
now, I fear, demand a certain amount of previous knowledge on the part of
my readers. To have done this, however, would have defeated some of the
great objects of the present publication, which is intended to convey a
general view of the history and philosophy of the subject, without extending
the work so as to make it inconveniently large, or increasing the price so as
to render it inaccessible to a large number of readers. The principle
consequently that has been adopted in the selection of the illustrations is,
first, that none of the really important typical specimens of the art shall be
passed over without some such illustrations as shall render them
intelligible; and, after this, those examples are chosen which are remarkable
either for their own intrinsic merit, or for their direct bearing in elucidation
of the progress or affinities of the style under discussion; all others being
sternly rejected as irrelevant, notwithstanding the almost irresistible
temptation at times to adorn my pages with fascinating illustrations. The
reader who desires information not bearing on the general thread of the
narrative must thus have recourse to monographs, or other special works,
which alone can supply his wants in a satisfactory manner.

It may tend to explain some things which appear open to remark in the
following pages, if I allude here to a difference of opinion which has
frequently been pointed out as existing between the views I have expressed
and those generally received regarding several points of ancient history or
ethnology. I always have been aware that this discrepancy exists; but it has
appeared to me an almost inevitable consequence of the different modes of

investigation pursued. Almost all those who have hitherto written on these
subjects have derived their information from Greek and Roman written
texts; but, if I am not very much mistaken, these do not suffice. The classic
authors were very imperfectly informed as to the history of the nations who
preceded or surrounded them; they knew very little of the archæology of
their own countries, and less of their ethnography. So long, therefore, as our
researches are confined to what they had written, many important problems
remain unsolved, and must ever remain as unsolvable as they have hitherto
proved.
My conviction is, that the lithic mode of investigation is not only capable
of supplementing to a very great extent the deficiencies of the graphic
method, and of yielding new and useful results, but that the information
obtained by its means is much more trustworthy than anything that can be
elaborated from the books of that early age. It does not therefore terrify me
in the least to be told that such men as Niebuhr, Cornewall Lewis, or Grote,
have arrived at conclusions different from those I have ventured to express
in the following pages. Their information is derived wholly from what is
written, and it does not seem ever to have occurred to them, or to any of our
best scholars, that there was either history or ethnography built into the
architectural remains of antiquity.
While they were looking steadily at one side of the shield, I fancy I have
caught a glimpse of the other.
It has been the accident of my life—I do not claim it as a merit—that I
have wandered all over the Old World. I have seen much that they never
saw, and I have had access to sources of information of which they do not
suspect the existence. While they were trying to reconcile what the Greek or
Roman authors said about nations who never wrote books, and with regard
to whom they consequently had little information, I was trying to read the
history which these very people had recorded in stone, in characters as clear
and far more indelible than those written in ink. If, consequently, we arrived
at different conclusions, it may possibly be owing more to the sources from
which the information is derived than to any difference between the
individuals who announce it.
Since the invention of printing, I am quite prepared to admit that the
“litera scripta” may suffice. In an age like the present, when nine-tenths of
the population can read, and every man who has anything to say rushes into

print, or makes a speech which is printed next morning, every feeling and
every information regarding a people may be dug out of its books. But it
certainly was not so in the Middle Ages, nor in the early ages of Greek or
Roman history. Still less was this so in Egypt, nor is it the case in India, or
in many other countries; and to apply our English nineteenth century
experience to all these seems to me to be a mistake. In those countries and
times, men who had a hankering after immortality were forced to build their
aspirations into the walls of their tombs or of their temples. Those who had
poetry in their souls, in nine cases out of ten expressed it by the more
familiar vehicle of sculpture or painting rather than in writing. To me it
appears that to neglect these in trying to understand the manners and
customs, or the history of an ancient people, is to throw away one-half, and
generally the most valuable half, in some cases the whole, of the evidence
bearing on the subject. So long as learned men persist in believing that all
that can be known of the ancient world is to be found in their books, and
resolutely ignore the evidence of architecture and of art, we have little in
common. I consequently feel neither abashed nor ashamed at being told that
men of the most extensive book-learning have arrived at different
conclusions from myself—on the contrary, if it should happen that we
agreed in some point to which their contemporary works did not extend, I
should rather be inclined to suspect some mistake, and hesitate to put it
down.
There is one other point in which I fancy misconception exists, of a
nature that may probably be more easily removed by personal explanation
than by any other means. It is very generally objected to my writings that I
neither understand nor appreciate the beauties of Gothic architecture, and
consequently criticise it with undue severity. I regret that such a feeling
should prevail, partly because it is prejudicial to the dissemination of the
views I am anxious to promulgate, but more because at a time when in this
country the admiration of Gothic art is so nearly universal, it alienates from
me the best class of men who love the art, and prevents their co-operating
with me in the improvement of our architecture, which is the great object
which we all have at heart.
If I cannot now speak of Gothic architecture with the same enthusiasm as
others, this certainly was not the case in the early part of my career as a
student of art. Long after I turned my attention to the subject, I knew and
believed in none but the mediæval styles, and was as much astonished as

the most devoted admirer of Gothic architecture could be, when any one
suggested that any other forms could be compared with it. If I did not learn
to understand it then, it was not for want of earnest attention and study. I got
so far into its spirit that I thought I saw then how better things could be
done in Gothic art than had been done either in the Middle Ages or since;
and I think so now. But if it is to be done, it must be by free thought, not by
servile copying.
My faith in the exclusive pre-eminence of mediæval art was first shaken
when I became familiar with the splendid remains of the Mogul and Pathan
emperors of Agra and Delhi, and saw how many beauties of even the
pointed style had been missed in Europe in the Middle Ages. My
confidence was still further weakened when I saw what richness and variety
the Hindu had elaborated not only without pointed arches, but indeed
without any arches at all. And I was cured when, after a personal inspection
of the ruins of Thebes and Athens, I perceived that at least equal beauty
could be obtained by processes diametrically opposed to those employed by
the mediæval architects.
After so extended a survey, it was easy to perceive that beauty in
architecture did not reside in pointed or in round arches, in bracket capitals
or horizontal architraves, but in thoughtful appropriateness of design and
intellectual elegance of detail. I became convinced that no form is in itself
better than any other, and that in all instances those are best which are most
appropriate to the purposes to which they are applied.
So self-evident do these principles—which are the basis of the reasoning
employed in this book—appear to me, that I feel convinced that there are
very few indeed even of the most exclusive admirers of mediæval art who
would not admit them, if they had gone through the same course of
education as has fallen to my lot. My own conviction is, that the great
difference which seems to exist between my views and those of the parties
opposed to them arises almost entirely from this accident of education.
In addition to this, however, we must not overlook the fact that for three
centuries all the architects in Europe concurred in believing that the whole
of their art began and ended in copying classical forms and details. When a
reaction came, it was not, unfortunately, in the direction of freedom; but
towards a more servile imitation of another style, which—whether better or

worse in itself—was not a style of our age, nor suited to our wants or
feelings.
It is perhaps not to be wondered at, that after three centuries of
perseverance in one particular groove, men should have ceased to have any
faith in the possibility of reason or originality being employed in
architectural design. As, however, I can adduce in favour of my views 3000
years of perfect success in all countries and under all circumstances, against
300 years of absolute failure in consequence of the copying system, though
under circumstances the most favourable to success in other respects, there
seems at least an à priori probability that I may be right and that the
copyists may be mistaken.
I may be deceiving myself, but I cannot help fancying that I perceive
signs of a reaction. Some men are becoming aware of the fact that
“archæology is not architecture,” and would willingly see something done
more reasonable than an attempt to reproduce the Middle Ages. The
misfortune is, that their enlightenment is more apt to lead to despondency
than to hope. “If,” they ask, “we cannot find what we are looking for in our
own national style, where are we to look for it?” The obvious answer, that it
is to be found in the exercise of common sense, where all the rest of the
world have found it, seems to them beside the mark. Architecture with most
people is a mystery—something different from all other arts; and they do
not see that it is and must be subject to the same rules as they all are, and
must be practised in the same manner, if it is to be successful.
Whether the nation will or will not soon awaken to the importance of this
prosaic anti-climax, one thing at least seems certain and most hopeful. Men
are not satisfied with what is doing; a restless, inquiring spirit is abroad, and
if people can only be induced to think seriously about it, I feel convinced
that they will be as much astonished at their present admiration of Gothic
town-halls and Hyde Park Albert Memorials, as we are now at the Gothic
fancies of Horace Walpole and the men of his day.

NOTE.

Although every possible care has been taken in selecting the best
authorities for the statements in the text of the work, as well as the subjects
for illustration, still no one acquainted with the state of the literature of
architecture will need to be told that in many branches few materials exist
for a correct description of the style, and that the drawings which are
available are frequently so inexact, and with scales so carelessly applied,
that it is impossible at times to avoid error. The plans throughout the book
are on too small a scale to render any minute errors apparent, but being
drawn to a uniform scale of 100 feet to 1 inch, or 1⁄1200 of the real size, they
are quite sufficient as a means of comparison, even when not
mathematically correct. They suffice to enable the reader to judge of the
relative size of two buildings by a mere inspection of the plans, as correctly
as he could by seeing the buildings themselves, without actually measuring
them in all their details.
As a general rule, the sections or elevations of buildings, throughout the
book, are drawn to a scale double that of the plans, viz., 50 feet to 1 inch, or
1⁄
600 of the real dimensions; but, owing to the great size of many of them, it
has been found impossible to carry out this in all instances: where it has not
been effected the departure from the rule is always noted, either below the
woodcut or in the text.
No lineal dimensions are quoted in the text except such as it is believed
can be relied upon, and in all instances these are reduced to English feet.
The superficial measures also in the text, like the plans, are quite sufficient
for comparison, though not to be relied upon as absolutely correct. One
great source of uncertainty as regards them is the difficulty of knowing at
times what should be included in the building referred to. Should, for
instance, the Lady Chapel at Ely be considered an integral part of the
Cathedral, or the Chapter-house at Wells? Should the sacristies attached to

Continental cathedrals be considered as part of the church? or such semi-
detached towers as the south-western one at Bourges? What constitutes the
temple at Karnac, and how much of this belongs to the Hypostyle Hall?
These and fifty other questions occur in almost every instance which may
lead two persons to very different conclusions regarding the superficial
dimensions of a building, even without the errors inherent in imperfect
materials.
When either the drawing from which the woodcut is taken was without a
scale, or the scale given could not be depended upon, “No scale” has been
put under the woodcut, to warn the reader of the fact. When the woodcut
was either too large for the page, or too small to be distinct if reduced to the
usual scale, a scale of feet has been added under it, to show that it is an
exception to the rule.
Capitals, windows, and details which are meant to illustrate forms or
construction, and not particular buildings, are drawn to any scale that
seemed best to express the purpose for which they are inserted; when they
are remarkable for size, or as individual examples, a scale has been added;
but this is the exception, not the rule.
Every pain has been taken to secure the greatest possible amount of
accuracy, and in all instances the sources from which the woodcuts have
been taken are indicated. Many of the illustrations are from original
drawings, and of buildings never before published.

CONTENTS OF VOL. I.

INTRODUCTION.

Page

Part I.—Section I. Introductory.—II. Beauty in Art.—III. 3
Definition of Architecture.—IV. Mass.—V. Stability.—VI.
Durability.—VII. Materials.—VIII. Construction.—IX. Forms.
—X. Proportion.—XI. Carved Ornament.—XII. Decorative
Colour.—XIII. Sculpture and Painting.—XIV. Uniformity—XV.
Imitation of Nature.—XVI. Association.—XVII. New Style.—
XVIII. Prospects

PART II.—ETHNOGRAPHY AS APPLIED TO ARCHITECTURAL ART.

I. Introductory 52

II. Turanian Races—Religion, Government, Morals, Literature, 55
Arts, and Sciences

III. Semitic Races—Religion, Government, Morals, Literature, 64
Arts, and Sciences

IV. Celtic Races—Religion, Government Morals, Literature Arts, 70
and Sciences

V. Aryan Races—Religion, Government, Morals, Literature, Arts, 75
and Sciences

VI. Conclusion 83

PART I.—ANCIENT ARCHITECTURE.

Introductory 87

Outline of Egyptian Chronology 90

BOOK I.—EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE.

I. Introductory 91

II. The Pyramids and Contemporary Monuments—Tombs— 97
Temples

III. First Theban Kingdom—The Labyrinth—Tombs—Shepherds 110

IV. Pharaonic Kingdom—Thebes—Rock-cut Tombs and Temples 118
—Mammeisi—Tombs—Obelisks—Domestic Architecture

V. Greek and Roman Period—Decline of art—Temples at 139
Denderah—Kalábsheh—Philæ

VI. Ethiopia—Kingdom of Meroë—Pyramids 147

BOOK II.—ASSYRIAN ARCHITECTURE.

I. Introductory 151

II. Chaldean Temples 157

III. Assyrian Palaces—Wurka—Nineveh—Nimroud—Khorsabad 168
—Palace of Sennacherib, Koyunjik—Palace of Esarhaddon—
Temples and Tombs

IV. Persia—Pasargadæ—Persepolis—Susa—Fire Temples— 194
Tombs

V. Invention of the Arch 214

VI. Judea—Temple of Jerusalem 219

VII. Asia Minor—Historical notice—Tombs at Smyrna—Doganlu 229
—Lycian Tombs

BOOK III.—GRECIAN ARCHITECTURE.

I. Greece—Historical notice—Pelasgic art—Tomb of Atreus— 240
Other remains

II. Hellenic Greece—History Of the Orders—Doric Temples in 251
Greece—Doric Temples in Sicily—Ionic Temples—Corinthian
Temples—Dimensions of Greek Temples—Doric order—Ionic
order—Corinthian order—Caryatides—Forms of temples—Mode
of lighting temples—Temple of Diana at Ephesus—Municipal
architecture—Theatres—Tombs—Cyrene

BOOK IV.—ETRUSCAN, ROMAN, PARTHIAN AND SASSANIAN
ARCHITECTURE.

I. Etruria—Historical notice—Temples—Rock-cut tombs— 289
Tombs at Castel d’Asso—Tumuli—The arch

II. Rome—Introduction 302

III. Roman Architecture—Origin of style—The arch—Orders: 305
Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, Composite—Temples—The Pantheon—
Roman Temple at Athens—at Baalbec

IV. Basilicas, Theatres and Baths—Basilicas of Trajan and 327
Maxentius—Provincial basilicas—Theatre at Orange—Colosseum
—Provincial amphitheatres—Baths of Diocletian

V. Triumphal Arches, Tombs, and other Buildings—Arches at 347
Rome; in France—Arches at Trèves—Pillars of Victory—Tombs—
Minerva Medica—Provincial tombs—Eastern tombs—Domestic
Architecture—Spalato—Pompeii—Bridges—Aqueducts

VI. Parthian and Sassanian Architecture—Historical notice— 389
Palaces of Al Hadhr and Diarbekr—Domes—Serbistan—
Firouzabad—Tâk Kesra—Palaces at Mashita—Rabbath Ammon,
etc.

PART II.—CHRISTIAN ARCHITECTURE.

BOOK I.—BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE.

I. Introductory 415

II. Basilicas—Churches at Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and 419
Thessalonica—Rectangular churches in Syria and Asia Minor, with
wooden roofs and with stone vaults

III. Circular or Domical Buildings—Circular churches with 432
wooden roofs and with true domes in Syria and Thessalonica—

Churches of SS. Sergius and Bacchus and Sta. Sophia,
Constantinople—Civic Architecture—Tombs

IV. Neo-Byzantine Style—Sta. Irene, Constantinople—Churches 453
at Ancyra, Trabala, and Constantinople—Churches at Thessalonica
and in Greece—Domestic Architecture

V. Armenia—Churches at Dighour, Usunlar, Pitzounda, 466
Bedochwinta, Mokwi, Etchmiasdin, and Kouthais—Churches at
Ani and Samthawis—Details

VI. Rock-cut Churches—Churches at Tchekerman, Inkerman, and 481
Sebastopol—Excavations at Kieghart and Vardzie

VII. Mediæval Architecture of Russia—Churches at Kief— 484
Novogorod—Moscow—Towers

BOOK II.—ITALY.

I. Introductory—Division and Classification of the Mediæval 500
Styles of Architecture in Italy

II. Early Christian Style—Basilicas at Rome—Basilica of St. 504
Peter—St. Paul’s—Basilicas at Ravenna—St. Mark’s, Venice—
Dalmatia and Istria—Torcello

III. Circular Romanesque Churches—Circular Churches—Tomb 542
of Sta. Costanza—Churches at Perugia, Nocera, Ravenna, Milan—
Secular buildings

IV. Lombard and Round-arched Gothic—Chapel at Friuli— 558
Churches at Piacenza, Asti, and Novara—St. Michele, Pavia—St.
Ambrogio, Milan—Cathedral, Piacenza—Churches at Verona—
Churches at Toscanella—Circular Churches—Towers

V. Byzantine-Romanesque—Cathedral of Naples—San Miniato, 582
Florence—Cathedrals of Pisa and Zara—Cathedrals of Troja, Bari,
Bittonto—San Nicole, Bari—Cloisters of St. John Lateran—
Baptistery of Mont St. Angelo—San Donato, Zara—Towers—
Civic Architecture

VI. Pointed Italian Gothic—Fresco paintings—Churches at 607
Vercelli, Asti, Verona, and Lucca—Cathedral at Siena—Sta. Maria,
Florence—Church at Chiaravalle—St. Petronio, Bologna—
Cathedral at Milan—Certosa, near Pavia—Duomo at Ferrara

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

NO. PAGE

Frontispiece.—Elevation of Façade of Cologne
Cathedral.

Vignette to Title-page.—Section of the Parthenon,
showing the Author’s views as to the admission of
light.

1-6. Diagrams (technical) 8-34

7. Section of Great Pyramid 98

8. Section of King’s Chamber and of Passage in 101
Great Pyramid

9, 10. Pyramid of Sakkara 103

11. Doorway in Tomb at the Pyramids 106

12. Sarcophagus of Mycerinus 106

13. Plan of Temple near the Sphinx 107

14. Plans of houses, Kahun 113

15. Tomb at Beni-Hasan 114

16. Proto-Doric Pillar at Beni-Hasan 115

17. Reed Pillar from Beni-Hasan 115

18. Lotus Pier, Zawyet-el-Mayyitûr 115

19. Rameseum at Thebes 120

20. Central pillar, from Rameseum 121

21. Section of Palace of Thothmes III., Thebes 123

22. Plan of Hypostyle Hall at Karnac 124

23. Section of central portion of same 124

24. Caryatide Pillar, from the Great Court at 125
Medeenet-Habû

25. South Temple of Karnac 126

26. Section through Hall of Columns of same 126

27. Pillar, from Sedinga 127

28. Plan of smaller Temple, Abydus 128

29. Plan of Temple of Abydus 128

30. Plan and Section of Rock-cut Temple at Abû- 130
Simbel

31. Mammeisi at Elephantine 132

32. Plan and Section of Tomb of Meneptah at Thebes 134

33. Lateran obelisk 135

34. Pavilion at Medeenet-Habû 137

35. View of Pavilion at Medeenet-Habû 137

36. Elevation of an Egyptian House 138

37. Plan of Temple at Edfû 140

38. View of Temple at Edfû 141

39. Bas-relief at Tel el Amarna 142

40. Façade of Temple at Denderah 142

41. Pillar, from the Portico at Denderah 143

42. Plan of Temple at Kalábsheh 143

43. Section of Temple at Kalábsheh 144

44. View of Temple at Philæ 145

45. Plan of Temple at Philæ 145

46. Pyramids at Meroë 148

47. Obelisks at Axum 150

48. Diagram of elevation of Temple at Mugheyr 159

49. Plan of Temple at Mugheyr 159

50. Diagram elevation of Birs Nimroud 160

51. Diagram plan of Birs Nimroud 160

52. Observatory at Khorsabad 162

53. Plan of Observatory, Khorsabad 162

54. Representation of a Temple, Koyunjik 164

55. Elevation of a portion of the external Wall of 165
Wuswus, at Wurka

56. Plan of portion of Wuswus 165

57. Elevation of Wall at Wurka 166

58. Plan of North-West Palace at Nimroud 170

59. Plan of Palace at Khorsabad 171

60. Terrace Wall at Khorsabad 173

61. Plan of the Palace at Khorsabad 174

62. Existing remains of Propylæa at Khorsabad 175

63. Enlarged plan of the three principal Rooms at 176
Khorsabad

64. Restored section of principal Rooms at Khorsabad 177

65. Restoration of Northern Angle of Palace Court, 178
Khorsabad

66. City Gateways, Khorsabad 180

67. City Gateway at Khorsabad 181

68. Interior of a Yezidi House at Bukra, in the Sinjar 182

69. Hall of South-West Palace, Nimroud 184

70. Central Palace, Koyunjik 185

71. Pavement Slab from the Central Palace, Koyunjik 186

72. Pavilion, from the Sculptures at Khorsabad 187

73. Assyrian Temple, North Palace, Koyunjik 188

74. Bas-relief, representing façade of Assyrian Palace 188

75. Exterior of a Palace, from a Bas-relief at Koyunjik 189

76. King’s Tent (Koyunjik) 190

77. Horse tent (Nimroud) 190

78. Stylobate of Temple, Khorsabad 191

79. Section of same 191

80. Sacred Symbolic Tree of the Assyrians 192

81. Obelisk of Divanubara 192

82. Plan of Platform at Pasargadæ 195

83. Elevation of same 195

84. Tomb of Cyrus, Pasargadæ 196

85. Plan of Tomb of Cyrus 197

86. Section of Tomb of Cyrus 198

87. View from top of Great Stairs at Persepolis 199

88. Stairs to Palace of Xerxes 200

89. Propylæa at Persepolis 202

90. Palace of Darius 202

91. Façade of Palace of Darius at Persepolis 203

92. Tomb of Darius at Naksh-i-Rustam 204

93. Palace of Xerxes, Persepolis 205

94. Restored Plan of Great Hall of Xerxes at 206
Persepolis

95. Pillar of Western Portico 207

96. Pillar of Northern Portico 207

97. Restored Section of Hall of Xerxes 208

98. Restored Elevation of Capital at Susa 209

99. Frieze of Archers at Susa 210

100. Khabah at Istakr 212

101. Section of Tomb near the Pyramids of Gizeh 215

102. Vaulted Drain beneath the South-East Palace at 215
Nimroud

103. Arch at Dêr-el-Bahree 216

104. Arch of the Cloaca Maxima, Rome 216

105. Arches in the Pyramids at Meroë 217

106. Diagram plan of Solomon’s Palace 220

107. Diagram sections of the House of the Cedars of 221
Lebanon

108. The Tabernacle, showing one half ground plan and 222
one half as covered by the curtains

109. South-East View of the Tabernacle, as restored by 223
the Author

110. Plan of Solomon’s Temple, showing the 224
disposition of the chambers in two storeys

111. Plan of Temple at Jerusalem, as rebuilt by Herod 225

112. View of the Temple from the East, as it appeared at 226
the time of the Crucifixion

113. Elevation of Tumulus at Tantalais 230

114. Plan and Section of Chamber in Tumulus at 230
Tantalais

115. Section of Tomb of Alyattes 230

116. Rock-cut Frontispiece at Doganlu 233

117. Lycian Tomb 234

118, Rock-cut Lycian Tombs 235,
119, 236, 236
120.

121. Ionic Lycian Tomb 237

122. Elevation of the Monument and Section of the 239
Tomb at Amrith

123. West View of the Acropolis restored 240

124. Section and Plan of Tomb of Atreus at Mycenæ 243

125. Fragment of Pillar of same 244

126. Gateway at Thoricus 245

127. Arch at Delos 245

128. Wall in Peloponnesus 246

129. Gateway at Assos 246

130. Doorway at Missolonghi 247

131. Gate of Lions, Mycenæ 247

132. Plan of Palace at Tiryns 248

133. Plan of the Acropolis at Athens 251

134. Temple at Ægina restored 252

135. Ancient Corinthian Capital 258

136, Doric Column of the Temple at Delos, the 260
137, Parthenon at Athens, and the Temple at Corinth

138.

139. The Parthenon, Athens 262

140. Ionic order of Erechtheium 264

141. Ionic order in Temple of Apollo at Bassæ 265

142. Section of Capital of same 265

143. Order of the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates, 266
Athens

144. Order of the Tower of the Winds 267

145. Caryatide Figure in the British Museum 268

146. Caryatide Figure from the Erechtheium 268

147. Telamones at Agrigentum 269

148. Small Temple at Rhamnus 269

149. Plan of Temple of Apollo at Bassæ 270

150. Plan of Parthenon at Athens 270

151. Plan of the Great Temple at Selinus 270

152. Plan of Great Temple at Agrigentum 271

153. Section of the Parthenon 273

154. Part Section, part Elevation, of Great Temple at 273
Agrigentum

155. Plan of Erechtheium 274

156. Elevation of West End of Erechtheium 274

157. View of Erechtheium 275

158. Restored plan of Erechtheium 276

159. Plan of the Temple of Diana at Ephesus 277

160. Choragic Monument of Lysicrates, Athens 279

161. Plan of Theatre at Dramyssus 280

162. View of the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, as 282
restored by the Author

163. Plan of the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, from a 283
drawing by the Author

164. Lion Tomb at Cnidus 284

165. Rock-cut and Structural Tombs at Cyrene 286

166. Tombs at Cyrene 287

167. Plan and Elevation of an Etruscan Temple 292

168. Tombs at Castel d’Asso 295

169. Mouldings from Tombs at same 295

170. Plan of Regulini Galeassi Tomb 296

171. Sections of same 297

172. Section of a Tomb at Cervetri 298

173. View of principal Chamber in the Regulini 298
Galeassi Tomb

174. Plan of Cocumella, Vulci 299

175. View of same 299

176. Tomb of Aruns, Albano 300

177. Gateway at Arpino 301

178. Aqueduct at Tusculum 301

179. Doric Order 308

180. Ionic Order 309

181. Corinthian Order 310

182. Composite Order 312

183. Corinthian Base, found in Church of St. Praxede in 312
Rome

184. Doric Arcade 313

185. View in Courtyard of Palace at Spalato 314

186. Temple of Mars Ultor 316

187. Plan of Maison Carrée at Nîmes 317

188. Plan of Temple of Diana at Nîmes 317

189. View of the Interior of same 318

190. Plan of Pantheon at Rome 319

191. Half Elevation, half Section, of the Pantheon at 320
Rome

192. Plan of Temple at Tivoli 322

193. Restored Elevation of Temple at Tivoli 322

194. Plan and elevation of Temple in Diocletian’s 323
Palace at Spalato

195. Ruins of the Temple of Jupiter Olympius at Athens 324

196. Plan of same 324

197. Plan of Small Temple at Baalbec 325

198. Elevation of same 325

199. Plan of Trajan’s Basilica at Rome 328

200. Restored Section of Trajan’s Basilica 328

201. Plan of Basilica of Maxentius 330

202. Longitudinal Section of same 330

203. Transverse Section of same 330

204. Pillar of Maxentian Basilica 331

205. Plan of the Basilica at Trèves 332

206. Internal View of same 332

207. External View of same 333

208. Plan of Basilica at Pompeii 333

209. Plan of the Theatre at Orange 335

210. View of same 336

211. Elevation and Section of part of the Flavian 338
Amphitheatre, at Rome

212. Quarter-plan of the Seats and quarter-plan of the 338
Basement of the Flavian Amphitheatre

213. Elevation of Amphitheatre at Verona 341

214. Baths of Caracalla, as restored by A. Blouet 344

215. Arch of Trajan at Beneventum 347

216. Arch of Titus at Rome 348

217. Arch of Septimius Severus 348

218. Porte St. André at Autun 349

219. Plan of Porta Nigra at Trèves 350

220. View of same 350

221. Bridge at Chamas 351

222. Column at Cussi 354

223. Capital of Column at Cussi 354

224. Tomb of Cæcilia Metella 355

225. Columbarium near the Gate of St. Sebastian, Rome 356

226. Section of Sepulchre at San Vito 357

227. Section and Elevation of Tomb of Sta. Helena, 358
Rome

228. Plan of Minerva Medica at Rome 360

229. Section of Minerva Medica 360

230. Rib of Roof of Minerva Medica 360

231. Tomb at St. Rémi 361

232. Monument at Igel, near Trèves 362

233. Khasné, Petra 364

234. Section of Tomb at Khasné 365

235. Corinthian Tomb, Petra 366

236. Rock-cut interior at Petra 367

237. Façade of Herod’s Tombs 368

238. So-called “Tomb of Zechariah” 368

239. The so-called Tomb of Absalom 369

240. Angle of Tomb of Absalom 369

241. Façade of the Tomb of the Judges 370

242. Tomb at Mylassa 371

243. Tomb at Dugga 372

244. Plan of the Kubr Roumeïa 373

245. View of the Madracen 373

246. Palace of Diocletian at Spalato 377

247. Golden Gateway at Spalato 379

248. House of Pansa at Pompeii 381

249. Wall Decoration at Pompeii 383

250. Aqueduct of Segovia 386

251. Aqueduct of Tarragona 386

252. Bridge of Trajan, Alcantara, Spain 387

253. Plan of Palace at Al Hadhr 390

254. Elevation of part of the Palace of Al Hadhr 391

255. Plan of the Mosque at Diarbekr 392

256. Façade of South Palace at Diarbekr 393

257. View in the Court showing North Palace 394

258. Plan of Palace at Serbistan 396

259. Section of Palace at Serbistan 396

260. Plan of Palace at Firouzabad 397

261. Doorway at Firouzabad 397

262. Part of External Wall, Firouzabad 398

263. Plan of Tâk Kesra at Ctesiphon 399

264. Elevation of Great Arch of same 399

265. Sketch Plan of Palace at Mashita 400

266. Interior of ruined Triapsal Hall of Palace of same 402

267. One compartment of Western Octagon Tower of 403
the Persian Palace at Mashita

268. Part of West Wing Wall of External Façade of 404
Palace at Mashita

269. Elevation of External Façade of the Palace at 405
Mashita, as restored by the Author

270. Plan of Palace at Rabbath Ammon in Moab 407

271. Section of Palace at same 407

272. Arch of Chosroes at Takt-i-Bostan 408

273. Plan of Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem 419

274. Plan of Eski Djuma, Thessalonica 420

275. Plan of St. Demetrius, Thessalonica 421

276. Arches in St. Demetrius at Thessalonica, A.D. 500 421
to 520.

277. Pillar in Church of St. John, Constantinople 422

278. Plan of Church in Baquoza 423

279. Section of Church at Baquoza 423

280. Plan of Church and Part of Monastic Buildings at 423
Kalat Sema’n

281. Plan of Church at Roueiha 424

282. Section of Church at Roueiha 424

283. Plan of Church at Qalb Louzeh 425

284. Apse of Church at Qalb Louzeh 425

285. Plan of Chapel at Babouda 426

286. Elevation of Chapel at Babouda 426

287. Façade of Church at Tourmanin 427

288. Plan of Church at Pergamus 428

289. Section of Church at Tafkha 429

290. Plan of Church at Tafkha 429

291. Section on C D of same 429

292. Half Front Elevation, Tafkha 429

293. Plan of Great Church at Hierapolis 430

294. Plan of Church at Hierapolis 430

295. Section of same. With monogram found on its 431
walls

296. Plan of Church on Mount Gerizim 432

297. Plan of Cathedral at Bosra 432

298. Section of Double Church at Kalat Sema’n 433

299. Plan of Church, Kalat Sema’n 433

300. Diagram of Byzantine Arrangement 434

301. Diagram of Byzantine Pendentives 434

302. Interior of Tomb of Galla Placidia, Ravenna 435

303. Interior of Chapel in Archiepiscopal Palace, 435
Ravenna

304. Plan of the Church of St. George at Thessalonica 435

305. Section of same 436

306. View of same 436

307. Plan of Kalybe at Omm-es-Zeitoun 437

308. View of same 437

309. Plan of Church at Ezra 438

310. Section of Church at Ezra 438

311. Plan of Church of SS. Sergius and Bacchus 439

312. Section of Church of S. Sergius 439

313. Capital from Church of same 439

314. Entablature from same 439

315. Plan of Sta. Sophia. Upper Storey and Ground 441
Floor

316. Elevation of Façade of same 442

317. Section of Sta. Sophia from E. to W. 443

318. Lower Order of Sta. Sophia 445

319. Upper Order of Sta. Sophia 446

320. Elevation of House at Refadi 448

321. Plan of House at Moudjeleia 448

322. Window at Chaqqa 448

323. Interior of the Golden Gateway 449

324. Golden Gateway (West side) 450

325. Roof of one of the Compartments of the Gate 450
Huldah

326. Tomb at Hass 451

327. Half Section, half Elevation of Dome of Sta. Irene 453
at Constantinople

328. Church of St. Clement, Ancyra 455

329. Plan of St. Clement, Ancyra 455

330. Plan of Church at Trabala 456

331. Church of Moné tés Choras 456

332. Plan of the Theotokos 457

333. Elevation of Church of Theotokos 457

334. Apse of Church of the Apostles, Thessalonica 458

335. Plan of Catholicon: Dochiariu 459

336. Plan of Panagia Lycodemo 460

337. Church of Panagia Lycodemo 460

338. Cathedral at Athens 461

339. Plan of the Church at Mistra 462

340. Church at Mistra 462

341. Apse from Mistra 463

342. Palace of the Hebdomon, Constantinople 464

343. View of Church at Dighour 467

344. Plan of Church at Dighour 468

345. Section of Dome at Dighour 468

346. Plan of Church at Usunlar 469

347. West Elevation of same 469

348. Plan of Church at Pitzounda 469

349. Section of Church at Pitzounda 470

350. View of Church at Pitzounda 470

351. Plan of Church at Bedochwinta 471

352. Plan of Church at Mokwi 471

353. Plan of Church at Etchmiasdin 472

354. Plan of Church of Kouthais 472

355. Window at Kouthais 472

356. Plan of Cathedral at Ani 473

357. Section of Cathedral at Ani 473

358. Side Elevation of same 474

359. East Elevation of Chapel at Samthawis 475

360. Niche at Samthawis 475

361. Plan of Tomb at Ani 475

362. Tomb at Ani 475

363. Tomb at Varzahan 476

364. Capital at Ani 477

365. Capital at Gelathi 477

366. Window in small Church at Ish Khan, Tortoom, 478
Armenia

367. Window in same 478

368. Jamb of Doorway at same 479

369. Cave of Inkerman 482

370. Rock-cut Church at Inkerman 482

371. View in Church Cave, near Sebastopol 482

372. Plan of Church of St. Basil, Kief 486

373. Plan of St. Irene, Kief 486

374. Plan of Cathedral at Kief 486

375. East End of the Church at Novogorod 487

376. Cathedral at Tchernigow 488

377. Village Church near Novogorod 489

378. Village Church near Tzarskoe Selo 490

379. Interior of Church at Kostroma 491

380. Interior of Church near Kostroma 492

381. Doorway of the Troitzka Monastery, near Moscow 493

382. Plan of the Church of the Assumption, Moscow 493

383. Plan of the Church of St. Basil (Vassili 493
Blanskenoy), Moscow

384. View of the same 494

385. View of Church at Kurtea d’Argyisch 495

386. Plan of same 495

387. Tower of Ivan Veliki, Moscow, with the Cathedrals 496
of the Assumption and the Archangel Gabriel

388. Tower of Boris, Kremlin, Moscow 497

389. Sacred Gate, Kremlin, Moscow 498

390. Plan of Church at Djemla 509

391. Plan of Church at Announa 509

392. Plan of Church at Ibrim in Nubia 510

393. Plan of Basilica at Orleansville 510

394. Plan of White Convent near Siout 511

395. Plan of the Church of San Clemente at Rome 513

396. Plan of the original Basilica of St. Peter at Rome 516

397. Basilica of St. Peter, before its destruction 518

398. View of the Interior of St. Paul’s at Rome, before 520
the fire

399. Plan of Sta. Maria Maggiore 521

400. View of Sta. Maria Maggiore 522

401. Plan of Sta. Agnese 522

402. Section of Sta. Agnese 522

403. Plan of St. Lorenzo, Fuori le Mura, Rome 523

404. Interior view of same 524

405. Plan of Sta. Pudentiana 525

406. Section of Sta. Pudentiana 525

407. Capital of Sta. Pudentiana 525

408. Half Section, half Elevation, of the Church of San 526
Vincenzo alle Tre Fontane, Rome

409. Plan of St. Apollinare in Classe 528

410. Arches in Church of St. Apollinare Nuovo 528

411. Part of Apse in St. Apollinare in Classe, Ravenna 529

412. View of Exterior of same 529

413. Plan of St. Mark’s, Venice 531

414. Capital in Apse of same 532

415. View of St. Mark’s, Venice 533

416. Section of St. Mark’s, Venice 534

417. Plan of St. Antonio, Padua 536

418. Church at Parenzo in Istria 537

419. Capital of Pillar at Parenzo 538

420. Plan of Church at Torcello 539

421. Apse of Basilica at Torcello 540

422. Plan of Baptistery of Constantine 544

423. Plan of Tomb of Sta. Costanza, Rome 544

424. Plan of San Stefano Rotondo 545

425. Plan of Sti. Angeli, Perugia 545

426. Section of Sti. Angeli, Perugia 546

427. Plan of Baptistery at Nocera dei Pagani 546

428. Section of same 547

429. Plan of St. Vitale, Ravenna 548

430. Section of St. Vitale, Ravenna 548

431. Capital from same 549

431a. Capital from same 550

432. Plan of S. Lorenzo at Milan 551

433. Half-section, half-elevation of the Baptistery at 552
Novara

434. Plan of Tomb of Galla Placidia, Ravenna 553

435. Capital of shafts forming peristyle round 554
Theodoric’s Tomb, Ravenna

436. Plan of Tomb of Theodoric 554

437. Elevation of Tomb of Theodoric 554

438. Palazzo delle Torre, Turin 556

439. Chapel at Friuli 559

440. Plan of San Antonio, Piacenza 560

440a. Section of same 561

441. Plan and Section of Baptistery at Asti 561

442. Plan of the Cathedral at Novara 562

443. Elevation and Section of same 563

444. Section of San Michele, Pavia 564

445. View of the Apse of same 565

446. Plan of San Ambrogio, Milan 566

447. Atrium of San Ambrogio, Milan 567

448. Façade of the Cathedral at Piacenza 568

449. Apse of the Cathedral, Verona 570

450. Façade of San Zenone, Verona 571

451. Plan of Sta. Maria, Toscanella 573

452. View of the Interior of same 573

453. Elevation of the Exterior of same 574

454. Plan of the Duomo, Brescia 575

455. Elevation of Duomo at Brescia 575

456. Section of Duomo at Brescia 576

457. Plan of San Tomaso in Limine 576

458. Section of San Tomaso 576

459. Tower of Sta. Maria-in-Cosmedin 578

460. Plan of the Old and New Cathedrals at Naples 583

461. Plan of San Miniato, Florence 584

462. Section of same 584

463. Elevation of same 585

464. Transverse section of same 586

465. View of the Cathedral at Pisa 587

466. Plan of Zara Cathedral 588

467. View of Zara Cathedral 589

468. Façade of Cathedral at Troja 591

469. Plan of Cathedral at Bari 591

470. East End of Cathedral at Bari 592

471. Apse of San Pellino 592

472. Church at Caserta Vecchia 592

473. West Front of Bittonto Cathedral 593

474. West Front of the Church of San Nicolo in Bari 594

475. View of the Interior of San Nicolo, Bari 595

476. Plan of Crypt at Otranto 596

477. View in Crypt at Otranto 596

478. Window in the South side of the Cathedral Church 597
in Matera

479. Doorway of Church of Pappacoda, Naples 598

480. Cloister of St. John Lateran 599

481. Plan of Church at Molfetta 600

482. Section of Church at Molfetta 600

483. Section of Baptistery, Mont St. Angelo 601

484. Plan of same 601

485. Tomb of Bohemund at Canosa 601

486. Plans of San Donato, Zara 603

487. Section of San Donato, Zara 603

488. Leaning Tower at Pisa 604

489. Tower of Gaeta 604

490. Plan of Castel del Monte 606

491. Part Section, part Elevation, of Castel del Monte 606

492. Plan of the Church at Vercelli 610

493. Church at Asti 611

494. Plan of Sta. Anastasia, Verona 612

495. One Bay of Sta. Anastasia, Verona 612

496. One Bay, externally and internally, of the Church 613
of San Martino, Lucca

497. Plan of Cathedral at Siena 614

498. Façade of the Cathedral at Siena 615

499. Plan of the Cathedral at Florence 617

500. Section of Dome and part of Nave of the Cathedral 618
at Florence

501. Part of the Flank of Cathedral at Florence 619

502. Dome at Chiaravalle, near Milan 620

503. Section of Eastern portion of Church at Chiaravalle 621

504. Plan of the part executed of St. Petronio, Bologna 623

505. Section of San Petronio, Bologna 624

506. Plan of the Cathedral of Milan 625

507. Section of Cathedral of Milan 627

508. View of the Interior of same 628

509. Plan of designed Façade of same 629

510. View of the Certosa, near Pavia 630

511. Duomo at Ferrara 632

512. View of St. Francesco, Brescia 633

HISTORY
OF

ARCHITECTURE.

INTRODUCTION.

PART I.

Section I.

Like every other object of human inquiry, Architecture may be studied from
two distinct points of view. Either it may be regarded statically, and
described scientifically as a thing existing, without any reference to the
manner in which it was invented; or it may be treated historically, tracing
every form from its origin and noting the influence one style has had upon
another in the progress of time.
The first of these methods is more technical, and demands on the part of
the student very considerable previous knowledge before it can be
successfully prosecuted. The other, besides being more popular and easily
followed, has the advantage of separating the objects of study into natural
groups, and tracing more readily their connection and relation to one
another. The great superiority, however, of the historical mode of study
arises from the fact that, when so treated, Architecture ceases to be a mere
art, interesting only to the artist or his employer, but becomes one of the
most important adjuncts of history, filling up many gaps in the written
record and giving life and reality to much that without its presence could
with difficulty be realised.
A still more important use of architecture, when followed as a history, is
found in its ethnographic value. Every different race of men had their own
peculiar forms in using the productions of this art, and their own mode of
expressing their feelings or aspirations by its means. When properly
studied, it consequently affords a means as important as language for
discriminating between the different races of mankind—often more so, and
one always more trustworthy and more easily understood.
In consequence of these advantages, the historical mode is that which
will be followed in this work. But before entering upon the narrative, it will

be well if a correct definition of what Architecture really is can be obtained.
Without some clear views on the technical position of the art, much that
follows will be unintelligible and the meaning of what is said may be
mistaken.
A great deal of the confusion of ideas existing on the subject of
Architecture arises from the fact that writers have been in the habit of
speaking of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture as three similar fine arts,
practised on the same principles. This error arose in the 16th century, when
in a fatal hour painters and sculptors undertook also the practice of
architecture, and builders ceased to be architects. This confusion of ideas
has been perpetuated to the present hour, and much of the degraded position
of the art at this day is owing to the mistake then made. It cannot therefore
be too strongly insisted upon that there is no essential connection between
painting and sculpture on the one hand and architecture on the other.
The two former rank among what are called Phonetic arts. Their business
is to express by colour or form ideas that could be—generally have been—
expressed by words. With the Egyptians their hieroglyphical paintings were
their only means of recording their ideas. With us, such a series of pictures
as Hogarth’s ‘Mariage à la Mode’ or ‘The Rake’s Progress’ are novels
written with the brush; and many of our Mediæval cathedrals possess whole
Bibles carved in stone. Poetry, Painting, and Sculpture are three branches of
one form of art, refined from Prose, Colour, and Carving, and form a group
apart, interchanging ideas and modes of expression, but always dealing with
the same class of images and appealing to the same class of feelings.
Distinct and separate from these Phonetic arts is another group, generally
known as the Technic arts, comprising all those which minister to the
primary wants of mankind under such various heads as food, clothing, and
shelter. Between these two groups is a third called the Æsthetic arts,
forming, as it were, a flux between the Technic and Phonetic arts, fusing the
whole into one homogeneous mass. They take their rise from the fact that to
every want which the technic arts are designed to supply, Nature has
attached a gratification which is capable of refining all the useful arts into
fine arts. Thus the Technic art of agriculture is capable of supplying food in
its simple form; but by the refinements of cookery and of wine-making,
simple meats and drinks are capable of affording endless gratification to the
senses. Simple clothing to keep out the cold requires little art, but

embroidery, dyeing, lace-making, and fifty other arts employ the hands of
millions, and the gratification afforded by their use, the thoughts of as many
more. Shelter, too, is easily provided, but ornamental and ornamented
shelter, or in other words architecture, is one of the most prominent of the
fine arts. Music, though hardly known as a useful art, is the most typical of
the Æsthetic arts, and, “married to immortal verse,” steps upwards into the
region of the Phonetic arts, just as building, when used for ornament, is
raised out of the domain of the Technic arts.
Like music, colour and form may be so arranged as to afford infinite
pleasure to the senses without their having any phonetic value; but when
used, as sculpture and paintings are and have been in all ages, to tell a tale
or to express emotion, they rank high among the Phonetic arts; and though
able to express certain impressions even more vividly than can be done by
words, they cannot rise to the high intellectual position that can be attained
either by Poetry or Eloquence when expressed only in that verbal language
which is the highest gift of God to man.

II.—Beauty in Art.

The term Beauty in Art is little else than a synonym for Perfection, but
perfection in these three classes of arts is far from being the same thing, or
of anything like the same value, as an intellectual expression. The beauty of
a machine, however complicated, arises mainly from its adaptability to use;
while a mosaic of exquisite colours, or an elevated piece of instrumental
music, raises emotions of a far higher class: and a painting or a poem may
appeal to all that is great or noble in human nature.
If, for instance, we take a dozen arts at random, and divide them into
twelve equal component parts, as they belong to each of the three divisions,
Technic, Æsthetic, or Phonetic. If we further assign one as the relative
intellectual value of the Technic element, two as that due to the Æsthetic,
and three as the proportionate importance of the Phonetic, we obtain the
index number in the fourth column of the table below, which is probably
not far from expressing the true relative value of each. Of course there are
adventitious circumstances which may raise the proportionate value of any
art very considerably, and, on the other hand, neglect of cultivation may
depress others below their true value; but the principles on which the table

is formed are probably those by which a correct estimate may be most
easily obtained.
Technic. Æsthetic. Phonetic.
Heating, Ventilation, &c. 11 1 — = 13
Turnery, Joinery, &c. 9 3 — = 15
Gastronomy 7 5 — = 17
Jewellery 7 4 1 = 18
Clothing 5 6 1 = 20
Ceramique 5 5 2 = 21
Gardening 4 6 2 = 22
Architecture 4 4 4 = 24
Music 2 6 4 = 26
Painting and Sculpture 3 3 6 = 27
Drama 2 2 8 = 30
Epic — 2 10 = 34
Eloquence — 1 11 = 35
The first three arts enumerated in the above table are evidently utterly
incapable of Phonetic expression, and the first hardly even can be raised to
the second class, though air combined with warmth does afford pleasure to
the senses. Joinery may convey an idea of perfection from the mode in
which it is designed or executed; while gastronomy, as above mentioned,
does really afford important gratification to the senses, approaching nearly
in importance to the plain food-supplying art of cookery. Jewellery may
combine extreme mechanical beauty of execution with the most harmonious
arrangement of colour, and may also be made to express a meaning, though
only to a very limited extent. Clothing depends on both colour and form for
its perfection more than even beauty of material, and may be made to
express gaiety or sorrow, though perhaps more from association than from
any inherent qualities. The arts of the potter can exhibit not only perfection
in execution, but practically depend both in colour and form, especially the
latter, to raise their products out of the category of mere Technic arts; while
the paintings on them, which are indispensable to the highest class of
ceramique, render them capable of taking their place among those objects
which affect a Phonetic mode of utterance. As mentioned above, floriculture

and landscape gardening may, besides their use, afford infinite pleasure to
the senses and even express gaiety or gloom, and, from mere prettiness,
may rise towards something like sublimity in expression.
Architecture is, however, the central art of the group, which in its highest
form combines all the three classes in nearly equal proportions, but not
always necessarily so. The Pyramids of Egypt, for instance, though
Technically the most wonderful buildings in the world, have very little
Æsthetic, and hardly more than one of Phonetic, value. The great temple at
Baalbec,—and in fact all the Roman temples, may be classed as containing
six parts of Technic value for mechanical excellence of size and
construction, four for beauty of form and detail, but certainly not more than
two parts for any expression of religion or intellect they may exhibit,
making up twenty for the index of their artistic value. Cologne cathedral
takes very nearly the same position in the scale, but Rheims, Bourges, and
the more perfect Gothic cathedrals may be classed higher, as five Technic,
three Æsthetic, and four Phonetic, making twenty-three altogether as their
index; and they are only surpassed by such a building as the Parthenon at
Athens, which, though not so large and imposing as some others, is, so far
as we know, the most perfect building yet erected by man. It owes this
perfection mainly to the equal balance of parts. There is nothing so difficult
or startling in its construction as there is in most Gothic cathedrals; but what
there is is mechanically perfect, both in design and execution. Its form is
nearly perfect, combining stability with simplicity and at the same time
avoiding monotony or any appearance of greater strength than is absolutely
necessary. Its details are all as exquisite in form as the Temple itself, and it
was at one time coloured to an extent we can hardly now realise, but which
must, when complete, have made it one of the most perfect examples of
Æsthetic art. The walls of the cella were almost certainly covered with
Phonetic paintings similar to those in the Lesche at Delphi; and the
pediment, the metopes, the friezes, were all sculptured to such an extent as
to render the Phonetic expression of the building at least equal to either its
Technic or its Æsthetic excellence. It is easy to conceive a building, such as
a trophy or a mausoleum, in which painting and sculpture shall be relatively
more important than they are in this instance, and in which consequently the
index may be raised above twenty-four; but if this were so, it ought
probably to be classed among works of sculpture or painting rather than as
an object of architecture.

In music the Æsthetic element naturally prevails over the other two, but
Technic cleverness of execution often affords to some as much pleasure as
the harmony of the sounds produced; and, on the other hand, in its power of
expressing joy or sorrow and of exciting varied emotions at will, it rivals
frequently the more distinct and permanent power of words themselves,
when unaccompanied by Æsthetic forms of art. It is of course, however, in
the outpourings of his imagination or in the logical products of his reason
that man rises highest, and stands most distinctly apart from the rest of
created beings; and though all may not be capable of appreciating it, it is
when both Technic and Æsthetic adjuncts are laid aside, and man listens
only to the voice of reason, that he reaches what, as far as we can now see,
is the highest form of his artistic development.
Of course there are many other forms in which this might be expressed,
and many will be inclined to dispute the correctness of the figures assigned
to each art. They are, in fact, only approximations, and as a first attempt can
hardly be expected to meet all the conditions of the problem. The truth of
the matter is, it would have been better to use algebraic symbols and to
allow every one to translate them into numbers according to his own fancy,
but in the present state of matters such an attempt would have savoured of
affectation. The art of criticism is not sufficiently advanced for this, but if
two or three would follow up what is here indicated it might be placed on a
basis from which to proceed higher. Meanwhile, perhaps the annexed
diagram may serve to explain the relation of the three classes of art to one
another, and the way in which they overlap and mix together so as to make
up a perfect art. Like the preceding table, it will require several editions, the
work of several minds, before it can be perfected, but it probably is not far
from representing the truth as at present known.
There is still another relation of these arts to one another which must not
be overlooked before proceeding further, as a knowledge of it is
indispensable in forming a correct judgment of their respective merits. Like
the Sciences, the Technic Arts hardly depend, after the first steps have been
taken, on individual prowess for their advancement. An astronomer, a
chemist, or a natural historian, now starts from the highest point reached by
any of his predecessors, and he has only to observe and calculate, to analyse
and put together again, in order to advance our knowledge. A giant may of
course make a rapid stride in advance, but a hundred dwarfs will, if they
persevere steadily in the right path, not only overtake him, but probably

advance far beyond anything the most gigantic intellect can accomplish in
science. So it is also in the mechanical arts. The immense strides that have
of late years been made in improving all the machines employed in
manufactures have not been made by the greatest intellects, but by
thousands of men suggesting new contrivances and acquiring skill by
steady improvement in manipulation. In ship-building, for instance, one of
the most complex of the useful arts, no one can tell who the men were who
converted the rude galleys in which our forefathers sailed to Crecy and
Agincourt into the gigantic commercial steamers and war-ships of the
present day. It was the result of thousands of intellects working steadily
towards a well-defined aim, and accomplishing a triumph by a process
which must always be successful in the Technic arts when persevered in
long enough.

Diagram No. 1.

The case is somewhat different with the Æsthetic arts. Some men are
insensible to the harmony of colour and are not offended by the crudest
contrasts. Others do not perceive concords in music, and the most violent
discords give them no pain; others, on the contrary, are endowed with the
utmost sensibility on these points, and are consequently not only able to
appreciate the beauty of the arts arising out of colour or sound, but of
advancing what to those who cannot understand them is an inexplicable
mystery.
When from the Æsthetic Arts we turn to the Sciences and Technic Arts,
we find, as just pointed out, that the individual becomes much less

important and the process everything. Every astronomer now knows more
than Newton; every chemist than John Dalton. Any ordinary mechanic can
start from a higher point than was reached by a Watt or an Arkwright or a
Stephenson, and can surpass them. But no man can mount on the shoulders
of such men as Handel or Mozart or Beethoven, and surpass them; and the
higher we ascend in the scale of arts the more important does the individual
become and the less so the process. A Phidias, a Raphael, a Shakespeare,
are yet unsurpassed, and possibly never may be. All men may be taught to
carve, to colour, and to write mechanically, and may even be instructed to
practise these processes so as to afford pleasure to themselves and others;
but when from this we rise to Phonetic painting, sculpture, or poetry, and
the still higher region of philosophy, the individual becomes all in all, and
his special genius there stamps the true value on the production.
In this respect, again, Architecture is singularly happy as a means of
study. As a Technic art it is practised in the same progressive principles as
all its sister arts, irrespective of individuality. As an Æsthetic art it is hardly
so individual as music, because its forms and colours are permanent and
capable of being repeated with such improvements as each experiment
suggests in every subsequent building; but when it attempts Phonetic forms
of utterance, these are seldom so absolutely integral that they cannot be
separated from the building and judged of apart. A Greek Temple or a
Mediæval cathedral without painting and sculpture may be poor and
inanimate, but still so beautiful in its form, so grand from its mass, and so
imposing from its durability, that in its Technic-Æsthetic form alone it may
command our admiration, more perhaps than any other work of human
hands, except of course, as said before, the highest intellectual forms of
Phonetic art. Architecture thus combines in itself the steady progressive
perfectibility of a Technic art quite independent of the intellectual
capabilities of the architect, combined with the Æsthetic appreciation of
form and colour which is mostly universal, and can at all events be
generally inculcated and learned. But its greatest glory is that it can enlist in
its service the higher branches of Phonetic sculpture and painting, which
can be exercised only by specially gifted individuals. It is difficult to
conceive all these qualities being equally combined in the person of any one
architect, and in practice it is by no means necessary for success that it
should be so, though, if possible, the combination would no doubt be
advantageous. In criticising, on the contrary, it is always necessary to

separate and distinguish between the mechanical, the sensuous, and the
intellectual part of a design. Without this an intelligent appreciation of its
merits or defects can hardly be obtained.
Notwithstanding all that has been pointed out already, and the advantages
of its central position among the sister arts, combined with its own intrinsic
merits, Architecture would never have attained to the high position it now
occupies had it not been fitted with an aim which raised it far above all
utilitarian feelings. In all ages, though certainly not among all nations,
Architecture has been employed as one of the principal forms of worship.
The desire to erect a temple to their Gods worthy to be their dwelling-place
has exalted even the rude arts of savages into something worthy of
admiration, and when such a nation as the Egyptians were inspired with the
same desire, they produced, even in the earliest ages, temples which still
excite feelings of admiration and of awe. Had the practice of architecture
been restricted to supplying only the ordinary wants of mortals, it never
would have risen to be the noble art it now is. Neither the palaces of the
greatest kings, nor the wants of the proudest municipalities, nor the emporia
of the richest commerce would have supplied that lofty aim which is
indispensable for any great intellectual effort. But when, freed from all
trammels of use or expense, the object is to erect a casket worthy to
enshrine the sacred image of a god whom men feared but adored, the
aspiration elevates the work far beyond its useful purpose. It is when men
seek to erect a hall in which worshippers may meet to render that homage
which is their greatest privilege and their highest aspiration, when all that
man can conceive that is great and beautiful is enlisted to create something
worthy of the purpose, that temples have been erected which rank among
the most successful works man has yet produced. Had any exigencies of use
or economy controlled the design of the Parthenon, or of any of our
Mediæval cathedrals, they must have taken a much lower place in the scale
than they now occupy. Their architects were, however, in fact as free from
any utilitarian influences as the poets who composed the ‘Iliad’ or ‘Paradise
Lost.’

III.—Definition of Architecture.

If what has just been said above is understood, it may be sufficient to
make it possible to give a more definite answer than has usually been done
to two questions to which hitherto no satisfactory reply has been accorded
in modern times. “What,” it is frequently asked, “is the true definition of the
word Architecture, or of the Art to which it applies?” “What are the
principles which ought to guide us in designing or criticising Architectural
objects?”
Fifty years ago the answers to these questions generally were, that
Architecture consisted in the closest possible imitation of the forms and
orders employed by the Romans; that a church was well designed exactly in
the proportion in which it resembled a heathen temple; and that the merit of
a civic building was to be measured by its imitation, more or less perfect, of
some palace or amphitheatre of classic times.
In the beginning of this century these answers were somewhat modified
by the publication of Stuart’s works on Athens; the word Grecian was
substituted for Roman in all criticisms, and the few forms that remain to us
of Grecian art were repeated ad nauseam in buildings of the most
heterogeneous class and character.
At the present day churches have been entirely removed from the domain
of classic art, and their merit is made to depend on their being correct
reproductions of mediæval designs. Museums and town halls still generally
adhere to classic forms, alternating between Greek and Roman. In some of
our public buildings an attempt has recently been made to reproduce the
Middle Ages, while in our palaces and clubhouses that compromise
between classicality and common sense which is called Italian is generally
adhered to. These, it is evident, are the mere changing fashions of art. There
is nothing real or essential in this Babel of styles, and we must go deeper
below the surface to enable us to obtain a true definition of the art or of its
purposes. Before attempting this, however, it is essential to bear in mind
that two wholly different systems of architecture have been followed at
different periods in the world’s history.
The first is that which prevailed since the art first dawned, in Egypt, in
Greece, in Rome, in Asia, and in all Europe, during the Middle Ages, and
generally in all countries of the world down to the time of the Reformation
in the 16th century, and still predominates in remote corners of the globe
wherever European civilisation or its influences have not yet penetrated.

The other being that which was introduced with the revival of classic
literature contemporaneously with the reformation of religion, and still
pervades all Europe and wherever European influence has established itself.
In the first period the art of architecture consisted in designing a building
so as to be most suitable and convenient for the purposes required, in
arranging the parts so as to produce the most stately and ornamental effect
consistent with its uses, and in applying to it such ornament as should
express and harmonise with the construction, and be appropriate to the
purposes of the building; while at the same time the architects took care that
the ornament should be the most elegant in itself which it was in their
power to design.
Following this system, not only the Egyptian, the Greek, and the Gothic
architects, but even the indolent and half-civilised inhabitants of India, the
stolid Tartars of Thibet and China, and the savage Mexicans, succeeded in
erecting great and beautiful buildings. No race, however rude or remote, has
failed, when working on this system, to produce buildings which are
admired by all who behold them, and are well worthy of the most attentive
consideration. Indeed, it is almost impossible to indicate one single building
in any part of the world, designed during the prevalence of this true form of
art, which was not thought beautiful, not alone by those who erected it, but
which does not remain a permanent object of admiration and of study even
for strangers in all future ages.
The result of the other system is widely different from this. It has now
been practised in Europe for more than three centuries, and by people who
have more knowledge of architectural forms, more constructive skill, and
more power of combining science and art in effecting a great object, than
any people who ever existed before. Notwithstanding this, from the
building of St. Peter’s at Rome to that of our own Parliament Houses, not
one building has been produced that is admitted to be entirely satisfactory,
or which permanently retains a hold on general admiration. Many are large
and stately to an extent almost unknown before, and many are ornamented
with a profuseness of which no previous examples exist; but with all this,
though they conform with the passing fashions of the day, they soon
become antiquated and out of date, and men wonder how such a style could
ever have been thought beautiful, just as we wonder how any one could

have admired the female costumes of the last century which captivated the
hearts of our grandfathers.
It does not require us to go very deeply into the philosophy of the subject
to find out why this should be the case; the fact simply being that no sham
was ever permanently successful, either in morals or in art, and no
falsehood ever remained long without being found out, or which, when
detected, inevitably did not cease to please. It is literally impossible that we
should reproduce either the circumstances or the feelings which gave rise to
classical art and made it a reality; and though Gothic art was a thing of our
country and of our own race, it belongs to a state of society so totally
different from anything that now exists, that any attempt at reproduction
now must at best be a masquerade, and never can be a real or earnest form
of art. The designers of the Eglinton Tournament carried the system to a
perfectly legitimate conclusion when they sought to reproduce the costumes
and warlike exercises of our ancestors; and the pre-Raphaelite painters were
equally justified in attempting to do in painting that which was done every
day in architecture. Both attempts failed signally, because we had
progressed in the arts of war and painting, and could easily detect the
absurdity of these practices. It is in architecture alone of all the arts that the
false system remains, and we do not yet perceive the impossibility of its
leading to any satisfactory result.

No. 2.

Bearing all this in mind, let us try if we can come to a clearer definition
of what this art really is, and in what its merits consist. Let us suppose the
Diagram (Woodcut No. 2) to represent an ordinary house, such as is found
in many of our London streets. The first division, A, is the most prosaic
form of building, no more thought being bestowed on it than if it were a
garden wall. The second division, B, is better; the cornices and string-course
indicate the levels of the several floors into which the building is divided;
the quoins of the door and windows are emphasized by the use of a better or
different coloured brick, and the arched forms given to door and window on
ground floor suggest increased strength. In the third division, C, this has
been carried still further; the rustication of the stonework on the lower
storey gives an appearance of greater solidity, and the importance given to
the cornices, the addition of architrave mouldings round windows, with
pediments to those of the first floor, and the decoration of the parapet carry
the house out of the domain of building into that of architecture. The fourth
division carries this still farther; the whole design is here divided into three
stages—the ground floor being treated as a podium or base to the two floors
above, the whole being crowned by an attic storey; greater importance is
given to the front by the slight projection of two wings; the entrance
doorway is emphasized, and by means of cornices, quoins, and pilasters, a
play of light and shade is given to an elevation which virtually lies in one
plane. In this instance not only is a greater amount of ornament applied, but
the parts are so disposed as in themselves to produce a more agreeable
effect; and although the height of the floors remains the same, and the
amount of light introduced very nearly so, still the slight grouping of the
parts is such as to produce a better class of architecture than could be done
by the mere application of any amount of ornament. The diagram deals with
one phase of the subject, “a town house,” and with the elevation only, the
style being that generally known as Italian; if it is admitted that the last
division is an object of architecture, which the first is not, it follows from
this analysis that architecture commences when some embellishment is
added to the building which was not strictly a structural necessity. The
value of the embellishment, from an architectural point of view, depends on
—the extent to which, in its application, the structural features have been
recognised,—the appropriateness of the ornament,—the careful study of
proportion and balance of the several parts, and,—in a certain measure, the
extent to which some known precedent has been followed.

Recurring, for instance, to the Parthenon, to illustrate this principle
farther. The proportions of length to breadth, and of height to both these, are
instances of carefully-studied proportion and balance; and still more so is
the arrangement of the porticoes and the disposition of the peristyle. If all
the pillars were plain square piers, and all the mouldings square and flat,
still the Parthenon could not fail, from the mere disposition of its parts, to
be a pleasing and imposing building. So it is with a Gothic cathedral. The
proportion of length to breadth, the projection of the transepts, the different
height of the central and side aisles, the disposition and proportion of the
towers, are all instances of proportion and balance, and beautiful even if
without ornament. Many of the older abbeys, especially those of the
Cistercians, are as devoid of ornament as a modern barn; but from the mere
disposition of their parts they are always pleasing and, if large, are imposing
objects of architecture. Stonehenge is an instance of ornamental
construction wholly without ornament, yet it is almost as imposing an
architectural object as any of the same dimensions in any part of the world.
It is, however, when ornament is added to this, and when that ornament is
elegant itself and appropriate to the construction and to the purposes of the
building, that the temple or the cathedral ranks among the highest objects of
the art and becomes one of the noblest works of man.
Even without structural decoration, a building may, by mere dint of
ornament, become an architectural object, though it is far more difficult to
attain good architecture by this means, and in true styles it has seldom been
attempted. Still, such a building as the town hall at Louvain, which if
stripped of its ornaments would be little better than a factory, by richness
and appropriateness of ornament alone has become a very pleasing
specimen of the art. In modern times it is too much the fashion to attempt to
produce architectural effects not only without attending to ornamental
construction, but often in defiance of, and in concealing that which exists.
When this is done, the result must be bad art; but nevertheless it is
architecture, however execrable it may be.
If these premises are correct, the art of the builder consists in merely
putting materials together so as to attain the desired end in the speediest and
simplest fashion. The art of the civil or military engineer consists in
selecting the best and most appropriate materials for the object he has in
view, and using these in the most scientific manner, so as to ensure an
economical but satisfactory result. Where the engineer leaves off, the art of

the architect begins. His object is to arrange the materials of the engineer,
not so much with regard to economical as to artistic effects, and by light
and shade, and outline, to produce a form that in itself shall be permanently
beautiful. He then adds ornament, which by its meaning doubles the effect
of the disposition he has just made, and by its elegance throws a charm over
the whole composition.
Viewed in this light, it is evident that there are no objects that are usually
delegated to the civil engineer which may not be brought within the
province of the architect. A bridge, an aqueduct, the embankment of a lake,
or the roof of a station, are all as legitimate subjects for architectural
ornament as a temple or a palace. They were all so treated by the Romans
and in the Middle Ages, and are so treated up to the present day in the
remote parts of India, and wherever true art prevails.
It is not essential that the engineer should know anything of architecture,
though it is certainly desirable he should do so; but, on the other hand, it is
indispensably necessary that the architect should understand construction.
Without that knowledge he cannot design; and although it has been
conceived by some that it would be better to delegate the mechanical task to
the engineer, and so restrict himself entirely to the artistic arrangement and
ornamentation of his design, such a course would be fatal to the
development of architectural style. It is true that in some of the works above
stated, it is generally thought desirable to confide them to engineers; but in
the few cases in which architects have been called in to co-operate with
them, as in the roofs of the Great Western and Midland Railway Stations,
the result has been so satisfactory as to suggest the advantage of such
combination. In the Great Exhibition of 1851, the happiest feature, the
semicircular roof of the transept, was suggested by the late Sir Charles
Barry, and the developments of that form in the nave and transepts of the
Crystal Palace constitute still the most beautiful features of that building. In
works of a monumental character, such as town-halls, museums, or public
galleries, which are designed to last for centuries, the strict economy of
material, which is sometimes deemed necessary in engineering works, is
not advisable, because mass, stability, and durability—three elements into
which we enter later on—are of the very essence of their architectural
character. In these and other works of a simple character, such as private
houses, the calculations are not of so elaborate a nature as to be outside the
architect’s knowledge; and although of late years the use of iron girders,

stanchions, and columns has introduced a new factor among building
materials which occasionally may call for the assistance of an expert to
substantiate the architect’s calculations, it has hitherto been the custom to
conceal these features, so that they have not entered the phase of
architectural design. In course of time, when an increased knowledge of the
properties of iron is acquired, we may hope to see a great development in its
artistic treatment, so that it may eventually rise to the dignity and assume
the character, which in the architectural styles of bygone times, all other
materials have reached.
In addition, however, to the convenient arrangement and artistic
treatment of a building, and its proper and sound construction, there is still a
third element which requires the special endowment of an artist for its
exercise. No architectural object can be considered as complete, or as
having attained the highest excellence till it is endowed with a voice
through the aid of phonetic sculpture and painting.
In a few words, therefore, a perfect building may be defined as one that
combines:—
1st, as Technic principles:
Convenience of general arrangements,
Proper distribution of materials and sound construction.

2nd, as Æsthetic principles of design:
Artistic conception combined with
Ornamented construction, and

3rd, for Phonetic adjuncts:
Sculpture, or
Painting, employed as voices to tell the story of the building,
and explain the purposes for which it was designed, or those
to which it is dedicated.

Besides these, however, which are the principal theoretic characteristics
of architecture, there are several minor technical principles which it may be
convenient to enumerate before proceeding farther.
It may also be well to give such examples as shall make what has just
been indicated theoretically, clearer than can be done by the mere

enunciation of abstract principles.

IV.—Mass.

The first and most obvious element of architectural grandeur is size—a
large edifice being always more imposing than a small one; and when the
art displayed in two buildings is equal, their effect is almost in the direct
ratio of their dimensions. In other words, if one temple or church is twice or
three times as large as another, it is twice or three times as grand or as
effective. The Temple of Theseus differs very little, except in dimensions,
from the Parthenon, and, except in that respect, hardly differed at all from
the Temple of Jupiter at Elis; but because of its smaller size it must rank
lower than the greater examples. In our own country many of our smaller
abbeys or parish churches display as great beauty of design or detail as our
noblest cathedrals, but, from their dimensions alone, they are insignificant
in comparison, and the traveller passes them by, while he stands awe-struck
before the portals or under the vault of the larger edifices.
The pyramids of Egypt, the topes of the Buddhists, the mounds of the
Etruscans, depend almost wholly for their effect on their dimensions. The
Romans understood to perfection the value of this element, and used it in its
most unsophisticated simplicity to obtain the effect they desired. In the
Middle Ages the architects not only aspired to the erection of colossal
edifices, but they learnt how they might greatly increase the apparent
dimensions of a building by a scientific disposition of the parts and a skilful
arrangement of ornament, thereby making it look very much larger than it
really was. It is, in fact, the most obvious and most certain, though it must
be confessed perhaps the most vulgar, means of obtaining architectural
grandeur; but a true and perfect example can never be produced by
dependence on this alone, and it is only when size is combined with beauty
of proportion and elegance of ornament that perfection in architectural art is
attained.

V.—Stability.

Next to size the most important element is stability. By this is meant, not
merely the strength required to support the roof or to resist the various
thrusts and pressures, but that excess of strength over mere mechanical
requirement which is necessary thoroughly to satisfy the mind, and to give
to the building a monumental character, with an appearance that it could
resist the shocks of time or the violence of man for ages yet to come.
No people understood the value of this so well as the Egyptians. The
form of the Pyramids is designed wholly with reference to stability, and
even the Hypostyle Hall at Karnac excites admiration far more by its
massiveness and strength, and its apparent eternity of duration, than by any
other element of design. In the Hall all utilitarian exigencies and many other
obvious means of effect are sacrificed to these, and with such success that
after more than 3000 years’ duration still enough remains to excite the
admiration which even the most unpoetical spectators cannot withhold from
its beauties.
In a more refined style much of the beauty of the Parthenon arises from
this cause. The area of each of the pillars in the portico of the Pantheon at
Rome is under 20 feet, that of those of the Parthenon is over 33 feet, and,
considering how much taller the former are than the latter, it may be said
that the pillars at Athens are twice as massive as those of the Roman temple,
yet the latter have sufficed not only for the mechanical, but for many points
of artistic stability; but the strength and solidity of the porticos of the
Parthenon, without taking into consideration its other points of superiority,
must always render it more beautiful than the other.
The massiveness which the Normans and other early Gothic builders
imparted to their edifices arose more from clumsiness and want of
constructive skill than from design; but, though arising from so ignoble a
cause, its effect is always grand, and the rude Norman nave often surpasses
in grandeur the airy and elegant choir which was afterwards added to it. In
our own country no building is more entirely satisfactory than the nave at
Winchester, where the width of the pillars exceeds that of the aisles, and the
whole is Norman in outline, though Gothic in detail. On the other hand no
building of its dimensions and beauty of detail can well be so unsatisfactory
as the choir at Beauvais. Though it has stood the test of centuries, it looks
so frail, requires so many props to keep it up, and is so evidently an
overstrained exercise of mechanical cleverness, that though it may excite

wonder as an architectural tour de force, it never can satisfy the mind of the
true artist, or please to the same extent as less ambitious examples.
Even when we descend to the lowest walks of architecture we find this
principle prevailing. It would require an immense amount of design and
good taste to make the thin walls and thinner roof of a brick and slated
cottage look as picturesque or so well as one built of rubble-stone, or even
with mud walls, and a thatched roof: the thickness and solidity of the one
must always be more satisfactory than the apparent flimsiness of the other.
Here, as in most cases, necessity controls the architect; but when fettered by
no utilitarian exigencies, there is no safer or readier means of obtaining an
effect than this, and when effect alone is sought it is almost impossible for
an architect to err in giving too much solidity to his building. Size and
stability are alone sufficient to produce grandeur in architectural design,
and, where sublimity is aimed at, they are the two elements most essential
to its production, and are indeed the two without which it cannot possibly
be attained.

VI.—Durability.

As the complement to stability, the length of time during which
architectural objects are calculated to endure confers on them an impress of
durability which can hardly be attained by any of the sister arts. Sculpture
may endure as long, and some of the Egyptian examples of that art found
near the Pyramids are as old as anything in that country, but it is not their
age that impresses us so much as the story they have to tell. The Pyramids,
on the other hand, in the majesty of their simple Technic grandeur, do
challenge a quasi-eternity of duration with a distinctness that is most
impressive, and which there, as elsewhere, is one of the most powerful
elements of architectural expression.
When Horace sang—
“Vixêre fortes ante Agamemnona
Multi, sed omnes illacrimabiles
Urgentur ignotique longâ
Nocte, carent quia vate sacro,”

he overlooked the fact that long before Troy was dreamt of, Egyptian kings
had raised pyramids which endure to the present day, and the Pharaohs of
the Eighteenth and Nineteenth dynasties had filled the valley of the Upper
Nile with temples and palaces and tombs which tell us not only the names
of their founders, but reveal to us their thoughts and aspirations with a
distinctness that no sacred poet could as well convey. From that time
onward the architects have covered the world with monuments that still
remain on the spot where they were erected, and tell all, who are
sufficiently instructed to read their riddles aright, what nations once
occupied these spots, what degree of civilisation they had reached, and how,
in erecting these monuments on which we now gaze, they had attained that
quasi-immortality after which they hankered.
Sculpture and painting, when allied with architecture, may endure as
long, but their aim is not to convey to the mind the impression of durability
which is so strongly felt in the presence of the more massive works of
architectural art. Even when ruined and in decay the buildings are almost
equally impressive, while ruined sculptures or paintings are generally far
from being pleasing objects, and, whatever their other merits may be,
certainly miss that impression obtained from the durability of architectural
objects.

VII.—Materials.

Another very obvious mode of obtaining architectural effect is by the
largeness or costliness of the materials employed. A terrace, or even a wall,
if composed of large stones, is in itself an object of considerable grandeur,
while one of the same lineal dimensions and of the same design, if
composed of brick or rubble, may appear a very contemptible object.
Like all the more obvious means of architectural effect, the Egyptians
seized on this and carried it to its utmost legitimate extent. All their
buildings, as well as their colossi and obelisks, owe much of their grandeur
to the magnitude of the materials employed in their construction. The works
called Cyclopean found in Italy and Greece have no other element of
grandeur than the size of the stones or rather masses of rock which the
builders of that age were in the habit of using. In Jerusalem nothing was so
much insisted upon by the old writers, or is so much admired now, as the

largeness of the stones employed in the building of the Temple and its
substructions.
We can well believe how much value was attached to this when we find
that in the neighbouring city of Baalbec stones were used of between 60 and
70 ft. in length, weighing as much as the tubes of the Britannia Bridge, for
the mere bonding course of a terrace wall. Even in a more refined style of
architecture, a pillar, the shaft of which is of a single stone, or a lintel or
architrave of one block, is always a grander and more beautiful object than
if composed of a number of smaller parts. Among modern buildings, the
poverty-stricken design of the church of St. Isaac at St. Petersburg is
redeemed by the grandeur of its monolithic columns, whilst the beautiful
design of the Madeleine at Paris is destroyed by the smallness of the
materials in which it is expressed. It is easy to see that this arises from the
same feeling to which massiveness and stability address themselves. It is
the expression of giant power and the apparent eternity of duration which
they convey; and in whatever form that may be presented to the human
mind, it always produces a sentiment tending towards sublimity, which is
the highest effect at which architecture or any other art can aim.
The Gothic architects ignored this element of grandeur altogether, and
sought to replace it by the display of constructive skill in the employment of
the smaller materials they used, but it is extremely questionable whether in
so doing they did not miss one of the most obvious and most important
principles of architectural design.
Besides these, value in the mere material is a great element in
architectural effect. We all, for instance, admire an ornament of pure gold
more than one that is only silver gilt, though few can detect the difference.
Persons will travel hundreds of miles to see a great diamond or wonderful
pearl, who would not go as many yards to see paste models of them, though
if the two were laid together on the table very few indeed could distinguish
the real from the counterfeit.
When we come to consider such buildings as the cathedral at Milan or
the Taje Mehal at Agra, there can be no doubt but that the beauty of the
material of which they are composed adds very much to the admiration they
excite. In the latter case the precious stones with which the ornamental parts
of the design are inlaid, convey an impression of grandeur almost as
directly as their beauty of outline.

It is, generally speaking, because of its greater preciousness that we
admire a marble building more than one of stone, though the colour of the
latter may be really as beautiful and the material at least as durable. In the
same manner a stone edifice is preferred to one of brick, and brick to wood
and plaster; but even these conditions may be reversed by the mere question
of value. If, for instance, a brick and a stone edifice stand close together, the
design of both being equally appropriate to the material employed, our
judgment may be reversed if the bricks are so beautifully moulded, or made
of such precious clay, or so carefully laid, that the brick edifice costs twice
as much as the other; in that case we should look with more respect and
admiration on the artificial than on the natural material. From the same
reason many elaborately carved wooden buildings, notwithstanding the
smallness of their parts and their perishable nature, are more to be admired
than larger and more monumental structures, and this merely in
consequence of the evidence of labour and consequent cost that have been
bestowed upon them.
Irrespective of these considerations, many building materials are
invaluable from their own intrinsic merits. Granite is one of the best known,
from its hardness and durability, marble from the exquisite polish it takes,
and for its colour, which for internal decoration is a property that can hardly
be over-estimated. Stone is valuable on account of the largeness of the
blocks that can be obtained and because it easily receives a polish sufficient
for external purposes. Bricks are excellent for their cheapness and the
facility with which they can be used, and they may also be moulded into
forms of great elegance, so that beauty may be easily attained; but sublimity
is nearly impossible in brickwork, without at least such dimensions as have
rarely been accomplished by man. The smallness of the material is such a
manifest incongruity with largeness of the parts, that even the Romans,
though they tried hard, could never quite overcome the difficulty.
Plaster is another artificial material. Except in monumental erections it is
superior to stone for internal purposes, and always better than brick from
the uniformity and smoothness of its surface, the facility with which it is
moulded, and its capability of receiving painted or other decorations to any
extent.
Wood should be used externally only on the smallest and least
monumental class of buildings, and even internally is generally inferior to

plaster. It is dark in colour, liable to warp and split, and combustible, which
are all serious objections to its use, except for flooring, doors, and such
purposes as it is now generally applied to.
Cast iron is another material rarely brought into use, though more
precious than any of those above enumerated, and possessing more
strength, though probably less durability. Where lightness combined with
strength is required, it is invaluable, but though it can be moulded into any
form of beauty that may be designed, it has hardly yet ever been so used as
to allow of its architectural qualities being appreciated.
All these materials are nearly equally good when used honestly each for
the purpose for which it is best adapted; they all become bad either when
employed for a purpose for which they are not appropriate, or when one
material is substituted in the place of or to imitate another. Grandeur and
sublimity can only be reached by the more durable and more massive class
of materials, but beauty and elegance are attainable in all, and the range of
architectural design is so extensive that it is absurd to limit it to one class
either of natural or of artificial materials, or to attempt to prescribe the use
of some and to insist on that of others, for purposes to which they are
manifestly inapplicable.

VIII.—Construction.

Construction has been shown to be the chief aim and object of the
engineer; with him it is all in all, and to construct scientifically and at the
same time economically is the beginning and end of his endeavours. It is far
otherwise with the architect. Construction ought to be his handmaid, useful
to assist him in carrying out his design, but never his mistress, controlling
him in the execution of that which he would otherwise think expedient. An
architect ought always to allow himself such a margin of strength that he
may disregard or play with his construction, and in nine cases out of ten the
money spent in obtaining this solidity will be more effective architecturally
than twice the amount expended on ornament, however elegant or
appropriate that may be.
So convinced were the Egyptians and Greeks of this principle, that they
never used any other constructive expedient than a perpendicular wall or

prop, supporting a horizontal beam; and half the satisfactory effect of their
buildings arises from their adhering to this simple though expensive mode
of construction. They were perfectly acquainted with the use of the arch and
its properties, but they knew that its employment would introduce
complexity and confusion into their designs, and therefore they wisely
rejected it. Even to the present day the Hindus refuse to use the arch, though
it has long been employed in their country by the Mahometans. As they
quaintly express it, “An arch never sleeps;” and it is true that by its thrust
and pressure it is always tending to tear a building to pieces; in spite of all
counterpoises, whenever the smallest damage is done, it hastens the ruin of
a building, which, if more simply constructed, might last for ages.
The Romans were the first who introduced a more complicated style.
They wanted larger and more complex buildings than had been before
required, and they employed brick and concrete to a great extent even in
their temples and most monumental buildings. They obtained both space
and variety by these means, with comparatively little trouble or expense;
but we miss in all their works that repose and harmony which is the great
charm that pervades the buildings of their predecessors.
The Gothic architects went even beyond the Romans in this respect. They
prided themselves on their constructive skill, and paraded it on all
occasions, and often to an extent very destructive of true architectural
design. The lower storey of a French cathedral is generally very
satisfactory; the walls are thick and solid, and the buttresses, when not
choked up with chapels, just sufficient for shadow and relief; but the
architects of that country were seized with a mania for clerestories of
gigantic height, which should appear internally mere walls of painted glass
divided by mullions. This could only be effected either by encumbering the
floor of the church with piers of inconvenient thickness or by a system of
buttressing outside. The latter was the expedient adopted; but
notwithstanding the ingenuity with which it was carried out, and the
elegance of many of the forms and ornaments used, it was singularly
destructive of true architectural effect. It not only produces confusion of
outline and a total want of repose, but it is eminently suggestive of
weakness, and one cannot help feeling that if one of these props were
removed, the whole would tumble down like a house of cards.

This was hardly ever the case in England: the less ambitious dimensions
employed in this country enabled the architects to dispense in a great
measure with these adjuncts, and when flying buttresses are used, they look
more as if employed to suggest the idea of perfect security than as
necessary to stability. Owing to this cause the French have never been able
to construct a satisfactory vault: in consequence of the weakness of their
supports they were forced to stilt, twist, and dome them to a most
unpleasing extent, and to attend to constructive instead of artistic
necessities. With the English architects this never was the case; they were
always able to design their vaults in such forms as they thought would be
most beautiful artistically, and, owing to the greater solidity of their
supports, to carry them out as at first designed.[12]
It was left for the Germans to carry this system to its acme of absurdity.
Half the merit of the old Round arched Gothic cathedrals on the Rhine
consists in their solidity and the repose they display in every part. Their
walls and other essential parts are always in themselves sufficient to support
the roofs and vaults, and no constructive contrivance is seen anywhere; but
when the Germans adopted the pointed style, their builders—they can
hardly be called architects—seemed to think that the whole art consisted in
supporting the widest possible vaults on the thinnest possible pillars and in
constructing the tallest windows with the most attenuated mullions. The
consequence is, that though their constructive skill still excites the wonder
of the mason or the engineer, the artist or the architect turns from the cold
vaults and lean piers of their later cathedrals with a painful feeling of
unsatisfied expectation, and wonders why such dimensions and such details
should produce a result so utterly unsatisfactory.
So many circumstances require to be taken into consideration, that it is
impossible to prescribe any general rules in such a subject as this, but the
following table will explain to a certain extent the ratio of the area to the
points of support in sixteen of the principal buildings of the world.[13] As far
as it goes, it tends to prove that the satisfactory architectural effect of a
building is nearly in the inverse ratio to the mechanical cleverness displayed
in its construction.

Nearest
Ratio in
Area. Solids. Vulgar
Decimals
Fractions.

Feet. Feet.
Hypostyle Three-
63,070 18,681 .296
Hall, Karnac tenths.
St. Peter’s,
227,000 59,308 .261 One-fourth.
Rome
Spires
56,737 12,076 .216 One-fifth.
Cathedral
Sta. Maria,
81,802 17,056 .201 One-fifth.
Florence
Bourges
61,590 11,091 .181 One-sixth.
Cathedral
St. Paul’s,
84,311 11,311 .171 One-sixth.
London
Ste.
Geneviève, 60,287 9,269 .154 One-sixth.
Paris
Parthenon, One-
23,140 4,430 .148
Athens seventh.
Chartres
68,261 8,886 .130 One-eighth.
Cathedral
Salisbury
55,853 7,012 .125 One-eighth.
Cathedral
Paris, Notre
61,108 7,852 .122 One-eighth.
Dame
Temple of
68,000 7,600 .101 One-ninth.
Peace
Milan
108,277 11,601 .107 One-tenth.
Cathedral
Cologne
91,164 9,554 .104 One-tenth.
Cathedral
York
72,860 7,376 .101 One-tenth.
Cathedral
St. Ouen,
47,107 4,637 .097 One-tenth.
Rouen

At the head of the list stands the Hypostyle Hall, and next to it practically
is the Parthenon, which being the only wooden-roofed building in the list,
its ratio of support in proportion to the work required is nearly as great as
that of the Temple at Karnac. Spires only wants better details to be one of
the grandest edifices in Europe, and Bourges, Paris, Chartres, and Salisbury
are among the most satisfactory Gothic cathedrals we possess. St. Ouen,
notwithstanding all its beauty of detail and design, fails in this one point,
and is certainly deficient in solidity. Cologne and Milan would both be very
much improved by greater massiveness: and at York the lightness of the
supports is carried so far that it never can be completed with the vaulted
roof originally designed, for the nave at least.
The four great Renaissance cathedrals, at Rome, Florence, London, and
Paris, enumerated in this list, have quite sufficient strength for architectural
effect, but the value of this is lost from concealed construction, and because
the supports are generally grouped into a few great masses, the dimensions
of which cannot be estimated by the eye. A Gothic architect would have
divided these masses into twice or three times the number of the piers used
in these churches, and by employing ornament designed to display and
accentuate the construction, would have rendered these buildings far more
satisfactory than they are.
In this respect the great art of the architect consists in obtaining the
greatest possible amount of unencumbered space internally, consistent in
the first place with the requisite amount of permanent mechanical stability,
and next with such an appearance of superfluity of strength as shall satisfy
the mind that the building is perfectly secure and calculated to last for ages.

IX.—Forms.

It is extremely difficult to lay down any general rules as to the forms best
adapted to architectural purposes, as the value of a form in architecture
depends wholly on the position in which it is placed and the use to which it
is applied. There is in consequence no prescribed form, however ugly it
may appear at present, that may not one day be found to be the very best for
a given purpose; and, in like manner, none of those most admired which
may not become absolutely offensive when used in a manner for which they
are unsuited. In itself no simple form seems to have any inherent value of

its own, and it is only by combination of one with another that they become
effective. If, for instance, we take a series of twenty or thirty figures,
placing a cube at one end as the most solid of angular and a sphere at the
other as the most perfect of round shapes, it would be easy to cut off the
angles of the cube in successive gradations till it became a polygon of so
many sides as to be nearly curvilinear. On the other hand by modifying the
sphere through all the gradations of conic sections, it might meet the other
series in the centre without there being any abrupt distinction between
them. Such a series might be compared to the notes of a piano. We cannot
say that any one of the base or treble notes is in itself more beautiful than
the others. It is only by a combination of several notes that harmony is
produced, and gentle or brilliant melodies by their fading into one another,
or by strongly marked contrasts. So it is with forms: the square and angular
are expressive of strength and power; curves of softness and elegance; and
beauty is produced by effective combination of the right-lined with the
curvilinear. It is always thus in nature. Rocks and all the harder substances
are rough and angular, and marked by strong contrasts and deep lines.
Among trees, the oak is rugged, and its branches are at right angles to its
stem, or to one another. The lines of the willow are rounded, and flowing.
The forms of children and women are round and full, and free from violent
contrasts; those of men are abrupt, hard, and angular in proportion to the
vigour and strength of their frame.
In consequence of these properties, as a general rule the square or angular
parts ought always to be placed below, where strength is wanted, and the
rounded above. If, for instance, a tower is to be built, the lower storey
should not only be square, but should be marked by buttresses, or other
strong lines, and the masonry rusticated, so as to convey even a greater
appearance of strength. Above this, if the square form is still retained, it
may be with more elegance and less accentuation. The form may then
change to an octagon, that to a polygon of sixteen sides, and then be
surmounted by a circular form of any sort. These conditions are not
absolute, but the reverse arrangement would be manifestly absurd. A tower
with a circular base and a square upper storey is what almost no art could
render tolerable, while the other pleases by its innate fitness without any
extraordinary effort of design.
On the other hand, round pillars are more pleasing as supports for a
square architrave, not so much from any inherent fitness for the purpose as

from the effect of contrast, and flat friezes are preferable to curved ones of
the late Roman styles from the same cause. The angular mouldings
introduced among the circular shafts of a Gothic coupled pillar, add
immensely to the brilliancy of effect. Where everything is square and
rugged, as in a Druidical trilithon, the effect may be sublime, but it cannot
be elegant; where everything is rounded, as in the Choragic Monument of
Lysicrates, the perfection of elegance may be attained, but never sublimity.
Perfection, as usual, lies between these extremes.

X—Proportion.

The properties above enumerated may be characterised as the mechanical
principles of design. Size, stability, construction, material, and many such,
are elements at the command of the engineer or mason, as well as of the
architect, and a building remarkable for these properties only, cannot be
said to rise above the lowest grade of architectural excellence. They are
invaluable adjuncts in the hands of the true artist, but ought never to be the
principal elements of design.
After these, the two most important resources at the command of the
architect are Proportion and Ornament; the former enabling him to
construct ornamentally, the latter to ornament his construction; both require
knowledge and thought, and can only be properly applied by one
thoroughly imbued with the true principles of architectural design.
As proportion, to be good, must be modified by every varying exigence
of a design, it is of course impossible to lay down any general rules which
shall hold good in all cases; but a few of its principles are obvious enough,
and can be defined so as to enable us to judge how far they have been
successfully carried out in the various buildings enumerated in the
following pages.
To take first the simplest form of the proposition, let us suppose a room
built, which shall be an exact cube—of say 20 feet each way—such a
proportion must be bad and inartistic; and besides, the height is too great for
the other dimensions, apparently because it is impossible to get far enough
away to embrace the whole wall at one view, or to see the springing of the
roof, without throwing the head back and looking upwards. If the height

were exaggerated to thirty or forty feet, the disproportion would be so
striking, that no art could render it agreeable. As a general rule, a room
square in plan is never pleasing. It is always better that one side should be
longer than the other, so as to give a little variety to the design. Once and a
half the width has often been recommended, and with every increase of
length an increase of height is not only allowable, but indispensable. Some
such rule as the following seems to meet most cases:—“The height of a
room ought to be equal to half its width, plus the square root of its length.”
Thus a room 20 feet square ought to be between 14 and 15 feet high; if its
length be increased to 40 feet, its height must be at least 161⁄2; if 100,
certainly not less than 20. If we proceed further, and make the height
actually exceed the width, the effect is that of making it look narrow. As a
general rule, and especially in all extreme cases, by adding to one
dimension, we take away in appearance from the others. Thus, if we take a
room 20 feet wide and 30 or 40 feet in height, we make it narrow; if 40
wide and 20 high, we make a low room. By increasing the length, we
diminish the other two dimensions.
This, however, is merely speaking of plain rooms with plain walls, and
an architect may be forced to construct rooms of all sorts of unpleasing
dimensions, but it is here that his art comes to his aid, and he must be very
little of an artist if he cannot conceal, even when unable entirely to
counteract, the defects of his dimensions. A room, for instance, that is a
perfect cube of 20 feet may be made to look as low as one only 15 feet
high, by using a strongly marked horizontal decoration, by breaking the
wall into different heights, by marking strongly the horizontal proportions,
and obliterating as far as possible all vertical lines. The reverse process will
make a room only 10 feet high look as lofty as one of 15.
Even the same wall-paper (if of strongly marked lines) if pasted on the
sides of two rooms exactly similar in dimensions, but with the lines vertical
in the one case, in the other horizontal, will alter the apparent dimensions of
them by several feet. If a room is too high, it is easy to correct this by
carrying a bold cornice to the height required, and stopping there the
vertical lines of the wall, and above this coving the roof, or using some
device which shall mark a distinction from the walls, and the defect may
become a beauty. In like manner, if a room is too long for its other
dimensions, this is easily remedied either by breaks in the walls where these

can be obtained, or by screens of columns across its width, or by only
breaking the height of the roof. Anything which will divide the length into
compartments will effect this. The width, if in excess, is easily remedied by
dividing it, as the Gothic architects did, into aisles. Thus a room 50 feet
wide and 30 high, may easily be restored to proportion by cutting off 10 or
12 feet on each side, and lowering the roofs of the side compartments, to
say 20 feet. If great stability is not required, this can be done without
encumbering the floor with many points of support. The greater the number
used the more easily the effect is obtained, but it can be done almost
without them.
Externally it is easier to remedy defects of proportion than it is internally.
It is easier than on the inside to increase the apparent height by strongly
marked vertical lines, or to bring it down by the employment of a horizontal
decoration.
If the length of a building is too
great, this is easily remedied by
projections, or by breaking up the
length into square divisions. Thus,
A A is a long building, but B B is a
square one, or practically (owing to
the perspective) less than a square
in length, in any direction at right
angles to the line of vision; or, in
other words, to a spectator at A’ the
building would look as if shorter in
the direction of B B than in that of A
A, owing to the largeness and
importance of the part nearest the
eye. If 100 feet in length by 50 feet
high is a pleasing dimension for a
No. 3. certain design, and it is required
that the building should be 500 feet
long, it is only necessary to break it into five parts, and throw three back
and two forward, or the contrary, and the proportion becomes as before.
The Egyptians hardly studied the science of proportion at all; they gained
their effects by simpler and more obvious means. The Greeks were masters

in this as in everything else, but they used the resources of the art with
extreme sobriety—externally at least—dreading to disturb that simplicity
which is so essential to sublimity in architecture. But internally, where
sublimity was not attainable with the dimensions they employed, they
divided the cells of their temples into three aisles, and the height into two,
by placing two ranges of columns one above the other. By these means they
were enabled to use such a number of small parts as to increase the apparent
size most considerably, and at the same time to give greater apparent
magnitude to the statue, which was the principal object for which the
temple was erected.
The Romans do not seem to have troubled themselves with the science of
proportion in the designs of their buildings, though nothing can well be
more exquisite than the harmony that exists between the parts in their
orders, and generally in their details. During the Middle Ages, however, we
find, from first to last, the most earnest attention paid to it, and half the
beauty of the buildings of that age is owing to the successful results to
which the architects carried their experiments in balancing the parts of their
structures the one against the other, so as to produce that harmony we so
much admire in them.
The first great invention of the Gothic architects (though of Greek origin)
was that of dividing the breadth of the building internally into three aisles,
and making the central one higher and wider than those on each side. By
this means height and length were obtained at the expense of width: this
latter, however, is never a valuable property artistically, though it may be
indispensable for the utilitarian exigencies of the building. They next sought
to increase still further the height of the central aisle by dividing its sides
into three equal portions which by contrast added very much to the effect:
but the monotony of this arrangement was soon apparent: besides, it was
perceived that the side aisles were so low as not to come into direct
comparison with the central nave. To remedy this they gradually increased
its dimensions, and at last hit on something very like the following
proportions. They made the height of the side aisle half that of the central
(the width being also in the same proportion); the remaining portions they
divided into three, making the triforium one-third, the clerestory two-thirds
of the whole. Thus the three divisions are in the proportion of 1, 2, and 3,
each giving value to the other, and the whole adding very considerably to
all the apparent dimensions of the interior. It would have been easy to have

carried the system further and, by increasing the number
of the pillars longitudinally and the number of divisions
vertically, to have added considerably to even this
appearance of size; but it would then have been at the
expense of simplicity and grandeur: and though the
building might have looked larger, the beauty of the
design would have been destroyed.
One of the most striking exemplifications of the
perfection of the Gothic architects in this department of
their art is shown in their employment of towers and
spires. As a general rule, placing a tall building in
juxtaposition with a low one exaggerates the height of the
one and the lowness of the other; and as it was by no
means the object of the architects to sacrifice their
churches for their towers, it required all their art to raise
noble spires without doing this. In the best designs they
effected it by bold buttresses below, and the moment the
tower got free of the building, by changing it to an
octagon and cutting it up by pinnacles, and lastly by
changing its form into that of a spire, using generally
No. 4.
smaller parts than are found in the church. By these
devices they prevented the spire from competing in any
way with the church. On the contrary, a spire or group of spires gave
dignity and height to the whole design, without deducting from any of its
dimensions.
The city of Paris contains an instructive exemplification of these
doctrines—the façade of the Cathedral of Notre Dame (exclusive of the
upper storey of the towers), and the Arc de l’Etoile being two buildings of
exactly the same dimensions; yet any one who is not aware of this fact
would certainly estimate the dimensions of the cathedral as at least a third,
if not a half, in excess of the other. It may be said that the arch gains in
sublimity and grandeur what it loses in apparent dimensions by the
simplicity of its parts. The façade of the cathedral, though far from one of
the best in France, is by no means deficient in grandeur; and had it been as
free from the trammels of utilitarianism as the arch, might easily have been
made as simple and as grand, without losing its apparent size. In the other
case, by employing in the arch the principles which the Gothic architects

elaborated with such pains, the apparent dimensions might have been
increased without detracting from its solidity, and it might thus have been
rendered one of the sublimest buildings in the world.
The interior of St. Peter’s at Rome is an example of the neglect of these
principles. Its great nave is divided into only four bays, and the proportions
and ornaments of these, borrowed generally from external architecture, are
so gigantic, that it is difficult to realise the true dimensions of the church,
except by the study of the plan; and it is not too much to assert, that had a
cathedral of these dimensions been built in the true Gothic style, during the
13th or 14th century, it would have appeared as if from one-third to one-
half larger, and might have been the most sublime, whereas St. Peter’s is
now only the largest temple ever erected.
It would be easy to multiply examples to show to what perfection the
science of proportion was carried by the experimental processes above
described during the existence of the true styles of architecture, and how
satisfactory the result is, even upon those who are not aware of the cause;
and, on the other hand, how miserable are the failures that result either from
the ignorance or neglect of its rules. Enough, it is hoped, has been said to
show that not only are the apparent proportions of a building very much
under the control of an architect independent of its lineal dimensions, but
also that he has it in his power so to proportion every part as to give value
to all those around it, thus producing that harmony which in architecture, as
well as in music or in painting, is the very essence of a true or satisfactory
utterance.

XI.—Carved Ornament.

Architectural ornament is of two kinds, constructive and decorative. By
the former is meant all those contrivances, such as capitals, brackets,
vaulting shafts, and the like, which serve to explain or give expression to
the construction; by the latter, such as mouldings, frets, foliage, &c., which
give grace and life either to the actual constructive forms, or to the
constructive decoration.
In mere building or engineering, the construction being all in all, it is left
to tell its own tale in its own prosaic nakedness; but in true architecture

construction is always subordinate, and as architectural buildings ought
always to possess an excess of strength it need not show itself unless
desired; but even in an artistic point of view it always is expedient to
express it. The vault, for instance, of a Gothic cathedral might just as easily
spring from a bracket or a corbel as from a shaft, and in early experiments
this was often tried; but the effect was unsatisfactory, and a vaulting shaft
was carried down first to the capital of the pillar, and afterwards to the
floor: by this means the eye was satisfied, the thin reed-like shafts being
sufficient to explain that the vault rested on the solid ground, and an
apparent propriety and stability were given to the whole. These shafts not
being necessary constructively, the artist could make them of any form or
size he thought most proper, and consequently, instead of one he generally
used three small shafts tied together at various intervals. Afterwards merely
a group of graceful mouldings was employed, which satisfied not only the
exigencies of ornamental construction, but became a real and essential
decorative feature of the building.
In like manner it was good architecture to use flying buttresses, even
where they were not essential to stability. They explained externally that the
building was vaulted, and that its thrusts were abutted and stability secured.
The mistake in their employment was where they became so essential to
security, that the constructive necessities controlled the artistic propriety of
the design, and the architect found himself compelled to employ either a
greater number, or buttresses of greater strength than he would have desired
had he been able to dispense with them.
The architecture of the Greeks was so simple, that they required few
artifices to explain their construction; but in their triglyphs their mutules,
the form of their cornices and other devices, they took pains to explain, not
only that these parts had originally been of wood but that the temple still
retained its wooden roof. Had they ever adopted a vault, they would have
employed a totally different system of decoration. Having no constructive
use whatever, these parts were wholly under the control of the architects,
and they consequently became the beautiful things we now so much admire.
With their more complicated style the Romans introduced many new
modes of constructive decoration. They were the first to employ vaulting
shafts. In all the great halls of their Baths, or of their vaulted Basilicas, they
applied a Corinthian pillar as a vaulting shaft to the front of the pier from

which the arch appears to spring, though the latter really supported the
vault. All the pillars have now been removed, but without at all interfering
with the stability of the vaults; they were mere decorative features to
explain the construction, but indispensable for that purpose. The Romans
also suggested most of the other decorative inventions of the Middle Ages,
but their architecture never reached beyond the stage of transition. It was
left for the Gothic architects freely to elaborate this mode of architectural
effect, and they carried it to an extent never dreamt of before; but it is to
this that their buildings owe at least half the beauty they possess.
The same system of course applies to dwelling-houses, and to the
meanest objects of architectural art. The string-course that marks externally
the floor-line of the different storeys is as legitimate and indispensable an
ornament as a vaulting shaft, and it would also be well that the windows
should be grouped so as to indicate the size of the rooms, and at least a
plain space left where a partition wall abuts, or better still a pilaster or
buttress, or line of some sort, ought to mark externally that feature of
internal construction.
The cornice is as indispensable a termination of the wall as the capital is
of a pillar; and suggests not only an appropriate support for the roof, but
eaves to throw the rain off the wall. The same is true with regard to
pediments or caps over windows: they suggest a means of protecting an
opening from the wet; and porches over doorways are equally obvious
contrivances. Everything, in short, which is actually constructive, or which
suggests what was or may be a constructive expedient, is a legitimate object
of decoration, and affords the architect unlimited scope for the display of
taste and skill, without going out of his way to seek it.
The difficulty in applying ornaments borrowed from other styles is, that
although they all suggest construction, it is not the construction of the
buildings to which they are applied. To use Pugin’s clever antithesis, “they
are constructed ornament, not ornamented construction,” and as such can
never satisfy the mind. However beautiful in themselves, they are out of
place, there is no real or apparent use for their being there; and, in an art so
essentially founded on utilitarian principles and common sense as
architecture is, any offence against constructive propriety is utterly
intolerable.

The other class, or decorative ornaments, are forms invented for the
purpose, either mere lithic forms, or copied from the vegetable kingdom,
and applied so as to give elegance or brilliancy to the constructive
decoration just described.
The first and most obvious of these are mere mouldings, known to
architects as Scotias, Cavettos, Ogees, Toruses, Rolls, &c.—curves which,
used in various proportions either horizontally or vertically, produce when
artistically combined, the most pleasing effect.
In conjunction with these, it is usual to employ a purely conventional
class of ornament, such as frets, scrolls, or those known as the bead and
reel, or egg and dart mouldings; or in Gothic architecture the billet or dog-
tooth or all the thousand and one forms that were invented during the
Middle Ages.
In certain styles of art, vegetable forms are employed even more
frequently than those last described. Among these, perhaps the most
beautiful and perfect ever invented was that known as the honeysuckle
ornament, which the Greeks borrowed from the Assyrians, but made so
peculiarly their own. It has all the conventional character of a purely lithic,
with all the grace of a vegetable form; and, as used with the Ionic order, is
more nearly perfect than any other known.
The Romans made a step further towards a more direct imitation of
nature in their employment of the acanthus leaf. As applied to a capital, or
where the constructive form of the bell beneath it is still distinctly seen, it is
not only unobjectionable, but productive of the most pleasing effect. Indeed
it is doubtful if anything of its class has yet been invented so entirely
satisfactory as the Roman Corinthian order, as found, for instance, in the so-
called Temple of Jupiter Stator at Rome. The proportions of the order have
never yet been excelled, and there is just that balance between imitation of
nature and conventionality which is indispensable. It is not so pure or
perfect as a Grecian order, but as an example of rich decoration applied to
an architectural order it is unsurpassed.
With their disregard of precedent and untrammelled wildness of
imagination, the Gothic architects tried every form of vegetable ornament,
from the purest conventionalism, where the vegetable form can hardly be
recognised, to the most literal imitation of nature.

While confining himself to purely lithic forms, an architect can never sin
against good taste, though he may miss many beauties; with the latter class
of ornament he is always in danger of offence, and few have ever employed
it without falling into mistakes. In the first place, because it is impossible to
imitate perfectly foliage and flowers in stone; and secondly, because if the
pliant forms of plants are made to support, or do the work of, hard stone,
the incongruity is immediately apparent, and the more perfect the imitation
the greater the mistake.

No. 5.

No. 6.

In the instance (Woodcut No. 5), any amount of literal imitation that the
sculptor thought proper may be indulged in, because in it the stone
construction is so apparent everywhere, that the vegetable form is the
merest supplement conceivable; or in a hollow moulding round a doorway,
a vine may be sculptured with any degree of imitation that can be
employed; for as it has no more work to do than the object represented
would have in the same situation, it is a mere adjunct, a statue of a plant
placed in a niche, as we might use the statue of a man: but if in the woodcut
(No. 6) imitations of real leaves were used to support the upper moulding,
the effect would not be so satisfactory; indeed it is questionable if in both
these last examples a little more conventionality would not be desirable.
In too many instances, even in the best Gothic architecture, the
construction is so overlaid by imitative vegetable forms as to be concealed,
and the work is apparently done by leaves or twigs, but in the earliest and
purest style this is almost never the case. As a general rule it may be
asserted that the best lithic ornaments are those which approach nearest to
the grace and pliancy of plants, and that the best vegetable forms are those
which most resemble the regularity and symmetry of such as are purely
conventional.
Although the Greeks in one or two instances employed human figures to
support entablatures or beams, the good taste of such an arrangement is
more than questionable. They borrowed it, with the Ionic order, from the
Assyrians, with whom the employment of caryatides and animal forms was
the rule, not the exception, in contradistinction from the Egyptians, who
never adopted this practice.[14] Even the Romans avoided this mistake, and

the Gothic architects also as a general rule kept quite clear of it. Whenever
they did employ ornamented figures for architectural purposes, they were
either monsters, as in gargoyles or griffons; or sometimes, in a spirit of
caricature, they used dwarfs or deformities of various sorts; but their
sculpture, properly so called, was always provided with a niche or pedestal,
where it might have been placed after the building was complete, or from
which it might be removed without interfering with the architecture.

XII.—Decorative Colour.

Colour is one of the most invaluable elements placed at the command of
the architect to enable him to give grace or finish to his designs. From its
nature it is of course only an accessory, or mere ornament; but there is
nothing that enables him to express his meaning so cheaply and easily, and
at the same time with such brilliancy and effect. For an interior it is
absolutely indispensable; and no apartment can be said to be complete till it
has received its finishing touches from the hand of the painter. Whether
exteriors ought or ought not to be similarly treated admits of more doubt.
Internally the architect has complete command of the situation: he can
suit his design to his colours, or his colours to his design. Walls, roof, floor,
furniture, are all at his disposal, and he can shut out any discordant element
that would interfere with the desired effect.
Externally this is seldom, if ever the case. A façade that looks brilliant
and well in noonday sun may be utterly out of harmony with a cold grey
sky, or with the warm glow of a setting sun full upon it: and unless all other
buildings and objects are toned into accordance with it, the effect can
seldom be harmonious.
There can be now no reasonable doubt that the Greeks painted their
temples both internally and externally, but as a general rule they always
placed them on heights where they could only be seen relieved against the
sky; and they could depend on an atmosphere of almost uniform, unvarying
brightness. Had their temples been placed in groves or valleys, they would
probably have given up the attempt, and certainly never would have
ventured upon it in such a climate as ours.

Except in such countries as Egypt and Greece, it must always be a
mistake to apply colour by merely painting the surface of the building
externally; but there are other modes of effecting this which are perfectly
legitimate. Coloured ornaments may be inlaid in the stone of the wall
without interfering with the construction, and so placed may be made more
effective and brilliant than the same ornaments would be if carved in relief.
Again, string-courses and mouldings of various coloured stones or marbles
might frequently be employed with better effect than can be obtained in
some situations by depth of cutting and boldness of projection. Such a mode
of decoration can, however, only be partial; if the whole building is to be
coloured, it must be done constructively, by using different coloured
materials, or the effect will never be satisfactory.
In the Middle Ages the Italians carried this mode of decoration to a
considerable extent; but in almost all instances it is so evidently a veneer
overlying the construction that it fails to please; and a decoration which
internally, where construction is of less importance, would excite general
admiration, is without meaning on the outside of the same wall.
At the same time it is easy to conceive how polychromy might be carried
out successfully, if, for instance, a building were erected, the pillars of
which were of red granite or porphyry, the cornices or string-courses of
dark coloured marbles, and the plain surfaces of lighter kinds, or even of
stone. A design so carried out would be infinitely more effective than a
similar one executed in materials of only one colour, and depending for
relief only on varying shadows of daylight. There is in fact just the same
difficulty in lighting monochromatic buildings as there is with sculpture. A
coloured painting, on the other hand, requires merely sufficient light, and
with that expresses its form and meaning far more clearly and easily than
when only one colour is employed. The task, however, is difficult; so much
so, indeed, that there is hardly one single instance known of a complete
polychromatic design being successfully carried out anywhere, though often
attempted. The other mode of merely inlaying the ornaments in colour
instead of relieving them by carving as seldom fails.
Notwithstanding this, an architect should never neglect to select the
colour of his materials with reference to the situation in which his building
is to stand. A red brick building may look remarkably well if nestling
among green trees, while the same building would be hideous if situated on

a sandy plain, and relieved only by the warm glow of a setting sun. A
building of white stone or white brick is as inappropriate among the trees,
and may look bright and cheerful in the other situation.
In towns colours might be used of very great brilliancy, and if done
constructively, there could be no greater improvement to our architecture;
but its application is so difficult that no satisfactory result has yet been
attained, and it may be questioned whether it will be ever successfully
accomplished.
With regard to interiors there can be no doubt. All architects in all
countries of the world resorted to this expedient to harmonise and to give
brilliancy to their compositions, and have depended on it for their most
important effects.
The Gothic architects carried this a step further by the introduction of
painted glass, which was a mode of colouring more brilliant than had been
ever before attempted. This went beyond all previous efforts, inasmuch as it
coloured not only the objects themselves, but also the light in which they
were seen. So enamoured were they of its beauties, that they sacrificed
much of the constructive propriety of their buildings to admit of its display,
and paid more attention to it than to any other part of their designs. Perhaps
they carried this predilection a little beyond the limits of good taste; but
colour is in itself so exquisite a thing, and so admirable a vehicle for the
expression of architectural as well as of æsthetic beauty, that it is difficult to
find fault even with the abuse of what is in its essence so legitimate and so
beautiful.

XIII.—Sculpture and Painting.

Carved ornament and decorative colour come within the especial
province of the architect. In some styles, such as the Saracenic, and in many
buildings, they form the Alpha and the Omega of the decoration. But, as
mentioned above, one of the great merits of architecture as an art is that it
affords room for the display of the works of the sculptor and the painter, not
only in such a manner as not to interfere with its own decorative
construction, but so as to add meaning and value to the whole. No Greek
temple and no Gothic cathedral can indeed be said to be perfect or complete

without these adjuncts; and one of the principal objects of the architects in
Greece or in the Middle Ages was to design places and devise means by
which these could be displayed to advantage, without interfering either with
the construction or constructive decoration. This was perhaps effected more
successfully in the Parthenon than in any other building we are acquainted
with. The pediments at either end were noble frames for the exhibition of
sculpture, and the metopes were equally appropriate for the purpose; while
the plain walls of the cella were admirably adapted for paintings below and
for a sculptured frieze above.
The deeply recessed portals of our Gothic cathedrals, their galleries, their
niches and pinnacles, were equally appropriate for the exuberant display of
this class of sculpture in a less refined or fastidious age; while the mullion-
framed windows were admirably adapted for the exhibition of a mode of
coloured decoration, somewhat barbarous, it must be confessed, but
wonderfully brilliant.
The system was carried further in India than in any other country except
perhaps Egypt. Probably no Hindu temple was ever erected without being at
least intended to be adorned with Phonetic sculpture, and many of them are
covered with it from the plinth to the eaves, in strong contrast with the
Mahomedan buildings that stand side by side with them, and which are
wholly devoid of any attempt at this kind of decoration. The taste of these
Hindu sculptures may be questionable, but such as they are they are so used
as never to interfere with the architectural effect of the building on which
they are employed, but always so as to aid the design irrespective of the
story they have to tell. There is probably no instance in which their removal
or their absence would not be felt as an injury from an architectural point of
view.
It is difficult now to ascertain whether Phonetic painting was used to the
same extent as sculpture in ancient times. From its nature it is infinitely
more perishable, and a bucket of whitewash will in half an hour obliterate
the work of years, and, strange to say, there are ages, both in the East and
the west, where men’s minds are so attuned that they consider whitewash a
more fitting decoration than coloured paintings of the most elaborate and
artistic character. While this is so we need hardly wonder that our means of
forming a distinct opinion on this subject are somewhat limited.

Be this as it may, it is still one of the special privileges of architecture
that she is able to attract to herself these phonetic arts, and one of the
greatest merits a building can possess is its affording appropriate places for
their display without interfering in any way with the special department of
the architect. But it is always necessary to distinguish carefully between
what belongs to the province of each art separately. The work of the
architect ought to be complete and perfect without either sculpture or
painting, and must be judged as if they were absent; but he will not have
been entirely successful unless he has provided the means by which the
value of his design may be doubled by their introduction. It is only by the
combination of the Phonetic utterance with the Technic and Æsthetic
elements that a perfect work of art has been produced, and that architecture
can be said to have reached the highest point of perfection to which it can
aspire.

XIV.—Uniformity.

Considerable confusion has been introduced into the reasoning on the
subject of architectural Uniformity from the assumption that the two great
schools of art—the classical and the mediæval—adopted contrary
conclusions regarding it, Formality being supposed to be the characteristic
of the former, Irregularity of the latter. The Greeks, of course, when
building a temple or monument, which was only one room or one object,
made it exactly symmetrical in all its parts; but so did the Gothic architects
when building a church or chapel or hall, or any single object: in ninety-
nine instances out of a hundred, a line drawn down the centre divides it into
two equal and symmetrical halves; and when an exception to this occurs,
there is some obvious motive for it.
But where several buildings of different classes were to be grouped, or
even two temples placed near one another, the Greeks took the utmost care
to prevent their appearing parts of one design or one whole; and when, as in
the instance of the Erechtheium,[15] three temples are placed together, no
Gothic architect ever took such pains to secure for each its separate
individuality as the Grecian architect did. What has given rise to the error
is, that all the smaller objects of Grecian art have perished, leaving us only
the great monuments without their adjuncts.

If we can conceive the task assigned to a Grecian architect of erecting a
building like one of our collegiate institutions, he would without doubt have
distinguished the chapel from the refectory, and that from the library, and he
would have made them of a totally different design from the principal’s
lodge, or the chambers of the fellows and students; but it is more than
probable that, while carefully distinguishing each part from the other, he
would have arranged them with some regard to symmetry, placing the
chapel in the centre, the library and refectory as pendants to one another,
though dissimilar, and the residences so as to connect and fill up the whole
design. The truth seems to be that no great amount of dignity can be
obtained without a certain degree of regularity; and there can be little doubt
that artistically it is better that mere utilitarian convenience should give way
to the exigencies of architectural design than that the latter should be
constrained to yield to the mere prosaic requirements of the building. The
chance-medley manner in which many such buildings were grouped
together in the Middle Ages tells the story as clearly, and may be productive
of great picturesqueness of effect, but not of the same nobility as might
have been obtained by more regularity. The highest class of design will
never be reached by these means.
It is not difficult to discover, at least to a certain extent, that the cause of
this is that no number of separate units will suffice to make one whole. A
number of pebbles will not make a great stone, nor a number of rose-bushes
an oak; nor will any number of dwarfs make up a giant. To obtain a great
whole there must be unity, to which all the parts must contribute, or they
will remain separate particles. The effect of unity is materially heightened
when to it is added uniformity: the mind then instantly and easily grasps the
whole, knows it to be one, and recognises the ruling idea that governed and
moulded the whole together. It seems only to be by the introduction of
uniformity that sufficient simplicity for greatness can be obtained, and the
evidence of design made so manifest that the mind is satisfied that the
building is no mere accumulation of separate objects, but the production of
a master-mind.
In a palace irregularity seems unpardonable. The architect has there
practically unlimited command of funds and of his arrangements, and he
can easily design his suites of rooms so as to produce any amount of
uniformity he may require: the different heights of the different storeys and
the amount of ornament on them, with the employment of wings for offices,

is sufficient to mark the various purposes of the various parts; but where the
system is carried so far in great public buildings, that great halls, libraries,
committee-rooms, and subordinate residences are all squeezed into one
perfectly uniform design, the building loses all meaning, and fails from the
opposite error.
The rule seems to be, that every building or every part of one ought most
distinctly and clearly to express not only its constructive exigencies, but
also the uses for which it is destined; on the other hand, that mere utility, in
all instances where architectural effect is aimed at, ought to give way to
artistic requirements; and that an architect is consequently justified, in so
far as his means will admit, in producing that amount of uniformity and
regularity which seems indispensable for anything like grandeur of effect.
In villas and small buildings all we look for is picturesqueness and meaning
combined with elegance; but in larger and more monumental erections we
expect something more; and this can hardly be obtained without the
introduction of some new element which shall tell, in the first place, that
artistic excellence was the ruling idea of the design, and in the next should
give it that perfect balance and symmetry which seems to be as inherent a
quality of the higher works of nature as of true art.

XV.—Imitation of Nature.

The subject of the imitation of Nature is one intimately connected with
those mooted in the preceding paragraphs, and regarding which
considerable misunderstanding seems to prevail. It is generally assumed
that in architecture we ought to copy natural objects as we see them,
whereas the truth seems to be that we ought always to copy the processes,
never the forms of Nature. The error apparently has arisen from
confounding together the imitative arts of painting and sculpture with the
constructive art of architecture. The former have no other mode of
expression than by copying, more or less literally, the forms of Nature; the
latter, as explained above, depends wholly on a different class of elements
for its effect; but at the same time no architect can either study too intently,
or copy too closely, the methods and processes by which Nature
accomplishes her ends; and the most perfect building will be that in which
these have been most closely and literally followed.

To take one prominent instance:—So far as we can judge, the human
body is the most perfect of Nature’s works; in it the groundwork of skeleton
is never seen, and though it can hardly be said to be anywhere concealed, it
is only displayed at the joints or more prominent points of support, where
the action of the frame would be otherwise unintelligible. The muscles are
disposed not only where they are most useful, but so as to form groups
gracefully rounded in outline. The softness and elegance of these are further
aided by the deposition of adipose matter, and the whole is covered with a
skin which with its beautiful texture conceals the more utilitarian
construction of the internal parts. In the trunk of the body the viscera are
disposed wholly without symmetry or reference to beauty of any sort—the
heart on one side, the liver on the other, and the other parts exactly in those
positions and in those forms by which they may most directly and easily
perform the essential functions for which they are designed. But the whole
is concealed in a perfectly symmetrical sheath of the most exquisitely
beautiful outline. It may be safely asserted that a building is beautiful and
perfect exactly in the ratio in which the same amount of concealment and
the same amount of display of construction is preserved, where the same
symmetry is shown as between the right and left sides of the human body—
the same difference as between the legs and arms, where the parts are
applied to different purposes, and where the same amount of ornament is
added, to adorn without interfering with what is useful. In short, there is no
principle involved in the structure of man which may not be taken as the
most absolute standard of excellence in architecture.
It is in Nature’s highest works that we find the symmetry of proportion
most prominent. When we descend to the lower types of animals we lose it
to a great extent, and among trees and vegetables generally find it only in a
far less degree, and sometimes miss it altogether. In the mineral kingdom
among rocks and stones it is altogether absent. So universal is this principle
in Nature that we may safely apply it to our criticism on art, and say that a
building is perfect as a whole in proportion to its motived regularity, and
departs from the highest type in the ratio in which symmetrical arrangement
is neglected. It may, however, be incorrect to say that an oak-tree is a less
perfect work of creation than a human being, but it is certain that it is lower
in the scale of created beings. So it may be said that a picturesque group of
Gothic buildings may be as perfect as the stately regularity of an Egyptian

or classic temple; but if it is so, it is equally certain that it belongs to a
lower and inferior class of design.
This analogy, however, we may leave for the present. The one point
which it is indispensable to insist on here is, that man can progress or tend
towards success only by following the principles and copying, so far as he
can understand them, the processes which Nature employs in her works; but
he can never succeed in anything by copying forms without reference to
principles. If we could find Nature making trees like stones, or animals like
trees, or birds like fishes, or fishes like mammalia, or using any parts taken
from one kingdom for purposes belonging to another, it would then be
perfectly legitimate for us to use man’s stature as the modulus for a Doric,
or woman’s as that of an Ionic column—to build cathedrals like groves, and
make windows like leaves, or to estimate their beauty by their resemblance
to such objects; but all such comparisons proceed on an entire mistake of
what imitation of Nature really means.
It is the merest and most absolute negation of reason to apply to one
purpose things that were designed for another, or to imitate them when they
have no appropriateness; but it is our highest privilege to understand the
processes of Nature. To apply these to our own wants and purposes is the
noblest use of human intellect and the perfection of human wisdom.
So instinctively, but so literally, has this correct process of imitating
Nature been followed in all true styles of architecture, that we can always
reason regarding them as we do with reference to natural objects. Thus, if
an architect finds in any quarter of the globe a Doric or Corinthian capital
with a few traces of a foundation, he can, at a glance, tell the age of the
temple or building to which it belonged. He knows who the people were
who erected it, to what purpose it was dedicated, and proceeds at once to
restore its porticos, and without much uncertainty can reproduce the whole
fabric. Or if he finds a few Gothic bases in situ, with a few mouldings or
frusta of columns, by the same process he traces the age, the size, and the
purposes of the building before him. A Cuvier or an Owen can restore the
form and predicate the habits of an extinct animal from a few fragments of
bone, or even from a print of a foot. In the same manner an architect may,
from a few fragments of a building, if of a true style of architecture, restore
the whole of its pristine forms, and with almost the same amount of
certainty. This arises wholly because the architects of former days had

correct ideas of what was meant by imitation of Nature. They added nothing
to their buildings which was not essential; there was no detail which had not
its use, and no ornament which was not an elaboration or heightening of
some essential part, and hence it is that a true building is as like to a work
of Nature as any production of man’s hands can be to the creations of his
Maker.

XVI.—Association.

There is one property inherent in the productions of architectural art,
which, while it frequently lends to them half their charm, at the same time
tends more than anything else to warp and distort our critical judgments
regarding them. We seldom can look at a building of any age without
associating with it such historical memories as may cling to its walls; and
our predilections for any peculiar style of architecture are more often due to
educational or devotional associations than to purely artistic judgments. A
man must be singularly ignorant or strangely passionless who can stand
among the fallen columns of a Grecian temple, or wander through the
corridors of a Roman amphitheatre, or the aisles of a ruined Gothic abbey,
and not feel his heart stirred by emotions of a totally different class from
those suggested by the beauty of the mouldings or the artistic arrangement
of the building he is contemplating.
The enthusiasm which burst forth in the 15th century for the classical
style of art, and then proved fatal to the Gothic, was not so much an
architectural as a literary movement. It arose from the re-discovery—if it
may be so called—of the poems of Homer and Virgil, of the histories of
Thucydides and Tacitus, of the Philosophy of Aristotle and the eloquence of
Cicero. It was a vast reaction against the darkness and literary degradation
of the Middle Ages, and carried the educated classes of Europe with it for
the next three centuries. So long as classical literature only was taught in
our schools, and classical models followed in our literature, classical
architecture could alone be tolerated in our buildings, and this generally
without the least reference either to its own peculiar beauties, or its
appropriateness for the purposes to which it was applied.
A second reaction has now taken place against this state of affairs. The
revival of the rites and ceremonies of the mediæval Church, our reverent

love of our own national antiquities, and our admiration for the rude but
vigorous manhood of the Middle Ages,—all have combined to repress the
classical element both in our literature and our art, and to exalt in their place
Gothic feelings and Gothic art, to an extent which cannot be justified on
any grounds of reasonable criticism.
Unless the art-critic can free himself from the influence of these
adventitious associations, his judgments lose half their value; but, on the
other hand, to the historian of art they are of the utmost importance. It is
because architecture so fully and so clearly expresses the feelings of the
people who practised it that it becomes frequently a better vehicle of history
than the written page; and it is these very associations that give life and
meaning to blocks of stone and mounds of brick, and bring so vividly
before our eyes the feelings and the aspirations of the long-forgotten past.
The importance of association in giving value to the objects of
architectural art can hardly be overrated either by the student or historian.
What has to be guarded against is that unreasoning enthusiasm which
mistakes the shadow for the reality, and would force us to admire a rude
piece of clumsy barbarism erected yesterday, and to which no history
consequently attaches, because something like it was done in some long
past age. Its reality, its antiquity, and its weather stains may render its
prototype extremely interesting, even if not beautiful; while its copy is only
an antiquarian toy, as ugly as it is absurd.

XVII.—New Style.

There is still one other point of view from which it is necessary to look at
this question of architectural design before any just conclusion can be
arrived at regarding it. It is in fact necessary to answer two other questions,
nearly as often asked as those proposed at the beginning of Section III.
“Can any one invent a new style?”—“Can we ever again have a new and
original style of architecture?” Reasoning from experience alone, it is easy
to answer these questions. No individual has, so far as we know, ever
invented a new style in any part of the world. No one can even be named
who during the prevalence of a true style of art materially advanced its
progress, or by his individual exertion did much to help it forward; and we

may safely answer, that as this has never happened before, it is hardly
probable that it will ever occur now.
If this one question must be answered in the negative, the other may as
certainly be answered in the affirmative, inasmuch as no nation in any age
or in any part of the globe has failed to invent for itself a true and
appropriate style of architecture whenever it chose to set about it in the right
way, and there certainly can be no great difficulty in our doing now what
has been so often done before, if we only set to work in a proper spirit, and
are prepared to follow the same process which others have followed to
obtain this result.
What that process is, may perhaps be best explained by such an example
as that of ship-building before alluded to, which, though totally distinct, is
still so nearly allied to architecture, as to make a comparison between the
two easy and intelligible.
Let us, for instance, take a series of ships, beginning with those in which
William the Conqueror invaded our shores, or the fleet with which Edward
III. crossed over to France. Next take the vessels which transported Henry
VIII. to his meeting with Francis I., and then pass on to the time of the
Spanish Armada and the sea fights of Van Tromp and De Ruyter, and on to
the times of William III., and then through the familiar examples till we
come to such ships as the ‘Wellington’ and ‘Marlborough’ of yesterday, and
the ‘Warrior’ or ‘Minotaur’ of to-day. In all this long list of examples we
have a gradual, steady, forward progress without one check or break. Each
century is in advance of the one before it, and the result is as near perfection
as we can well conceive.
But if we ask who effected these improvements, or who invented any part
of the last-named wonderful fabrics, we must search deep indeed into the
annals of the navy to find out. But no one has inquired and no one cares to
know, for the simple reason that, like architecture in the Middle Ages, it is a
true and living art, and the improvements were not effected by individuals,
but by all classes—owners, sailors, shipwrights, and men of science, all
working together through centuries, each lending the aid of his experience
or of his reasoning.
If we place alongside of this series of ships a list of churches or
cathedrals, commencing with Charlemagne and ending with Charles V., we
find the same steady and assured progress obtained by the same identical

means. In this instance, princes, priests, masons, and mathematicians, all
worked steadily together for the whole period, striving to obtain a well-
defined result.
In the ship the most suitable materials only are employed in every part,
and neither below nor aloft is there one single timber nor spar nor one rope
which is superfluous. Nor in the cathedral was any material ever used that
was not believed to be the most suitable for its purpose; nor any form of
construction adopted which did not seem the best to those who employed it;
nor any detail added which did not appear necessary for the purpose it was
designed to express? the result being, that we can look on and contemplate
both with the same unmitigated satisfaction.
The one point where this comparison seems to halt is, that ship-building
never became a purely fine art, which architecture really is. The difference
is only one of aim, which it would be as easy to apply to the one art as it has
been to the other. Had architecture never progressed beyond its one strictly
legitimate object of house-building, it would never have been more near a
fine art than merchant ship-building, and palaces would only have been
magnified dwelling-places. Castles and men-of-war advanced both one
stage further towards a fine art. Size and power were impressed on both,
and in this respect they stand precisely equal to one another. Here ship-
building halted, and has not progressed beyond, while architecture has been
invested with a higher aim. In all ages men have sought to erect houses
more dignified and stately than those designed for their personal use. They
attempted the erection of dwelling-places for their Gods, or temples worthy
of the worship of Supreme Beings; and it was only when this strictly useful
art threw aside all shadow of utilitarianism, and launched boldly forth in
search of the beautiful and the sublime, that it became a truly fine art, and
took the elevated position which it now holds above all other useful arts. It
would have been easy to supply the same motive to ship-building. If we
could imagine any nation ever to construct ships of God, or to worship on
the bosom of the ocean, ships might easily be made such objects of beauty
that the cathedral could hardly compete with them.
It is not, however, only in architecture or in ship-building that this
progress is essential, for the progress of every art and every science that is
worthy of the name is owing to the same simple process of the aggregation
of experiences; whether we look to metallurgy or mechanics, cotton-

spinning or coining, their perfection is due to the same cause. So also the
sciences—astronomy, chemistry, geology—are all cultivated by the same
means. When the art or science is new, great men stand forth and make
great strides; but when once it reaches maturity, and becomes the property
of the nation, the individual is lost in the mass, and a thousand inferior
brains follow out steadily and surely the path which the one great intellect
has pointed out, but which no single mind, however great, could carry to its
legitimate conclusion.
So far as any reason or experience yet known can be applied to this
subject, it seems clear that no art or science ever has been or can be now
advanced by going backwards, and copying earlier forms, or those
applicable to other times or other circumstances; and that progress towards
perfection can only be obtained by the united efforts of many steadily
pursuing a well-defined object. Whenever this is done, success appears to
be inevitable, or at all events every age is perfectly satisfied with its own
productions. Where forward progress is the law, it is certain that the next
age will surpass the present; but the living cannot conceive anything more
perfect than what they are doing, or they would apply it. Everything in any
true art is thoroughly up to the highest standard of its period, and instead of
the dissatisfied uncertainty in which we are wandering in all matters
concerning architecture, we should be exulting in our own productions, and
proud in leaving to our posterity the progress we have made, feeling assured
that we have paved the way for them to advance to a still higher standard of
perfection.
As soon as the public are aware of the importance of this rule, and of its
applicability to architecture, a new style must be the inevitable result; and if
our civilisation is what we believe it to be, that style will not only be
perfectly suited to all our wants and desires, but also more beautiful and
more perfect than any that has ever existed before.

XVIII.—Prospects.

If we turn from these speculations to ask what prospect there is of the
public appreciating correctly this view of the matter, or setting earnestly
about carrying it out, the answer can hardly be deemed satisfactory; in fact,

if it were left to the public, very little progress, except from an utilitarian
point of view, would probably be made.
The study of the classical languages, to which so much importance is
attached in our public schools, and in our own and most foreign
universities, tended at one time in another way to draw attention from the
formation of a true style of architecture by fixing it exclusively on Greek
and Roman models. The Renaissance in the 15th century, as pointed out
above, arose much more from admiration of classic literature than from any
feeling for the remains of buildings which had been neglected for centuries,
and were far surpassed by those which succeeded them. The same feelings
perpetuated by early association are the great cause of the hold that classic
art still has on the educated classes in Europe.
On the other hand, the revival of the Gothic style fifty years ago enlisted
the sympathy of the clergy, not only in England, but on the continent of
Europe, when they arrived at the conclusion that the Gothic style was the
one most suited for church-building purposes; and attempted to establish a
point that no deviation from Gothic models should be tolerated.
Beyond these there was another class of men who had but little sympathy
with Greece or Rome, and still less with mediæval monasticism or
feudalism, but who in their own strong sense were inclined to take a more
reasonable view of the matter, and these men have for years been erecting
in London, Manchester, Leeds, and in other cities of England a series of
warehouses and other buildings designed wholly with reference to their
uses, and ornamented only in their construction, and which consequently
are—as far as their utilitarian purposes will allow—as satisfactory as
anything of former days.
In addition to these, and within the last fifteen to twenty years, a very
great progress has taken place in domestic architecture, not only in London
and its suburbs, but throughout England, where buildings have been erected
of a new and an original type, peculiarly applicable to the requirements of
English domestic life, and of great variety and picturesque design; and these
remarks apply not only to mansions, but to the residences of a much
humbler and more simple kind.
In civil engineering, the lowest and most prosaic branch of architectural
art, our progress has been brilliant and rapid. Of this no better example can
be given than the four great bridges erected over the Thames. The old

bridges of Westminster and Blackfriars, and those of Waterloo and London,
were erected at nearly equal intervals during one century, and the steady
progress which they exhibit is greater than that of almost any similar branch
of art during any equal period of time.
In this department our progress is so undeniable that we saw old London
Bridge removed without regret, though it was a work of the same age and of
the same men who built all our greatest and best cathedrals, and in its own
line was quite as perfect and as beautiful as they. But it had outlived its age,
and we knew we could replace it by a better—so its destruction was
inevitable; and if we had made the same progress in the higher that we have
in the lower branches of the building art, we should see a Gothic cathedral
pulled down with the same indifference, content to know that we could
easily replace it by one far nobler and more worthy of our age and
intelligence. No architect during the Middle Ages ever hesitated to pull
down any part of a cathedral that was old and going to decay, and to replace
it with something in the style of the day, however incongruous that might
be; and if we were progressing as they were, we should have as little
compunction in following the same course.
In the confusion of ideas and of styles which now prevails, it is
satisfactory to be able to contemplate, in the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, at
least one great building carried out wholly on the principles of Gothic or of
any true style of art. No material is used in it which is not the best for its
purpose, no constructive expedient employed which was not absolutely
essential, and it depends wholly for its effect on the arrangement of its parts
and the display of its construction. So essentially is its principle the same
which, as we have seen, animated Gothic architecture, that we hardly know
even now how much of the design belongs to Sir Joseph Paxton, how much
to the contractors, or how much to the subordinate officers employed by the
Company. Here, as in a cathedral, every man was set to work in that
department which it was supposed he was best qualified to superintend.
There was room for every art and for every intellect, and clashing and
interference were impossible. This, however, was only the second of the
series. The third was entrusted to an Engineer officer, who had no
architectural education, and who had never thought twice on the subject
before he was set to carry out his very inchoate design for the 1862
Exhibition. He failed of course, for architecture is not a Phonetic art
depending on inspiration, but a technic art based on experience. As re-

erected on Muswell Hill the building was immensely improved, and far
superior to its predecessor, but was burnt down before the public had time
to realise its form. As being rebuilt, it probably will be still one step further
in advance, and if the series were carried to a hundred, with more leisure
and a higher aim, we might perhaps learn to despise many things we now so
servilely copy, and might create a style surpassing anything that ever went
before. We have certainly more wealth, more constructive skill, and more
knowledge than our forefathers; and, living in the same climate and being
of the same race, there seems no insuperable difficulty in our doing at least
as much if not more than they accomplished.
Art, however, will not be regenerated by buildings so ephemeral as
Crystal Palaces or so prosaic as Manchester warehouses, nor by anything so
essentially utilitarian as the works of our engineers. The one hope is that
having commenced at the bottom, the true system may extend upwards, and
come at last to be applied to our palaces and even to churches, and that the
whole nation may lend its aid to work out the great problem. The prospect
of this being done may seem distant, but as soon as the general significance
of the problem is fully appreciated by the public, the result seems
inevitable; and with the means of diffusing knowledge which we now
possess, we may perhaps be permitted to fancy that the dawn is at hand, and
that after our long wanderings in the dark, daylight may again enlighten our
path and gladden our hearts with the vision of brighter and better things in
art than a false system has hitherto enabled us to attain.

These remarks might easily be extended to any desired length, and in fact
this part of the work ought to be enlarged till it equalled the narrative part, if
it had any pretension to be a complete treatise on the Art of Architecture. In
that case, the static or descriptive part of a treatise on any art is equally
important with the dynamic or narrative part. In most instances more so; but
in this respect architecture is exceptional, and the narrative form is by far
the more important of the two divisions into which the subject naturally
divides itself.
If, for instance, any one were writing a treatise on Naval Architecture, it
is more than probable that he would not allude to any vessel not afloat at the
time of his writing. If he mentioned the triremes of the Romans or the
galleys of the Venetians, it would be in an introductory chapter intended for

the amusement, not the instruction, of his readers. In like manner, if an
engineer undertakes to write on the art of bridge-building, harbour-making,
or on roads or canals, he is only careful to cite the best existing examples in
use, and would be considered pedantic if he wasted his time, or that of his
readers, in recounting what was done in these departments by the Romans
or the Chinese. If the fine art architecture was with us as well up to the
mark of the intelligence of the day as these more utilitarian branches of the
profession, the same course would be the proper one to pursue in writing
with regard to it. Unfortunately, however, we have no architecture of our
own, and it is impossible to make the various styles in practice either
intelligible or interesting, except by tracing them back to their origin, and
explaining the steps by which they reached perfection.
If architecture was practised by us on the same principles that guided
either the Classic or Gothic architects in their designs, a static treatise on it
would not only be the most instructive but the most pleasing form of
teaching its elements. Owing, however, to the system of copying which is
now the basis of all designs, this is no longer the case, and the consequently
abnormal position of the art renders the study of its principles almost
impossible, and memory must supply the place of pure reason for their
elucidation, thus giving to the narrative branch of the subject a somewhat
exaggerated importance, even when looked at from a merely technic point
of view.
Besides this, however, the narrative form as applied to Architecture has
advantages of its own greater than those of any other art of the same class,
inasmuch as it is a great stone book in which most of the nations of the
earth have recorded their annals, and written their thoughts, and even
expressed their feelings in clearer and truer language than by any other
form of utterance. The pyramids and temples of Egypt are a truer
expression of the feelings and aspirations of their builders than we can
obtain from any other source. The Parthenon at Athens brings the age of
Pericles more clearly before our eyes in all its perfection of art than any
written page. The Flavian Amphitheatre and the Baths of Caracalla enable
us to realise imperial Rome more vividly than even the glowing pages of
Tacitus. Our Mediæval cathedrals are a living record of the faith and
feelings of peoples, who have left, besides these, but few materials by
which one could judge of their aspirations or of their civilisation; while, if
we wish to know in what India differed from Europe in those ages, and in

what respect she still resembled it, it is to her contemporary temples that we
must turn, and they tell us in a language not to be mistaken wherein lay the
differences, and still how nearly alike the civilisations at one time were. All
this, and infinitely more, we may learn from a record, which, though often
ruined and nearly obliterated, never deceives. Where it first was placed,
there it still remains to tell to future generations what at that spot, at some
previous time, men thought and felt; what their state of civilisation enabled
them to accomplish, and to what stage they had attained in their conception
of a God.
Besides, however, the advantages to be obtained in an artistic point of
view from treating architecture in a narrative rather than in a static form,
there is, as pointed out above, still another, which, though of minor
importance, still adds immensely to the interest of the subject. It is that,
when so treated, the art affords one of the clearest and most certain tests
known of the ethnographic relations of people one to another. It may,
therefore, be as well, before proceeding further, to explain as briefly as is
consistent with intelligibility what is meant by Architectural Ethnography.

PART II.

I.—ETHNOGRAPHY AS APPLIED TO ARCHITECTURAL
ART.

Ethnology, though one of the youngest, is perhaps neither the least
beautiful nor the least attractive of that fair sisterhood of sciences whose
birth has rewarded the patient industry and inflexible love of truth which
characterises the philosophy of the present day. It takes up the history of the
world at the point where it is left by its elder sister Geology, and, following
the same line of argument, strives to reduce to the same scientific mode of
expression the apparent chaos of facts which have hitherto been looked
upon as inexplicable by the general observer.
It is only within the limits of the present century that Geology was
rescued from the dreams of cataclysms and convulsions which formed the
staple of the science in the last century; and that step by step, by slow
degrees, rocks have been classified and phenomena explained. All that
picturesque wildness with which the materials seemed at first sight to be
distributed over the world’s surface has been reduced to order, and they now
lie arranged as clearly, and as certainly in the mind of a geologist, as if they
had been squared by the tool of a mason and placed in order by the hand of
a mechanic. So it is with Ethnology. Race has succeeded race;—all have
been disturbed, some obliterated—many contorted—and sometimes the
older, apparently, superimposed upon the newer. All at first sight is chaos
and confusion, and it seems almost hopeless to attempt to unravel the
mysteries of the long-forgotten past. It is true nevertheless, in Ethnology, as
in the sister science, that no change on the world’s surface has taken place
without leaving its mark. A race may be obliterated, or only crop up at the
edge of some great basin of population; but it has left its traces either as
fossil remains in the shape of buildings or works, or as impressions on
language or on the arts of those who supplanted the perishing race. When

these are read,—when all the phenomena are gathered together and
classified, we find the same perfection of Order, the same beautiful
simplicity of law pervading the same complex variety of results, which
characterise all the phenomena of nature, and the knowledge of which is the
highest reward of intellectual exertion.
Language has hitherto been the great implement of analysis which has
been employed to elucidate the affiliation of races; and the present state of
the science may be said to be almost entirely due to the acumen and
industry of learned linguists. Physiology has lent her aid; but the objects
offered for her examination are so few, especially in remote ages, and the
individual differences are so small, as compared with the general
resemblance, that, in the present state of that science, its aid has not been of
the importance which it may fairly be expected hereafter to assume. In both
sciences History plays an important part: in Geology, by furnishing
analogies without which it would be hardly possible to interpret the facts; in
Ethnology, by pointing out the direction in which inquiries should be made,
and by guiding and controlling the conclusions which may have been
arrived at. With the assistance of these sciences, Ethnologists have
accomplished a great deal, and may do more; but Ethnology, based merely
on Language[16] and Physiology, is like Geology based only on Mineralogy
and Chemistry. Without Palæontology, that science would never have
assumed the importance or reached the perfection to which it has now
attained; and Ethnology will never take the place which it is really entitled
to, till its results are checked, and its conclusions elucidated, by the science
of Archæology.
Without the aid and vivifying influence derived from the study of fossil
remains, Geology would lose half its value and more than half its interest. It
may be interesting to the man of science to know what rock is
superimposed upon another, and how and in what relative periods these
changes occurred; but it is far more interesting to watch the dawn of life on
this globe, and to trace its development into the present teeming stage of
existence. So it will be when, with the aid of Archæology, Ethnologists are
able to identify the various strata in which mankind have been distributed;
to fix identities of race from similarities of Art; and to read the history of
the past from the unconscious testimony of material remains. When
properly studied and understood, there is no language so clear, or whose
testimony is so undoubted, as that of those petrified thoughts and feelings

which men have left engraved on the walls of their temples, or buried with
them in the chambers of their tombs. Unconsciously expressed, but
imperishably written, they are there to this hour. Any one who likes may
read, and no one who can translate them can for one moment doubt but that
they are the best, and frequently the only, records that remain of bygone
races.
It is not difficult to explain why ethnographers have not hitherto
considered Archæology of that importance to their researches to which it is
undoubtedly entitled. We live in an age when all Art is a chaos of copying
and confusion; we are daily masquerading in the costume of every nation of
the earth, ancient and modern, and are unable to realise that these dresses in
which we deck ourselves were once realities. Because Architecture, since
the Reformation in the sixteenth century, has in Europe been a mere hortus
siccus of dried specimens of the art of all countries and of all ages, we
cannot feel that, before that time, Art was earnest and progressive; and that
men then did what they felt to be best and most appropriate, by the same
processes by which Nature works. We do not therefore perceive that, though
in an infinitely lower grade, we may reason of the works of man before a
given date, with the same certainty with which we can reason of those of
Nature. When this great fact is once recognised—and it is indisputable—
Archæology and Palæontology take their places side by side, as the guiding
and vivifying elements in the sister sciences of Ethnology and Geology; and
give to each of these a value they could never otherwise attain.
As may well be expected, however, when Archæology is employed to aid
in these researches, results are frequently arrived at, which at first sight are
discrepant from those to which the study of language alone has hitherto led
scientific men. But this is no proof either of the truth or falsehood of the
conclusions arrived at, or of the value or worthlessness of the processes
employed. Both are essential to the question of knowledge, and it is by a
skilful balancing of both classes of evidence that truth is ultimately arrived
at.

It would be out of place to attempt in an introduction like the present
anything approaching to a complete investigation of this subject. Nor is it
necessary. The various ethnographic relations of one style to another will be
pointed out as they arise in the course of the narrative, and their influence

traced to such an extent as may be necessary to render them intelligible. But
for the same reasons which made it expedient to try, in the preceding pages,
to define the meaning of the term architecture and to point out its position
and limits, it is believed that it will add to the clearness of what follows if
the typical characteristics of the principal races[17] of mankind with whom
the narrative deals, are first defined as clearly, though as succinctly as
possible.
As the object of introducing the subject here is not to write an essay on
Ethnology, but to render the history of Architecture interesting and
intelligible, it may be expedient to avoid all speculation as to the origin of
mankind, or the mode in which the various races diverged from one another
and became so markedly distinct. Stretch the history of Architecture as we
will, we cannot get beyond the epoch of the Pyramid builders (3500 B.C.),
and when these were erected the various races of mankind had acquired
those distinctive characteristics which mark them now. Not long afterwards,
when the tombs at Beni Hassan were painted (2500 B.C.), these distinctions
were so marked and so well understood, that these pictures might serve for
the illustration of a book on Ethnography at the present day. Nor will it be
necessary in this preliminary sketch to attempt more than to point out the
typical features of the four great building races of mankind. The Turanian,
the Semitic, the Celtic, and the Aryan. Even with regard to these, all that
will be necessary will be to point out the typical characteristics without
even attempting to define too accurately their boundaries, and leaving the
minuter gradations to be developed in the sequel.
The one great fact which it is essential to insist on here is, that if we do
not take into account its connexion with Ethnography, the History of
Architecture is a mere dry, hard recapitulation of uninteresting facts and
terms; but when its relation to the world’s history is understood,—when we
read in their buildings the feelings and aspirations of the people who
erected them, and above all through their arts we can trace their relationship
to, and their descent from one another, the study becomes one of the most
interesting, as well as one of the most useful which can be presented to an
inquiring mind.

II.—TURANIAN.

The result of recent researches has enabled the ethnographer to divide
and arrange prehistoric man into three great groups or periods, which in
Europe at least seem to have succeeded to one another; though at what time
has not yet been determined even approximately; nor is it known how long
any of the three subsisted before it was superseded by the next, nor how far
the one overlapped the other, or indeed, whether, as was almost certainly
the case, at some time all three may not have subsisted together.
The first is called the Stone age, from the rude race who then peopled
Europe having no knowledge of the use of metals. All the cutting parts of
their implements were formed of flint or other hard stones, probably fitted
with wooden or bone handles, and used as tools of these materials.
These were succeeded by a people having a knowledge of the use of
copper and tin, with the possession of gold, and perhaps silver. Their
principal weapons and tools were formed of a compound of the two first-
named metals; and their age has consequently been called the age of
Bronze.
Both these were superseded, perhaps in historic times, by a people having
a knowledge of the properties and use of Iron. Hence their epoch came to be
distinguished by the name of that metal.
There seems no doubt but that the people of the Stone age were
generally, if not exclusively, of that great family which we now know as the
Turanian.
The race who introduced bronze seem to have been the ancestors of the
Celtic races who afterwards peopled so large a portion of Europe.
The Aryans were those who introduced the use of iron, and with it
dominated over and expelled the older races.
If any prehistoric traces of the Semitic races are to be found, they must be
looked for in Western Asia or in Africa; they certainly had no settlements in
Europe.
Further researches may perhaps at some future time enable us to fix
approximative dates to these various migrations. At present we know that
men using flint implements lived in the valleys of the Garonne and
Dordogne when the climate of the south of France was as cold as that of
Lapland, or perhaps Greenland; when the reindeer was their principal
domestic animal, and the larger animals of the country belonged to species

many of which had ceased to inhabit those regions before the dawn of
history. On the other hand, we may assert with certainty that the climate of
Egypt has not varied since the age of the Pyramid builders; and there is
nothing in the history of either Greece or Italy that would lead us to believe
that any remarkable alteration in the climate of these countries has taken
place in historic times.
These questions, however, hardly come within the scope of the present
work. The men of the Stone age have left nothing which can be styled
architecture, unless we include in that term the rude tumuli of earth with
which they covered the remains of their dead. It is also extremely uncertain
if we can identify any building of stone as belonging certainly to the age of
Bronze. All the rude cromlechs, dolmens, menhirs, &c., which usher in the
early dawn of civilisation in Europe, belong, it is true to the earlier races,
but seem to have been erected by them at a time when the Aryan races had
taught them the use of iron, and they had learnt to appreciate the value of
stone as a monumental record. This, however, was at a period long
subsequent to the use of iron in Egypt and the East, and long after
architecture had attained maturity; and its history became easily and
distinctly legible in the Valley of the Nile.[18]
The great feature in the history of the Turanian races is that they were the
first to people the whole world beyond the limits of the original cradle of
mankind. Like the primitive unstratified rocks of geologists, they form the
substructure of the whole world, frequently rising into the highest and most
prominent peaks, sometimes overflowing whole districts and occupying a
vast portion of the world’s surface;—everywhere underlying all the others,
and affording their disintegrated materials to form the more recent strata
that now overlie and frequently obliterate them,—in appearance at least.
In the old world the typical Turanians were the Egyptians; in the modern
the Chinese and Japanese; and to these we are perhaps justified in adding
the Mexicans. If this last adscription stands good, we have at three nearly
equidistant points (120 degrees apart) on the earth’s surface, and under the
tropic of Cancer, the three great culminating points of this form of
civilisation. The outlying strata in Asia are the Tamuls, who now occupy the
whole of the south of India, and all the races now existing in the countries
between India and China. The Turanians existed in the Valley of the
Euphrates before the Semitic or Aryan races came there. The Tunguses in

the north are Turanians, and so are the Mongols, the Turks, and all those
tribes generally described as Tartars.
In Europe the oldest people of this family we are acquainted with are the
Pelasgi and Etruscans, but the race also crops up in the Magyars, the Finns,
the Lapps, and in odd broken fragments here and there, but everywhere
overpowered by the more civilised Aryans, who succeeded and have driven
them into the remotest corners of the continent.
In Africa they have been almost as completely overpowered by the
Semitic race, and in America are now being everywhere as entirely
overwhelmed as they were in Europe by the Aryan races, and in all
probability must eventually disappear altogether.
Even if the linguist should hesitate to affirm that all their languages can
be traced to a common root, or present sufficient affinities for a
classification, the general features of the races enumerated above are so
alike the one to the other, that, for all real ethnographic purposes, they may
certainly be considered as belonging to one great group. Whether nearly
obliterated, as they are in most parts of Europe, or whether they still retain
their nationality, as in the eastern parts of Asia, they always appear as the
earliest of races, and everywhere present peculiarities of feeling and
civilisation easily recognised, and which distinguish them from all the other
races of mankind.
If they do not all speak cognate languages, or if we cannot now trace
their linguistic affinities, we must not too readily assume that therefore they
are distinct the one from the other. It must be more philosophical to believe,
what probably is the case, that the one instrument of analysis we have
hitherto used is not sufficient for the purpose, and we ought consequently to
welcome every other process which will throw further light on the subject.

Religion of the Turanians.

It is perhaps not too much to assert that no Turanian race ever rose to the
idea of a God external to the world. All their gods were men who had lived
with them on the face of the earth. In the old world they were kings,—men
who had acquired fame from the extent of their power, or greatness from
their wisdom. The Buddhist reform taught the Turanian races that virtue,

not power, was true greatness, and that the humblest as well as the highest
might attain beatitude through the practice of piety.
All the Turanians have a distinct idea of rewards and punishments after
death, and generally also of a preparatory purgatory by transmigration
through the bodies of animals, clean or unclean according to the actions of
the defunct spirit, but always ending in another world. With some races
transmigration becomes nearly all in all; in others it is nearly evanescent,
and Heaven and Hell take its place; but the two are essentially doctrines of
this race.
From the fact of their gods having been only ordinary mortals, and all
men being able to aspire to the godhead, their form of worship was
essentially anthropic and ancestral; their temples were palaces, where the
gods sat on thrones and received petitions and dispensed justice as in life,
and where men paid that homage to the image of the dead which they
would have paid to the living king. They were in fact the idolators, par
excellence. Their tombs were even more sacred than their temples, and their
reverence was more frequently directed to the remains of their ancestors
than to the images of their gods. Hence arose that reverence for relics which
formed so marked a feature in their ritual in all ages, and which still
prevails among many races almost in the direct ratio in which Turanian
blood can be traced in their veins.
Unable to rise above humanity in their conceptions of the deity, they
worshipped all material things. Trees with them in all times were objects of
veneration, and of especial worship in particular localities. The mysterious
serpent was with them a god, and the bull in most Turanian countries a
being to be worshipped. The sun, the moon, the stars, all filled niches in
their Pantheon; in fact, whatever they saw they believed in, whatever they
could not comprehend they worshipped. They cared not to inquire beyond
the evidence of their senses, and were incapable of abstracting their
conceptions. To the Turanians also is due that peculiar reverence for
localities made celebrated by great historical events, or rendered sacred by
being the scene of great religious events, and hence to them must be
ascribed the origin of pilgrimages, and all their concomitant adjuncts and
ceremonies.
It is to this race also that we owe the existence of human sacrifices.
Always fatalists, always and everywhere indifferent of life, and never

fearing death, these sacrifices never were to them so terrible as they appear
to more highly-organised races. Thus a child, a relative, or a friend, was the
most precious, and consequently the most acceptable offering a man could
bring to appease the wrath or propitiate the favour of a god who had been
human, and who was supposed to have retained all the feelings of humanity
for ever afterwards.
It is easy to trace their Tree and Serpent worship in every corner of the
old world from Anuradhapura in Ceylon, to Upsala in Sweden. Their tombs
and tumuli exist everywhere. Their ancestral worship is the foundation at
the present day of half the popular creeds of the world, and the planets have
hardly ceased to be worshipped at the present hour. Most of the more salient
peculiarities of this faith were softened down by the great Buddhist reform
in the sixth century B.C., and that refinement of their rude primitive belief
has been adopted by most of the Turanian people of the modern world, and
is now almost exclusively the appanage of people having Turanian blood in
their veins. Even, however, through the gloss of their Buddhist refinements
we can still discern most of the old forms of faith, and even its most
devoted votaries are yet hardly more than half converted.

Government.

The only form of government ever adopted by any people of Turanian
race was that of absolute despotism,—with a tribe, a chief,—in a kingdom,
a despot. In highly civilised communities, like those of Egypt and China,
their despotism was tempered by bureaucratic forms, but the chief was
always as absolute as a Timour or an Attila, though not always strong
enough to use his power as terribly as they did. Their laws were real or
traditional edicts of their kings, seldom written, and never administered
according to any fixed form of procedure.
As a consequence or a cause of this, the Turanian race are absolutely
casteless; no hereditary nobility, no caste of priests ever existed among
them; between the ruler and the people there could be nothing, and every
one might aspire equally to all the honours of the State, or to the highest
dignity of the priesthood. “La carrière ouverte aux talens,” is essentially the
motto of these races or of those allied to them, and whether it was the slave
of a Pharaoh, or the pipe-bearer of a Turkish sultan, every office except the

throne is and always was open to the ambitious. No republic, no limited
monarchy, ever arose among them. Despotism pure and simple is all they
ever knew, or are even now capable of appreciating.

Morals.

Woman among the Turanian races was never regarded otherwise than as
the helpmate of the poor and the plaything of the rich; born to work for the
lower classes and to administer to the gratification of the higher. No
equality of rights or position was ever dreamt of, and the consequence was
polyandry where people were poor and women scarce, and polygamy where
wealth and luxury prevailed; and with these it need hardly be added, a loss
of half those feelings which ennoble man or make life valuable.
Neither loving nor beloved in the bosom of his own family,—too much
of a fatalist to care for the future,—neither enjoying life nor fearing death,
—the Turanian is generally free from those vices which contaminate more
active minds; he remains sober, temperate, truthful, and kindly in all the
relations of life. If, however, he has few vices, he has fewer virtues, and
both are far more passive than active in their nature,—in fact, approach
more nearly to the instincts of the lower animals than to the intellectual
responsibilities of the highest class of minds.

Literature.

No Turanian race ever distinguished itself in literature, properly so
called. They all possessed annals, because they loved to record the names,
the dates, and the descent of their ancestors; but these never rose to the
dignity of history even in its simplest form. Prose they could hardly write,
because none of the greater groups ever appreciated the value of an
alphabet. Hieroglyphics, signs, symbols, anything sufficed for their simple
intellectual wants, and they preferred trusting to memory to remember what
a sign stood for, rather than exercise their intellect to compound or analyse
a complex alphabetical arrangement. Their system of poetry helped them, to
some extent, over the difficulty; and, with a knowledge of the metre, a few
suggestive signs enabled the reader to remember at least a lyric

composition. But without a complex grammar to express and an alphabet to
record their conceptions it is hopeless to expect that either Epic or Dramatic
Poetry could flourish, still less that a prose narrative of any extent could be
remembered; and philosophy, beyond the use of proverbs, was out of the
question.
In their most advanced stages they have, like the Chinese, invented
syllabaria of hideous complexity, and have even borrowed alphabets from
their more advanced neighbours. By some it is supposed that they have
even invented them; but though they have thus got over the mechanical
difficulties of the case, their intellectual condition remains the same, and
they have never advanced beyond the merest rudiments of a literature, and
have never mastered even the elements of any scientific philosophy.

Arts.

If so singularly deficient in the phonetic modes of literary expression, the
Turanian races made up for it to a great extent in the excellence they
attained in most of the branches of æsthetic art. As architects they were
unsurpassed, and in Egypt alone have left monuments which are still the
world’s wonder. The Tamul race in Southern, the Moguls in Northern India,
in Burmah, in China, and in Mexico, wherever these races are found, they
have raised monuments of dimensions unsurpassed; and, considering the
low state of civilisation in which they often existed, displaying a degree of
taste and skill as remarkable as it is unexpected.
In consequence of the circumstance above mentioned of their gods
having been kings, and after death still only considered as watching over
and influencing the destiny of mankind, their temples were only
exaggerated palaces, containing halls, and chambers, and thrones, and all
the appurtenances required by the living, but on a scale befitting the
celestial character now acquired. So much is this the case in Egypt that we
hardly know by which name to designate them, and the same remark
applies to all.
Even more sacred, however, than their temples were their tombs.
Wherever a Turanian race exists or existed, there their tombs remain; and
from the Pyramids of Egypt to the mausoleum of Hyder Ali, the last Tartar

king in India, they form the most remarkable series of monuments the world
possesses, and all were built by people of Turanian race. No Semite and no
Aryan ever built a tomb that could last a century or was worthy to remain so
long.
The Buddhist reform altered the funereal tumulus into a relic shrine,
modifying this, as it did most of the Turanian forms of utterance, from a
literal to a somewhat more spiritual form of expression, but leaving the
meaning the same,—the Tope being still essentially a Tomb.
Combined with that wonderful appreciation of form which characterises
all the architectural works of the Turanians, they possessed an extraordinary
passion for coloured decoration and an instinctive knowledge of the
harmony of colours. They used throughout the primitive colours in all their
elemental crudeness; and though always brilliant, are never vulgar, and are
guiltless of any mistake in harmony. From the first dawn of painting in
Egypt to the last signboard in Constantinople or Canton, it is always the
same,—the same brilliancy and harmony produced by the simplest means.
In sculpture they were not so fortunate. Having no explanatory literature
to which to refer, it was necessary that their statues should tell their whole
tale themselves; and sculpture does not lend itself to this so readily as
painting. With them it is not sufficient that a god should be colossal, he
must be symbolical; he must have more arms and legs or more heads than
common men; he must have wings and attributes of power, or must
combine the strength of a lion or a bull with the intellect of humanity. The
statue must, in short, tell the whole story itself; and where this is attempted
the result can only be pleasing to the narrow faith of the unreflecting
devotee. So far from being able to express more than humanity, sculpture
must attempt even less if it would be successful; but this of course rendered
it useless for the purposes to which the Turanians wished to apply it.
The same remarks apply to painting, properly so called. This never can
attain its highest development except when it is the exponent of phonetic
utterances. In Greece the painter strove only to give form and substance to
the more purely intellectual creation of the poet, and could consequently
dispense with all but the highest elements of his art. In Egypt the picture
was all in all; it had no text to refer to, and must tell the whole tale with all
its adjuncts, in simple intelligible prose, or be illegible, and the
consequence is that the story is told with a clearness that charms us even

now. It is however, only a story; and, like everything else Turanian,
however great or wonderful, its greatness and its wonder are of a lower
class and less intellectual than the utterances of the other great divisions of
the human family.
We have scarcely the means of knowing whether any Turanian race ever
successfully cultivated music to any extent. It is more than probable that all
their families can and always could appreciate the harmony of musical
intervals, and might be charmed with simple cadences; but it is nearly
certain that a people who did not possess phonetic poetry could never rise to
that higher class of music which is now carried to such a pitch of perfection,
that harmonic combinations almost supply the place of phonetic expression
and influence the feelings and passions to almost the same extent.
There is also this further peculiarity about their arts, that they seem
always more instinctive than intellectual, and consequently are incapable of
that progress which distinguishes most of the works of man. At the first
dawn of art in Egypt, in the age of the Pyramid builders, all the arts were as
perfect and as complete as they were when the country fell under the
domination of the Romans. The earliest works in China are as perfect—in
some respects more so—as those of to-day; and in Mexico, so soon as a
race of red savages peopled a country so densely as to require art and to
appreciate magnificence, the arts sprung up among them with as much
perfection, we may fairly assume, as they would have attained had they
been practised for thousands of years under the same circumstances and
uninfluenced by foreigners. It is even more startling to find that the arts of
the savages who inhabited the south of France, on the skirts of the glacial
period, are identical with those of the Esquimaux of the present day, and
even at that early time attained a degree of perfection which is startling, and
could hardly be surpassed by any people in the same condition of life at the
present day.

Sciences.

There is no reason to suppose that any people occupying so low a
position in the intellectual scale could ever cultivate anything approaching
to abstract science, and there is no proof of it existing. Living, however, as
they did, on the verge of the tropics, in the most beautiful climates of the

world, and where the sky is generally serene and unclouded, it was
impossible but that they should become to some extent astronomers.
It is not known that any of them ever formed any theory to account for
the phenomena they observed, but they seem to have watched the paths of
the planets, to have recorded eclipses, and generally to have noted times
and events with such correctness as enabled them to predict their return
with very considerable precision; but here their science stopped, and it is
not known that they ever attempted any other of the multifarious branches
of modern knowledge.
We have only very imperfect means of knowing what their agriculture
was; but it seems always to have been careful when once they passed from
the shepherd state, though whether scientific or not it is not easy to say. On
the point of artificial irrigation the Turanians have always been singularly
expert. Wherever you follow their traces, the existence of a tunnel is almost
as certain an indication of their pre-existence as that of a tomb. It is
amusing, as it is instructive, to see at this hour an Arab Pacha breaking
down in his attempts to restore the irrigation works of the old Pharaohs, or
an English Engineer officer blundering in his endeavours to copy the works
instinctively performed by a Mogul, or a Spaniard trying to drain the lakes
of Mexico. Building and irrigation were the special instincts of this old
people, and the practical intellect of the higher races seems hardly yet to
have come up to the point where these arts were left by the early Turanian
races, while the perfection they attained in them is the more singular from
the contrast it affords to what they did, or rather, did not do, in other
branches of art or science.

III.—SEMITIC RACES.

From the extraordinary influence the Semitic races have had in the
religious development of mankind, we are apt to consider them as
politically more important than they really ever were. At no period of their
history do they seem to have numbered more than twenty or thirty millions
of souls. The principal locality in which they developed themselves was the
small tract of country between the Tigris, the Mediterranean and the Red
Sea; but they also existed as a separate race in Abyssinia, and extended their
colonies along the northern coast of Africa. Their intellectual development

has been in all ages so superior to that of the Turanian races, that they have
subdued them mentally wherever they came in contact with them; and
notwithstanding their limited geographical extension, they have influenced
the intellect of the Aryan tribes to a greater extent than almost any of their
own congeners.
If anything were required to justify the ethnographer in treating the
various families of mankind as distinct and separate varieties, it would be
the study of the history of the Semitic race. What they were in the time of
Abraham, that they are at the present day. A large section of them sojourned
in Egypt, among people of a different race, and they came out as unmixed
as oil would do that is floated on water. For the last two thousand years they
have dwelt dispersed among the Gentiles, without a nationality, almost
without a common language, yet they remain the same in feature, the same
in intellectual development and feeling, they exhibit the same undying
repugnance to all except those of their own blood, which characterised the
Arab and the Jew when we first recognise their names in history. So
unchangeable are they in this respect, that it seems in vain to try to calculate
how long this people must have lived by themselves, separated from other
races, that they should have thus acquired that distinctive fixity of character
nothing can alter or obliterate, and which is perhaps even more wonderful
intellectually than are the woolly hair and physical characteristics of the
negro, though not so obvious to the superficial observer.

Religion.

From the circumstance of our possessing a complete series of the
religious literature of the Semitic race, extending over the two thousand
years which elapsed between Moses and Mahomet, we are enabled to speak
on this point with more precision than we can regarding the doctrines of
almost any other people.
The great and distinguishing tenet of this race when pure is and always
seems to have been the unity of God, and his not being born of man. Unlike
the gods of the Turanians, their Deity never was man, never reigned or lived
on earth, but was the Creator and Preserver of the universe, living before all
time, and extending beyond all space; though it must be confessed they

have not always expressed this idea with the purity and distinctness which
might be desired.
It is uncertain how far they adhered to this purity of belief in Assyria,
where they were more mixed up with other races than they have ever been
before or since. In Syria, where they were superimposed upon and mixed
with a people of Turanian origin, they occasionally worshipped stones and
groves, serpents, and even bulls; but they inevitably oscillated back to the
true faith and retained it to the last. In Arabia, after they became dominant,
they cast off their Turanian idolatries, and rallied as one man to the
watchword of their race, “There is no God but God,” expressed with a
clearness that nothing can obscure, and clung to it with a tenacity that
nothing could shake or change. Since then they have never represented God
as man, and hardly ever looked upon Him as actuated by the feelings of
humanity.
The channel of communication between God and man has always been,
with all the Semitic races, by means of prophecy. Prophets are sent, or are
inspired, by God, to communicate His will to man, to propound His laws,
and sometimes to foretell events; but in all instances without losing their
character as men, or becoming more than messengers for the special service
for which they are sent.
With the Jews, but with them only, does there seem to have been a priest
caste set aside for the special service of God; not selected from all the
people, as would have been the case with the casteless Turanians, but
deriving their sanctity from descent, as would have been the case with the
Aryans; still they differed from the Aryan institution inasmuch as the
Levites always retained the characteristics of a tribe, and never approached
the form of an aristocracy. They may therefore be considered
ethnographically as an intermediate institution, partaking of the
characteristics of the other two races.
The one point in which the Semitic form of religion seems to come in
contact with the Turanian is that of sacrifice—human, in early times
perhaps, even till the time of Abraham, but afterwards only of oxen and
sheep and goats in hecatombs; and this apparently not among the Arabs, but
only with the Jews and the less pure Phœnicians.
From their having no human gods they avoided all the palatial temples or
ceremonial forms of idolatrous worship. Strictly speaking, they have no

temples. There was one holy place in the old world, the Hill of Zion at
Jerusalem, and one in the new dispensation, the Kaaba at Mecca. Solomon,
it is true, adorned the first to an extent but little consonant with the true
feeling of his race, but the Kaaba remains in its primitive insignificance;
and neither of these temples, either then or now, derive their sanctity from
the buildings. They are the spots where God’s prophets stood and
communicated His will to man. It is true that in after ages a Roman Tetrarch
and a Turkish Sultan surrounded these two Semitic cells with courts and
cloisters, which made them wonders of magnificence in the cities where
they existed; but this does not affect the conclusion that no Semitic race
ever erected a durable building, or even thought of possessing more than
one temple at a time, or cared to emulate the splendour of the temple-
palaces of the Turanians.

Government.

Although no Semitic race was ever quite republican, which is a purely
Aryan characteristic, they never sank under such an unmitigated despotism
as is generally found among the Turanians. When in small nuclei, their form
of government is what is generally called patriarchal, the chief being neither
necessarily hereditary, nor necessarily elective, but attaining his headship
partly by the influence due to age and wisdom, or to virtue, partly to the
merits of his connexions, and sometimes of his ancestors; but never wholly
to the latter without some reference at least to the former.
In larger aggregations the difficulty of selection made the chiefship more
generally hereditary; but even then the power of the King was always
controlled by the authority of the written law, and never sank into the pure
despotism of the Turanians. With the Jews, too, the sacred caste of the
Levites always had considerable influence in checking any excesses of
kingly power; but more was due in this respect to their peculiar institution
of prophets, who, protected by the sacredness of their office, at all times
dared to act the part of tribunes of the people, and to rebuke with authority
any attempt on the part of the King to step beyond the limits of the
constitution.

Morals.
One of the most striking characteristics in the morals of the Semitic races
is the improvement in the position of woman, and the attempt to elevate her
in the scale of existence. If not absolutely monogamic, there is among the
Jews, and among the Arabic races where they are pure, a strong tendency in
this direction; and but for the example of those nations among whom they
were placed, they might have gone further in this direction, and the dignity
of mankind have been proportionately improved.
Their worst faults arise from their segregation from the rest of mankind.
With them war against all but those of their own race is an obligation and a
pleasure, and it is carried on with a relentless cruelty which knows no pity.
To smite root and branch, to murder men, women, and children, is a duty
which admits of no hesitation, and has stained the character of the Semites
in all ages. Against this must be placed the fact that they are patriotic
beyond all other races, and steadfast in their faith as no other people have
ever been; and among themselves they have been tempered to kindness and
charity by the sufferings they have had to bear because of their
uncompromising hatred and repugnance to all their fellow-men.
This isolation has had the further effect of making them singularly
apathetic to all that most interests the other nations of the earth. What their
God has revealed to them through His prophets suffices for them. “God is
great,” is a sufficient explanation with them for all the wonders of science.
“God wills it,” solves all the complex problems of the moral government of
the world. If not such absolute fatalists as the Turanians, they equally shrink
from the responsibility of thinking for themselves, or of applying their
independent reason to the great problems of human knowledge. They may
escape by this from many aberrations that trouble more active minds, but
their virtues at best can be but negative, and their vices unredeemed by the
higher aspirations that sometimes half ennoble even crime.

Literature.

In this again we have an immense advance above all the Turanian races.
No Semitic people ever used a hieroglyph or mere symbol, or were content

to trust to memory only. Everywhere and at all times—so far as we know—
they used an alphabet of more or less complicated form. Whether they
invented this mode of notation or not is still unknown, but its use by them is
certain; and the consequence is that they possess, if not the oldest, at least
one of the very oldest literatures of the world. History with them is no
longer a mere record of names and titles, but a chronicle of events, and with
the moral generally elicited. The story and the rhapsody take their places
side by side, the preaching and the parable are used to convey their lessons
to the world. If they had not the Epos and the Drama, they had lyric poetry
of a beauty and a pathos which has hardly ever been surpassed.
It was this possession of an alphabet, conjoined with the sublimity of
their monotheistic creed, that gave these races the only superiority to which
they have attained. It is this which has enabled them to keep themselves
pure and undefiled in all the catastrophes to which they have been exposed,
and that still enables their literature and their creed to exert an influence
over almost all the nations of the earth, even in times when the people
themselves have been held in most supreme contempt.

Arts.

It may have been partly in consequence of their love of phonetic
literature, and partly in order to keep themselves distinct from those great
builders the Turanians, that the Semitic races never erected a building
worthy of the name; neither at Jerusalem, nor at Tyre or Sidon, nor at
Carthage, is there any vestige of Semitic Architectural Art. Not that these
have perished, but because they never existed. When Solomon proposed to
build a temple at Jerusalem, though plain externally, and hardly so large as
an ordinary parish church, he was forced to have recourse to some Turanian
people to do it for him, and by a display of gold and silver and brass
ornaments to make up for the architectural forms he knew not how to apply.
In Assyria we have palaces of dynasties more or less purely Semitic,
splendid enough, but of wood and sunburnt bricks, and only preserved to
our knowledge from the accident of their having been so clumsily built as to
bury themselves and their wainscot slabs in their own ruins. Though half
the people were probably of Turanian origin, their temples seem to have
been external and unimportant till Sennacherib and others learnt the art of

using stone from the Egyptians, as the Syrians did afterwards from the
Romans. During the domination of the last-named people, we have the
temples of Palmyra and Baalbec, of Jerusalem and Petra: everywhere an art
of the utmost splendour, but with no trace of Semitic feeling or Semitic
taste in any part, or in any detail.
The Jewish worship being neither ancestral, nor the bodies of their dead
being held in special reverence, they had no tombs worthy of the name.
They buried the bodies of their patriarchs and kings with care, and knew
where they were laid; but not until after the return from the Babylonish
captivity did they either worship there, or mark the spot with any
architectural forms, though after that epoch we find abundant traces of a
tendency towards that especial form of Turanian idolatry. But even then the
adornment of their tombs with architectural magnificence cannot be traced
back to an earlier period than the time of the Romans; and all that we find
marked with splendour of this class was the work of that people, and
stamped with their peculiar forms of Art.
Painting and sculpture were absolutely forbidden to the Jews because
they were Turanian arts, and because their practice might lead the people to
idolatry, so that these nowhere existed: though we cannot understand a
people with any mixture of Turanian blood who had not an eye for colour,
and a feeling for beauty of form, in detail at least. Music alone was
therefore the one æsthetic art of the Semitic races, and, wedded to the lyric
verse, seems to have influenced their feelings and excited their passions to
an extent unknown to other nations; but to posterity it cannot supply the
place of the more permanent arts, whose absence is so much felt in
attempting to realise the feelings or aspirations of a people like this.[19]
As regards the useful arts, the Semites were always more pastoral than
agricultural, and have not left in the countries they inhabited any traces of
such hydraulic works as the earlier races executed; but in commerce they
excelled all nations. The Jews—from their inland situation, cut off from all
access to the sea—could not do much in foreign trade; but they always kept
up their intercourse with Assyria. The Phœnicians traded backwards and
forwards with every part of the Mediterranean, and first opened out a
knowledge of the Atlantic; and the Arabs first commenced, and for long
afterwards alone carried on, the trade with India. From the earliest dawn of
history to the present hour, commerce has been the art which the Semitic

nations have cultivated with the greatest assiduity, and in which they
consequently have attained the greatest, and an unsurpassed success.
In Asia and in Africa at the present day, all the native trade is carried on
by Arabs; and it need hardly be remarked that the monetary transactions of
the rest of the world are practically managed by the descendants of those
who, one thousand years before Christ, traded from Eziongeber to Ophir.

Sciences.

Although, as before mentioned, Astronomy was cultivated with
considerable success both in Egypt and Chaldæa, among the more
contemplative Turanians, nothing can be more unsatisfactory than the
references to celestial events, either in the Bible or the Koran, both
betraying an entire ignorance of even the elements of astronomical science;
and we have no proof that the Phœnicians were at all wiser than their
neighbours in this respect.
The Semitic races seem always to have been of too poetical a
temperament to excel in mathematics or the mechanical sciences. If there is
one branch of scientific knowledge which they may be suspected of having
cultivated with success, it is the group of natural sciences. A love of nature
seems always to have prevailed with them, and they may have known “the
trees, from the cedar which is in Lebanon to the hyssop that springeth out of
the wall, and the names of all the beasts, and the fowls, and the creeping
things, and the fishes;” but beyond this we know of nothing that can be
dignified by the name of science among the Semitic races. They more than
made up however for their deficient knowledge of the exact sciences by the
depth of their insight into the springs of human action, and the sagacity of
their proverbial philosophy; and, more than even this, by that wonderful
system of Theology before which all the Aryan races of the world and many
of the Turanian bow at the present hour, and acknowledge it the basis of
their faith and the source of all their religious aspirations.

IV.—CELTIC.

It is extremely difficult to write anything very precise or very satisfactory
regarding the Celtic races, for the simple reason that, within the limits of
our historic knowledge, they never lived sufficiently long apart from other
races to develop a distinct form of nationality, or to create either a literature
or a polity by which they could be certainly recognised. In this respect they
form the most marked contrast with the Semitic races. Instead of wrapping
themselves up within the bounds of the most narrow exclusiveness, the Celt
everywhere mixed freely with the people among whom he settled, and
adopted their manners and customs with a carelessness that is startling;
while at the same time he retained the principal characteristics of his race
through every change of circumstance and clime.
Almost the only thing that can be predicated of them with certainty is,
that they were either the last wave of the Turanians, or, if another
nomenclature is preferred, the first wave of the Aryans, who, migrating
westward from their parent seat in Asia, displaced the original and more
purely Turanian tribes who occupied Europe before the dawn of history.
But, in doing this, they seem to have mixed themselves so completely with
the races they were supplanting, that it is extremely difficult to say now
where one begins or where the other ends.
We find their remains in Asia Minor, whence Ethnologists fancy that they
can trace a southern migration along the northern coast of Africa, across the
Straits of Gibraltar, into Spain, and thence to Ireland. A more certain and
more important migration, however, crossed the Bosphorus, and following
the valley of the Danube, threw one branch into Italy, where they penetrated
as far south as Rome; while the main body settled in and occupied Gaul and
Belgium, whence they peopled Britain, and may have met the southern
colonists in the Celtic Island of the west. From this they are now migrating,
still following the course of the sun, to carry to the New World the same
brilliant thoughtlessness which has so thoroughly leavened all those parts of
the Old in which they have settled, and which so sorely puzzles the purer
but more matter-of-fact Aryan tribes with which they have come in contact.

Religion.

It may appear like a hard saying, but it seems nevertheless to be true, to
assert that no purely Celtic race ever rose to a perfect conception of the

unity of the Godhead. It may be that they only borrowed this from the
Turanians who preceded them; but whether imitative or innate, their
Theology admits of Kings and Queens of Heaven who were mortals on
earth. They possess hosts of saints and angels, and a whole hierarchy of
heavenly powers of various degrees, to whom the Celt turns with as
confiding hope and as earnest prayer as ever Turanian did to the gods of his
Pantheon. If he does not reverence the bodies of the departed as the
Egyptian or Chinese, he at least adopts the Buddhist veneration for relics,
and attaches far more importance to funereal rites than was ever done by
any tribe of Aryans.
The Celt is as completely the slave of a casteless priesthood as ever
Turanian Buddhist was, and loves to separate it from the rest of mankind, as
representing on earth the hierarchy in heaven, to which, according to the
Celtic creed, all may hope to succeed by practice of their peculiar virtues.
To this may be added, that his temples are as splendid, his ceremonials as
gorgeous, and the formula as unmeaning as any that ever graced the banks
of the Nile, or astonished the wanderer in the valleys of Thibet or on the
shores of the Eastern Ocean.

Government.

It is still more difficult to speak of the Celtic form of government, as no
kingdom of this people ever existed by itself for any length of time; and
none, indeed, it may be suspected, could long hold together. It may,
however, be safely asserted, that no republican forms are possible with a
Celtic people, and no municipal institutions ever flourished among them.
The only form, therefore, we know of as peculiarly theirs, is despotism; not
necessarily personal, but rendered systematic by centralised bureaucratic
organisations, and tempered by laws in those States which have reached any
degree of stability or civilisation.
Nothing but a strong centralised despotism can long co-exist with a
people too impatient to submit to the sacrifices and self-denial inherent in
all attempts at self-government, and too excitable to be controlled, except
by the will of the strongest, though it may also be the least scrupulous
among them.

When in small bodies they are always governed by a chief, generally
hereditary, but always absolute; who is looked up to with awe, and obeyed
with a reverence that is unintelligible to the more independent races of
mankind.
With such institutions, of course a real aristocracy is impossible; and the
restraints of caste must always have been felt to be intolerable. “La carrière
ouverte aux talens” is their boast; though not to the same extent as with the
Turanians; and the selfish gratification of individual ambition is
consequently always preferred with them to the more sober benefit of the
general advancement of the community.

Morals.

If the Celts never were either polygamic or polyandric, they certainly
always retained very lax ideas with regard to the marriage-vow, and never
looked on woman’s mission as anything higher than to minister to their
sensual gratification. With them the woman that fulfils this quality best
always commands their admiration most. Beauty can do no wrong—but
without beauty woman can hardly rise above the level of the common herd.
The ruling passion in the mind of the Celt is war. Not like the exclusive,
intolerant Semite, a war of extermination or of proselytism, but war from
pure “gaieté de cœur” and love of glory. No Celt fears to die if his death can
gain fame or add to the stock of his country’s glory; nor in a private fight
does he fear death or feel the pain of a broken head, if he has had a chance
of shooting through the heart or cracking the skull of his best friend at the
same time. The Celt’s love of excitement leads him frequently into
excesses, and to a disregard of truth and the virtues belonging to daily life,
which are what really dignify mankind; but his love of glory and of his
country often go far to redeem these deficiencies, and spread a halo over
even his worst faults, which renders it frequently difficult to blame what we
feel in soberness we ought to condemn.

Literature.

If love and war are the parents of song, the bard and the troubadour ought
to have left us a legacy of verse that would have filled the libraries of
Europe; and so they probably would had not the original Celt been too
illiterate to care to record the expressions of his feelings. As it is, nine-
tenths of the lyric literature of Europe is of Celtic origin. The Epos and the
Drama may belong to the Aryan; but in the art of wedding music to
immortal verse, and pouring forth a passionate utterance in a few but
beautiful words, the Celtic is only equalled by the Semitic race.
Their remaining literature is of such modern growth, and was so specially
copied from what had preceded it, or so influenced by the contemporary
effusions of other people, that it is impossible accurately to discriminate
what is due to race and what to circumstances. All that can safely be said is,
that Celtic literature is always more epigrammatic, more brilliant, and more
daring than that of the sober Aryan; but its coruscations neither light to so
great a depth, nor last so long as less dazzling productions might do. They
may be the most brilliant, but they certainly do not belong to the highest
class of literary effort; nor is their effect on the destiny of man likely to be
so permanent.

Arts.

The true glory of the Celt in Europe is his artistic eminence. It is perhaps
not too much to assert that without his intervention we should not have
possessed in modern times a church worthy of admiration, or a picture or a
statue we could look at without shame.
In their arts, too,—either from their higher status, or from their admixture
with Aryans,—we escape the instinctive fixity which makes the arts of the
pure Turanian as unprogressive as the works of birds or of beavers. Restless
intellectual progress characterises everything they perform; and had their
arts not been nipped in the bud by circumstances over which they had no
control, we might have seen something that would have shamed even
Greece and wholly eclipsed the arts of Rome.
They have not, it is true, that instinctive knowledge of colour which
distinguishes the Turanian, nor have they been able to give to music that
intellectual culture which has been elaborated by the Aryans: but in the

middle path between the two they excel both. They are far better musicians
than the former, and far better colourists than the last-named races; but in
modern Europe Architecture is practically their own. Where their influence
was strongest, there Architecture was most perfect; as they decayed, or as
the Aryan influence prevailed, the art first languished, and then died.
Their quasi-Turanian theology required Temples almost as grand as those
of the Copts or Tamuls; and, like them, they sought to honour those who
had been mortals by splendour which mortals are assumed to be pleased
with; and the pomp of their worship always surpassed that with which they
honoured their Kings. Even more remarkable than this is the fact that they
could and did build Tombs such as a Turanian might have envied, not for
their size but for their art, and even now can adorn their cemeteries with
monuments which are not ridiculous.
When a people are so mixed up with other races as the Celts are in
Europe,—frequently so fused as to be undistinguishable,—it is almost
impossible to speak with precision with regard either to their arts or
influence. It must in consequence be safer to assert that where no Celtic
blood existed there no real art is found; though it is perhaps equally true to
assert that not only Architecture, but Painting and Sculpture, have been
patronised, and have flourished in the exact ratio in which Celtic blood is
found prevailing in any people in Europe; and has died out as Aryan
influence prevails, in spite of their methodical efforts to indoctrinate
themselves with what must be the spontaneous impulse of genius, if it is to
be of any value.

Sciences.

Of their sciences we know nothing till they were so steeped in the
civilisation of older races that originality was hopeless. Still, in the stages
through which the intellect of Europe has yet passed, they have played their
part with brilliancy. But now that knowledge is assuming a higher and more
prosaic phase, it is doubtful whether the deductive brilliancy of the Celtic
mind can avail anything against the inductive sobriety of the Aryan. So long
as metaphysics were science, and science was theory, the peculiar form of
the Celtic mind was singularly well adapted to see through sophistry and to
guess the direction in which truth might lie. But now that we have only to

question Nature, to classify her answers, and patiently to record results, its
mission seems to have passed away. Truth in all its majesty, and Nature in
all her greatness, must now take the place of speculation, with its
cleverness, and man’s ideas of what might or should be, must be supplanted
by the knowledge of God’s works as they exist and the contemplation of the
eternal grandeur of the universe which we see around us.
Though these are the highest, they are at the same time the most sober
functions of the human mind; and while conferring the greatest and most
lasting benefit, not only on the individual who practises them, but also on
the human race, they are neither calculated to gratify personal vanity, nor to
reward individual ambition.
Such pursuits are not, therefore, of a nature to attract or interest the Celtic
races, but must be left to those who are content to sink their personality in
seeking the advantage of the common weal.

V.—ARYAN.

According to their own chronology, it seems to have been about the year
3101 B.C. that the Aryans crossed the Indus and settled themselves in the
country between that river and the Jumna, since known among themselves
as Arya Varta, or the Country of the Just, for all succeeding ages.
More than a thousand years afterwards we find them, in the age of the
Ramayana, occupying all the country north of the Vindya range, and
attempting the conquest of the southern country,—then, as now, occupied
by Turanians,—and penetrating as far as Ceylon.
Eight hundred years later we see them in the Mahabharata, having lost
much of their purity of blood, and adopting many of the customs and much
of the faith of the people they were settled amongst; and three centuries
before Christ we find they had so far degenerated as to accept, almost
without a struggle, the religion of Buddha; which, though no doubt a
reform, and an important one, on the Anthropic doctrines of the pure
Turanians, was still essentially a faith of a Turanian people; congenial to
them, and to them only.
Ten centuries after Christ, when the Moslems came in contact with India,
the Aryan was a myth. The religion of the earlier people was everywhere

supreme, and with only a nominal thread of Aryanism running through the
whole, just sufficient to bear testimony to the prior existence of a purer
faith, but not sufficient to leaven the mass to any appreciable extent.
The fate of the western Aryans differed essentially from that of those who
wandered eastward. Theoretically we ought to assume, from their less
complex language and less pure faith, that they were an earlier offshoot; but
it may be that in the forests of Europe they lost for a while the civilised
forms which the happier climate of Arya Varta enabled the others to retain;
or it may be that the contact with the more nearly equal Celtic races had
mixed the language and the faith of the western races, before they had the
opportunity or the leisure to record the knowledge they brought with them.
Be this as it may, they first appear prominently in the western world in
Greece, where, by a fortunate union with the Pelasgi, a people apparently of
Turanian race, they produced a civilisation not purely Aryan, and somewhat
evanescent in its character, but more brilliant, while it lasted, than anything
the world had seen before, and in certain respects more beautiful than
anything that has illumined it since their time.
They next sprang forth in Rome, mixed with the Turanian Etruscans and
the powerful Celtic tribes of Italy; and lastly in Northern Europe, where
they are now working out their destiny, but to what issue the future only can
declare.
The essential difference between the eastern and western migration is this
—that in India the Aryans have sunk gradually into the arms of a Turanian
people till they have lost their identity, and with it all that ennobled them
when they went there, or could enable them now to influence the world
again.
In Europe they found the country cleared of Turanians by the earlier
Celts; and mingling their blood with these more nearly allied races, they
have raised themselves to a position half way between the two. Where they
found the country unoccupied they have remained so pure that, as their
number multiplies, they may perhaps regain something of the position they
had temporarily abandoned, and something of that science which, it may be
fancied, mankind only knew in their primeval seats.

Religion.

What then was the creed of the primitive Aryans? So far as we can now
see, it was the belief in one great ineffable God,—so great that no human
intellect could measure His greatness,—so wonderful that no human
language could express His qualities,—pervading everything that was
made,—ruling all created things,—a spirit, around, beyond the universe,
and within every individual particle of it. A creed so ethereal could not long
remain the faith of the multitude, and we early find fire,—the most ethereal
of the elements,—looked to as an emblem of the Deity. The heavens too
received a name, and became an entity:—so did our mother earth. To these
succeeded the sun, the stars, the elements,—but never among the pure
Aryans as gods, or as influencing the destiny of man, but as manifestations
of His power, and reverenced because they were visible manifestations of a
Being too abstract for an ordinary mind to grasp. Below this the Aryans
never seem to have sunk.
With a faith so elevated of course no temple could be wanted; no human
ceremonial could be supposed capable of doing honour to a Deity so
conceived; nor any sacrifice acceptable to Him to whom all things
belonged. With the Aryans worship was a purely domestic institution;
prayer the solitary act of each individual man, standing alone in the
presence of an omniscient Deity. All that was required was that man should
acknowledge the greatness of God, and his own comparative insignificance;
should express his absolute trust and faith in the beneficence and justice of
his God, and a hope that he might be enabled to live so pure, and so free
from sin, as to deserve such happiness as this world can afford, and be
enabled to do as much good to others as it is vouchsafed to man to perform.
A few insignificant formulæ served to mark the modes in which these
subjects should recur. The recitation of a time-honoured hymn refreshed the
attention of the worshipper, and the reading of a few sacred texts recalled
the duties it was expected he should perform. With these simple ceremonies
the worship of the Aryans seems to have begun and ended.
Even in later times, when their blood has become less pure, and their
feelings were influenced by association with those among whom they
resided, the religion of the Aryans always retained its intellectual character.
No dogma was ever admitted that would not bear the test of reason, and no
article of faith was ever assented to which seemed to militate against the
supremacy of intellect over all feelings and passions. In all their wanderings

they were always prepared to admit the immeasurable greatness of the one
incorporeal Deity, and the impossibility of the human intellect approaching
or forming any adequate conception of His majesty.
When they abandoned the domestic form of worship, they adopted the
congregational, and then not so much with the idea that it was pleasing to
God, as in order to remind each other of their duties, to regulate and govern
the spiritual wants of the community, and to inculcate piety towards God
and charity towards each other.
It need hardly be added that superstition is impossible with minds so
constituted, and that science must always be the surest and the best ally of a
religion so pure and exalted, which is based on a knowledge of God’s
works, a consequent appreciation of their greatness, and an ardent
aspiration towards that power and goodness which the finite intellect of
man can never hope to reach.

Government.

The most marked characteristic of the Aryans is their innate passion for
self-government. If not absolutely republican, the tendency of all their
institutions, at all times, has been towards that form, and in almost the exact
ratio to the purity of the blood do they adopt this form of autocracy. If
kingly power was ever introduced among them, it was always in the form of
a limited monarchy; never the uncontrolled despotism of the other races;
and every conceivable check was devised to prevent encroachments of the
crown, even if such were possible among a people so organised as the
Aryans always have been.
With them every town was a municipality, every village a little republic,
and every trade a separate self-governing guild. Many of these institutions
have died out, or else fallen into neglect, in those communities where equal
rights and absolute laws have rendered each individual a king in his own
person, and every family a republic in itself.
The village system which the Aryans introduced into India is still the
most remarkable of its institutions. These little republican organisms have
survived the revolutions of fifty centuries. Neither the devastations of war
nor the indolence of peace seems to have affected them. Under Brahmin,

Buddhist, or Moslem, they remain the same unchanged and unchangeable
institutions, and neither despotism nor anarchy has been able to alter them.
They alone have saved India from sinking into a state of savage imbecility,
under the various hordes of conquerors who have at times overrun her; and
they, with the Vedas and the laws afterwards embodied by Menu, alone
remain as records of the old Aryan possessors of the Indian peninsula.
Municipalities, which are merely an enlargement of the Indian village
system, exist wherever the Romans were settled, or where the Aryan races
exist in Europe; and though guilds are fast losing their significance, it was
the Teutonic guilds that alone checked and ultimately supplanted the feudal
despotisms of the Celts.
Caste is another institution of these races, which has always more or less
influenced all their actions. Where their blood has become so impure as it is
in India, caste has degenerated into an abuse; but where it is a living
institution, it is perhaps as conducive to the proper regulation of society as
any with which we are acquainted. The one thing over which no man can
have any control is the accident of his birth; but it is an immense gain to
him that he should be satisfied with the station in which he finds himself,
and content to do his duty in the sphere in which he was born. Caste,
properly understood, never interferes with the accumulation of wealth or
power within the limits of the class, and only recognises the inevitable
accident of birth: while the fear of losing caste is one of the most salutary
checks which has been devised to restrain men from acts unworthy of their
social position. It is an enormous gain to society that each man should know
his station and be prepared to perform the duties belonging to it, without the
restless craving of a selfish ambition that would sacrifice everything for the
sake of the personal aggrandisement of the individual. It is far better to
acknowledge that there is no sphere in life in which man may not become
as like unto the gods as in any other sphere; and it is everywhere better to
respect the public good rather than to seek to gratify personal ambition.
The populations of modern Europe have become so mixed that neither
caste nor any other Aryan institution now exists in its pristine purity; but in
the ratio in which a people is Aryan do they possess an aristocracy and
municipal institutions; and, what is almost of more importance, in that ratio
are the people prepared to respect the gradations of caste in society, and to

sacrifice their individual ambition to the less brilliant task of doing all the
good that is possible in the spheres in which they have been placed.
It is true, and so has been found, that an uncontrolled despotism is a
sharper, a quicker, and a better tool for warlike purposes, or where national
vanity is to be gratified by conquest or the display of power; but the
complicated, and it may be clumsy, institutions of the Aryans, are far more
lasting and more conducive to individual self-respect, and far more likely to
add to the sum of human happiness, and tend more clearly to the real
greatness and moral elevation of mankind, than any human institution we
are yet acquainted with.
So far as our experience now goes, the division of human society into
classes or castes is not only the most natural concomitant of the division of
labour, but is also the most beneficent of the institutions of man; while the
organisation of a nation into self-governing municipalities is not only
singularly conducive to individual well-being, but renders it practically
indestructible by conquest, and even imperishable through lapse of time.
These two are the most essentially characteristic institutions of the Aryans.

Morals.

In morals the Aryans were always monogamic, and with them alone does
woman always assume a perfect equality of position: mistress of her own
actions till marriage; when married, in theory at least, the equal sharer in the
property and in the duties of the household. Were it possible to carry out
these doctrines absolutely in practice, they would probably be more
conducive to human happiness than any of those enumerated above; but
even a tendency towards them is an enormous gain.
Their institutions for self-government, enumerated above, have probably
done more to elevate the Aryan race than can well be appreciated. When
every man takes, or may take, his share in governing the commonwealth—
when every man must govern himself, and respect the independence of his
neighbour—men cease to be tools, and become independent reasoning
beings. They are taught self-respect, and with this comes love of truth—of
those qualities which command the respect of their fellow-men; and they
are likewise taught that control of their passions which renders them averse

to war; while the more sober occupations of life prevent the necessity of
their seeking, in the wildness of excitement, that relief from monotony
which so frequently drives other races into those excesses the world has had
so often to deplore. The existence of caste, even in its most modified form,
prevents individual ambition from having that unlimited career which
among other races has so often sacrificed the public weal to the ambition of
an individual.

Literature.

The Aryan races employed an alphabet at so early a period of their
history that we cannot now tell when or how it was introduced among them;
and it was, even when we first become acquainted with it, a far more
perfect alphabet than that of the Semitic races, though apparently formed on
its basis. Nothing in it was dependent on memory. It possessed vowels, and
all that was necessary to enunciate sounds with perfect and absolute
precision. In consequence of this, and of the perfect structure of their
language, they were enabled to indulge in philosophical speculation, to
write treatises on grammar and logic, and generally to assume a literary
position which other races never attained to.
History with them was not a mere record of dates or collection of
genealogical tables, but an essay on the polity of mankind, to which the
narrative afforded the illustration; while their poetry had always a tendency
to assume more a didactic than a lyric form. It is among the Aryans that the
Epos first rose to eminence and the Drama was elevated above a mere
spectacle; but even in these the highest merit sought to be attained was that
they should represent vividly events which might have taken place, even if
they never did happen among men; while the Celts and the Semites delight
in wild imaginings which never could have existed except in the brain of
the poet. When the blood of the Aryan has been mixed with that of other
races, they have produced a literature eminently imaginative and poetic; but
in proportion to their purity has been their tendency towards a more prosaic
style of composition. The aim of the race has always been the attainment of
practical common sense, and the possession of this quality is their pride and
boast, and justly so; but it is unfortunately antagonistic to the existence of
an imaginative literature, and we must look to them more for eminence in

works on history and philosophy than in those which require imagination or
creative power.

Art.

These remarks apply with more than double force to the Fine Arts than to
verbal literature. In the first place a people possessing such a power of
phonetic utterance never could look on a picture or statue as more than a
mere subsidiary illustration of the written text. A painting may represent
vividly one view of what took place at one moment of time, but a written
narrative can deal with all the circumstances and link it to its antecedents
and effects. A statue of a man cannot tell one-tenth of what a short
biography will make plain: and an ideal statue or ideal painting may be a
pretty Celtic plaything, but it is not what Aryans hanker after.
With Architecture the case is even worse. Convenience is the first thing
which the practical common sense of the Aryan seeks, and then to gain
what he desires by the readiest and the easiest means. This done, why
should he do more? If, induced by a desire to emulate others, he has to
make his building ornamental, he is willing to copy what experience has
proved to be successful in former works, willing to spend his money and to
submit to some inconvenience; but in his heart he thinks it useless, and he
neither will waste his time in thinking on the subject, nor apply those
energies of his mind to its elaboration, without which nothing great or good
was ever done in Art.
In addition to this, the immaterial nature of their faith has always
deprived the Aryan races of the principal incentive to architectural
magnificence.[20] The Turanian and Celtic races always have the most
implicit faith in ceremonial worship and in the necessity of architectural
splendour as its indispensable accompaniment. On the other hand, the more
practical Aryan can never be brought to understand that prayer is either
more sincere or is more acceptable in one form of house than in any other.
He does not feel that virtue can be increased or vice exterminated by the
number of bricks or stones that may be heaped on one another, or the form
in which they may be placed; nor will his conception of the Deity admit of
supposing that He can be propitiated by palaces or halls erected in honour

of Him, or that a building in the Middle Pointed Gothic is more acceptable
than one in the Classic or any other style.
This want of faith may be reasonable, but it is fatal to poetry in Art, and,
it is feared, will prevent the Aryans from attaining more excellence in
Architectural Art at the present time than they have done in former ages.
It is also true that the people are singularly deficient in their appreciation
of colours. Not that actual colour-blindness is more common with them than
with other races, but the harmony of tints is unknown to them. Some may
learn, but none feel it; it is a matter of memory and an exercise of intellect,
but no more. So, too, with form. Other—even savage—races cannot go
wrong in this respect. If the Aryan is successful in art, it is generally in
consequence of education, not from feeling; and, like all that is not innate in
man, it yields only a secondary gratification, and fails to impress his brother
man, or to be a real work of Art.
From these causes the ancient Aryans never erected a single building in
India when they were pure, nor in that part of India which they colonised
even after their blood became mixed; and we do not now know what their
style was or is, though the whole of that part of the peninsula occupied by
the Turanians, or to which their influence ever extended, is, and always
was, covered by buildings, vast in extent and wonderful from their
elaboration. This, probably, also is the true cause of the decline of
Architecture and other arts in Europe and in the rest of the modern world.
Wherever the Aryans appear Art flies before them, and where their
influence extends utilitarian practical common sense is assumed to be all
that man should aim at. It may be so, but it is sad to think that beauty cannot
be combined with sense.
Music alone, as being the most phonetic of the fine arts, has received
among the Aryans a degree of culture denied to the others; but even here the
tendency has been rather to develop scientific excellence than to appeal to
the responsive chords of the human heart. Notwithstanding this, its power is
more felt and greater excellence is attained in this science than in any other.
It also has escaped the slovenly process of copying, with which the
unartistic mind of the Aryans has been content to fancy it was creating Art
in other branches.
If, however, these races have been so deficient in the fine arts, they have
been as excellent in all the useful ones. Agriculture, manufactures,

commerce, ship-building, and road-making, all that tends to accumulate
wealth or to advance material prosperity, has been developed to an extent as
great as it is unprecedented, and promises to produce results which as yet
can only be dimly guessed at. A great, and, so far as we can see, an
inevitable revolution, is pervading the whole world through the devotion of
the Aryan races to these arts. We have no reason for supposing it will be
otherwise than beneficial, however much we may feel inclined to regret that
the beautiful could not be allowed to share a little of that worship so
lavishly bestowed on the useful.

Sciences.

It follows, as a matter of course, that, with minds so constituted, the
Aryans should have cultivated science with earnestness and success. The
only beauty they, in fact, appreciated was the beauty of scientific truth; the
only harmony they ever really felt was that of the laws of nature; and the
only art they ever cared to cultivate was that which grouped these truths and
their harmonies into forms which enabled them to be easily grasped and
appreciated. Mathematics always had especial charms to the Aryan mind;
and, more even than this, astronomy was always captivating. So, also, were
the mechanical, and so, too, the natural sciences. It is to the Aryans that
Induction owes its birth, and they probably alone have the patience and the
sobriety to work it to its legitimate conclusions.
The true mission of the Aryan races appears to be to pervade the world
with the useful and industrial arts, and so tend to reproduce that unity which
has long been lost, to raise man, not by magnifying his individual
cleverness, but by accumulating a knowledge of the works of God, so
tending to make him a greater and wiser, and at the same time a humbler
and a more religious servant of his Creator.

CONCLUSION.

When Auguste Comte proposed that classification which made the fortune
of his philosophy,—when he said that all mankind passed through the
theological state in childhood, the metaphysical in youth, and the

philosophical or positive in manhood,—and ventured to extend this
discovery to nations, he had a glimpse, as others have had before him, of
the beauty of the great harmony which pervades all created things. But he
had not philosophy enough to see that the one great law is so vast and so
remote, that no human intellect can grasp it, and that it is only the little
fragments of that great scheme which are found everywhere which man is
permitted to understand.
Had he known as much of ethnographical as he did of mathematical
science, he would have perceived that there is no warrant for this daring
generalisation; but that nations, in the states which he calls the theological,
the metaphysical, and the philosophical, exist now and coexisted through all
the ages of the world to which our historical knowledge extends.
What the Egyptians were when they first appeared on the scene they
were when they perished under the Greek and Roman sway;—what the
Chinese always were they now are;—the Jews and Arabs are unchanged to
this day;—the Celts are as daringly speculative and as blindly superstitious
now as we always found them;—and the Aryans of the Vedas or of Tacitus
were very much the same sober, reasoning, unimaginative, and unartistic
people as they are at this hour. Progress among men, as among the animals,
seems to be achieved not so much by advances made within the limits of
the group, as by the supercession of the less finely organised beings by
those of a higher class;—and this, so far as our knowledge extends, is
accomplished neither by successive creations, nor by the gradual
development of one species out of another, but by the successive prominent
appearances of previously developed, though partially dormant creations.

Ethnographers have already worked out this problem to a great extent,
and arrived at a very considerable degree of certainty, through the
researches of patient linguistic investigators. But language is in itself too
impalpable ever to give the science that tangible, local reality which is
necessary to its success; and it is here that Archæology comes so
opportunely to its aid. What men dug or built remains where it was first
placed, and probably retains the first impressions it received: and so fixes
the era and standing of those who called it into existence; so that even those
who cannot appreciate the evidence derived from grammar or from words,
may generally see at a glance what the facts of the case really are.

It is even more important that such a science as Ethnology should have
two or more methods of investigation at its command. Certainty can hardly
ever be attained by only one process, unless checked and elucidated by
others, and nothing can therefore be more fortunate than the possession of
so important a sister science as that of Archæology to aid in the search after
scientific truth.
If Ethnology may thus be so largely indebted to Archæology, the
converse is also true; and she may pay back the debt with interest. As
Archæology and Architecture have hitherto been studied, they, but more
especially the latter, have been little more than a dry record of facts and
measurements, interesting to the antiquary, to the professional architect, or
to the tourist, who finds it necessary to get up a certain amount of
knowledge on the subject; but the utmost that has hitherto been sought to be
attained is a certain knowledge of the forms of the art, while the study of it,
as that of one of the most important and most instructive of the sciences
connected with the history of man, has been as a rule neglected.
Without this the study of Architecture is a mere record of bricks and
stones, and of the modes in which they were heaped together for man’s use.
Considered in the light of an historical record, it acquires not only the
dignity of a science, but especial interest as being one of those sciences
which are most closely connected with man’s interests and feelings, and the
one which more distinctly expresses and more clearly records what man did
and felt in previous ages, than any other study we are acquainted with.
From this point of view, not only every tomb and every temple, but even
the rude monoliths and mounds of savages, acquire a dignity and interest to
which they have otherwise no title; and man’s works become not only
man’s most imperishable record, but one of the best means we possess of
studying his history, or of understanding his nature or his aspirations.
Rightly understood, Archæology is as useful as any other branch of
science or of art, in enabling us to catch such glimpses as are vouchsafed to
man of the great laws that govern all things; and the knowledge that this
class of man’s works is guided and governed by those very laws, and not by
the chance efforts of unmeaning minds, elevates the study of it to as high a
position as that of any other branch of human knowledge.

HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE.

PART I.—ANCIENT ARCHITECTURE.

INTRODUCTORY.

So long as the geographer confines himself to mapping out the different
countries of the world, or smaller portions of the earth’s surface, he finds no
difficulty in making a projection which shall correctly represent the exact
relative position of all the various features of the land or sea. But when he
attempts to portray a continent, some distortion necessarily results; and
when he undertakes a hemisphere, both distortion and exaggeration become
inevitable. It has consequently been found necessary to resort to some
conventional means of portraying the larger surfaces of the globe. These
avowedly do not represent correctly the forms of the countries portrayed,
but they enable the geographer to ascertain what their distances or relative
positions are by the application of certain rules and formulæ of no great
complexity.
The same thing is true of history. So long as the narrative is confined to
individual countries or provinces, it may be perfectly consecutive and
uninterrupted; but when two or three nations are grouped together, frequent
interruptions and recapitulations become necessary; and when universal
history is attempted, it seems impossible to arrange the narrative so as to
prevent these from assuming very considerable importance. The utmost that
can be done is to devise some scheme which shall prevent the repetition
from leading to tediousness, and enable the student to follow the thread of
any portion of the narrative without confusion or the assumption of any
special previous knowledge on his part.
Bearing these difficulties in mind, it will probably be found convenient to
divide the whole history of Architecture into four great divisions or parts.

The first, which may be called “Ancient or Heathen Art,” to comprehend
all those styles which prevailed in the old world from the dawn of history in
Egypt till the disruption of the Roman Empire by the removal of the capital
from Rome to Constantinople in the 4th century.
The second to be called either “Mediæval,” or more properly “Christian
Art.” This again subdivides itself into three easily-understood divisions. 1.
The Byzantine or Eastern Christian style; 2. The Romanesque or
transitional style which prevailed between the Roman and the Gothic styles;
and 3. The Gothic or western Christian style. The Byzantine style comes
first because its development was so rapid that already in the 6th century it
had reached its culminating period, and throughout the Middle Ages it
exercised considerable influence in various parts of Italy and France; an
influence the extent of which it is only possible to follow after its study. It is
difficult, for instance, to understand the churches in Ravenna or St. Mark’s
in Venice, or the churches at Périgueux, and in the Charente, until the
churches of Sta. Sophia and of St. Sergius, Constantinople, and of St.
Demetrius, Thessalonica, have been studied; and although it is advisable
when describing the style to carry it through its later developments in
Greece, in Russia, and in the East, these variations and developments are
not of a nature to distract the reader or cause him to lose sight of the leading
characteristics of the style. There is some difficulty in knowing where to
draw the line between the Romanesque and the Gothic style; as generally
accepted now, the term Romanesque includes all the round-arched Gothic
styles, and although many of the leading principles of Gothic work are to be
found entering into buildings constructed prior to the introduction of the
pointed arch into transverse and diagonal ribbed arch vaulting, it was this
latter which led to the great development of the Gothic style in France,
England, and elsewhere in the 12th and 13th centuries.
The third great division of the subject I would suggest might
conveniently be denominated “Pagan.”[21] It would comprise all those minor
miscellaneous styles not included in the two previous divisions.
Commencing with the Saracenic, it would include the Buddhist, Hindu, and
Chinese styles, the Mexican and Peruvian, and lastly that mysterious group
which for want of a better name I have elsewhere designated as “Rude
Stone Monuments.”[22] No very consecutive arrangement can be formed for
these styles. They generally have little connection with each other, and are
so much less important than the others that their mode of treatment is of far

less consequence. Nor is it necessary to attempt any exact classification of
these at present, as, owing to the convenience of publication, it has been
determined to form the Indian and allied Eastern styles into a separate
volume, which will include not only the Buddhist and Hindu styles, but the
Indian Saracenic, which, in a strictly logical arrangement, ought to be
classified with the western style bearing the same name.
The styles of the New world, having as yet no acknowledged connection
with those of the Old, may be for the present treated of anywhere.
The fourth and last great division, forming the fourth volume of the
present work, is that of the “Modern or Copying Styles of Architecture,”
meaning thereby those which are the products of the renaissance of the
classical styles that marked the epoch of the cinquecento period. These have
since that time prevailed generally in Europe to the present day, and are
now making the tour of the world. Within the limits of the present century it
is true that the copying of the classical styles to some extent were
superseded by a more servile imitation of those of mediæval art. The forms
consequently changed, but the principles remained the same.
It would of course be easy to point out minor objections to this or to any
scheme, but on the whole it will be found to meet the exigencies of the case
as we now know it, as well or perhaps better than any other. The greatest
difficulty in carrying it out is to ascertain how far the geographical
arrangement should be made to supersede the chronological and
ethnographical. Whether, for instance, Italy should be considered as a
whole, or if the buildings of the eastern coast should not be described as
belonging to the Byzantine, and those of the western coast to the Gothic
kingdom? Whether the description of the Temple at Jerusalem should stop
short with the rebuilding by Zorobabel, or be continued till its final
completion under Herod? If the former course is pursued, we cut in two a
perfectly consecutive narrative; if the latter, we get far in advance of our
chronological sequence.
In both of these instances, as in many others, it is a choice of difficulties,
and where frequently the least strictly logical mode of proceeding may be
found the most convenient.
After all, the real difficulty lies not so much in arranging the materials as
in weighing the relative importance to be assigned to each division. In
wandering over so vast a field it is difficult to prevent personal predilection

from interfering with purely logical criticism. Although architecture is the
most mechanical of the fine arts, and consequently the most amenable to
scientific treatment, still as a fine art it must be felt to be appreciated, and
when the feelings come into play the reason is sometimes in danger.
Though strict impartiality has been aimed at in assigning the true limits to
each of the divisions above pointed out, few probably will be of the same
opinion as to the degree of success which has been achieved in the attempt.

OUTLINE OF EGYPTIAN CHRONOLOGY.
ACCORDING TO MANETHO AND THE MONUMENTS.

OLD KINGDOM OF PYRAMID BUILDERS.
Years. B.C.
Accession of Menes,
1st dynasty Thinite 252 3906
1st king.
2nd dynasty Thinite 302
3rd dynasty Memphite 214 Ten dynasties of
kings, reigning
4th dynasty Memphite 284 sometimes
contemporaneously in
5th dynasty Elephantine 248
Upper and in Lower
6th dynasty Memphite 203 Egypt; at other times
both divisions were
7th dynasty Memphite 70 days? united under one
king.
8th dynasty Memphite 146
The total duration of
9th dynasty Heracleapolite 100 ? their reigns, as nearly
as can be estimated,
10th dynasty Heracleapolite 185 was 1335 years.
FIRST THEBAN KINGDOM.
11th dynasty Thebans 43 Commenced 2571
over Upper, 188 over
12th dynasty Thebans 246
Lower Egypt.

SHEPHERD INVASION. 2340
13th dynasty Diospolites 453 Five dynasties of
Shepherd or native
14th dynasty Xoite 484 kings reigning or
existing
15th dynasty Shepherds 284 contemporaneously in
four series in
16th dynasty Hellenes 518 different parts of
Egypt during 511
17th dynasty Shepherds 151 years.
435
GREAT THEBAN KINGDOM.
18th dynasty Theban 393 Over all Egypt 1829
19th dynasty Theban 194 1436
Exode of Jews, 1312.
20th dynasty Theban 135 1242
21st dynasty Tanite 130 1107
22nd dynasty Bubastite 120 977
Temple of Jerusalem
plundered, 972.
23rd dynasty Tanite 89 857
24th dynasty Saïte 44 768
25th dynasty Ethiopian 44 724
26th dynasty Saïte 155 680
Persian Invasion under Cambyses 526 [23]

BOOK I.

EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

In any consecutive narrative of the architectural undertakings of mankind
the description of what was done in Egypt necessarily commences the
series, not only because the records of authentic history are found in the
Valley of the Nile long before the traditions of other nations had assumed
anything like tangible consistency, but because, from the earliest dawn
down to the time when Christianity struck down the old idolatry, the
inhabitants of that mysterious land were essentially and pre-eminently a
building race. Were it not for this we should be left with the dry bones of
the skeleton of her history, which is all that is left us of the dynasties of
Manetho; or with the fables in which ignorant and credulous European
travellers expressed their wonder at a civilisation they could not
comprehend.
As the case now stands, the monuments of Egypt give life and reality to
their whole history. It is impossible for any educated man capable of
judging of the value of evidence to wander among the Pyramids and tombs
of Memphis, the Temples of Thebes, or the vast structures erected by the
Ptolemys or Cæsars, and not to feel that he has before him a chapter of
history more authentic than we possess of any nation at all approaching it in
antiquity, and a picture of men and manners more vivid and more ample
than remains to us of any other people who have passed away.
As we wander among the tombs or temples of Egypt we see the very
chisel-marks of the mason, and the actual colours of the painter which were
ordered by a Khufu, or a Rameses, and we stand face to face with works the
progress of which they watched, and which they designed in order to
convey to posterity what their thoughts and feelings were, and what they
desired to record for the instruction of future generations. All is there now,

and all who care may learn what these old kings intended should be known
by their remotest posterity.
Immense progress has been made in unravelling the intricacies of
Egyptian history since the time when Champollion, profiting by the
discovery of Young, first translated the hieroglyphical inscriptions that
cover the walls of Egyptian buildings. Of late years it has been too
frequently assumed that his works, with those of Rosellini, of Wilkinson,
and Lepsius, and the numerous other authors who have applied themselves
to Egyptology, had told us all we are ever likely to know of her history. In
so far as the epochs of the great Pharaonic dynasties of Thebes are
concerned this may be partially true, but it is only since M. Mariette
undertook the systematic exploration of the great Necropolis of Memphis
that we have been enabled to realise the importance of the older dynasties,
and become aware of the completeness of the records they have left behind
them. Much as we have learned during the last fifty years, the recent
explorations of Maspero, W. M. Flinders Petrie and others have taught us
that the soil of Egypt is not half exhausted yet; and every day our
knowledge is assuming a consistency and completeness as satisfactory as it
is wonderful.
Although there are still minor differences of opinion with regard to the
details of Egyptian chronology, still the divergences between the various
systems proposed are gradually narrowing in extent. The sequence of events
is certain, and accepted by all. The initial date, and the adjustments
depending on it, are alone in dispute. The truth is that every subsequent step
in the investigation has tended more and more to prove the correctness of
the data furnished by the lists of Manetho, and the only important question
is, “what is Manetho?” His work is lost. The only real extracts we have
from the original are those in ‘Josephus contra Apion.’ The lists in Eusebius
and Syncellus or Africanus have avowedly been adjusted to suit
preconceived theories of Biblical chronology; but on the whole a great
preponderance of evidence seems in favour of assuming that he really
intended to fix the year 3906 as the initial year of the reign of Menes,[24] or
some year within a very short distance of that date. Some years ago this
would have seemed to suffice, but so many new monuments have been
disinterred of late, so many new names of kings added to our lists, that the
tendency is now rather to extend than to contract this limit of duration.

Be this as it may, what we really do know absolutely is that there was an
old kingdom of pyramid-builders, comprising the first ten dynasties of
Manetho, who reigned at Memphis. These, after a period of decadence,
were superseded by kings of a different race coming from the south; and
that these, after a short period of glory, were conquered by an Asiatic race
of hated Shepherd kings.
After five centuries of foreign domination, the Shepherds in their turn
were driven out, and the new kingdom founded. This, after witnessing the
glories of the 18th and 19th dynasties, declined during the next seven
dynasties till they were struck down by the Persian Cambyses.
A third period of architectural magnificence arose with the Ptolemys, and
was continued by the Cæsars on nearly the same scale of magnificence as
the second kingdom; but wanting its exuberant nationality, and far below
the quiet grandeur of the earlier epoch.
In counting backwards the dates of these dynasties, the first authentic
synchronism we meet with is that of Shishak, the first king of the 22nd
dynasty, contemporary with Rehoboam, about 970 B.C.
The next is the Exode of the Jews, which took place 1312 B.C., under the
reign of Meneptah II., the fourth king of the 19th dynasty of Manetho.
Many would place it earlier, but none probably would bring that event
down to a more modern date.
From this date Josephus tells us that Manetho counted 518 years to the
expulsion of the Shepherds, and 511 for the duration of their sojourn in
Egypt,[25] we thus get back to 2340 for the first year of Salatis. There then
remain only fifteen centuries and a half, in which we have to arrange the
two great Theban dynasties (the 11th and 12th), which reigned for more
than two centuries over the whole of Egypt; while the 12th seems to have
extended some distance into the period occupied by the Shepherds. We are
thus left with little more than 1300 years over which to spread the ten first
dynasties, notwithstanding that some 60 or 70 of their royal sepulchral
pyramids still adorn the banks of the Nile; and we have many names to
which no tombs can be attached, and many pyramids may have perished
during the 5000 years which have elapsed since the greater number of them
were erected.
Long as these periods may to some appear, they are certainly the shortest
that any one familiar with the recent progress of Egyptian research would

be willing to assign to them. But in whatever light they may be viewed,
they sink into utter insignificance when compared with the periods that
must have elapsed before Egypt could have reached that stage of
civilisation in which we find her when her existence first dawns upon us. If
one point in Egyptian history is proved with more certainty than another, it
is that the great Pyramids of Gizeh were erected by the kings of the 4th
dynasty: and it seems impossible to find room for the now ascertained facts
of Egyptian chronology, unless we place their erection between 3000 and
3500 years before the Christian era.
No one can possibly examine the interior of the Great Pyramid without
being struck with astonishment at the wonderful mechanical skill displayed
in its construction. The immense blocks of granite brought from Syene—a
distance of 500 miles—polished like glass, and so fitted that the joints can
hardly be detected. Nothing can be more wonderful than the extraordinary
amount of knowledge displayed in the construction of the discharging
chambers over the roof of the principal apartment, in the alignment of the
sloping galleries, in the provision of ventilating shafts, and in all the
wonderful contrivances of the structure. All these, too, are carried out with
such precision, that, notwithstanding the immense superincumbent weight,
no settlement in any part can be detected to the extent of an appreciable
fraction of an inch. Nothing more perfect, mechanically, has ever been
erected since that time; and we ask ourselves in vain, how long it must have
taken before men acquired such experience and such skill, or were so
perfectly organised, as to contemplate and complete such undertakings.
Around the base of the pyramid are found numerous structural tombs,
whose walls bear the cartouche of the same king—Khufu—whose name
was found by Colonel Howard Vyse in one of the previously unopened
chambers of the Great Pyramid.[26] These are adorned with paintings so
numerous and so complete, as to enable us to realise with singular
completeness the state of Egyptian society at that early period.
On their walls the owner of the tomb is usually represented seated,
offering first fruits on a simple table-altar to an unseen god. He is generally
accompanied by his wife, and surrounded by his stewards and servants, who
enumerate his wealth in horned cattle, in asses, in sheep and goats, in geese
and ducks. In other pictures some are ploughing and sowing, some reaping
or thrashing out the corn, while others are tending his tame monkeys or

cranes, and other domesticated pets. Music and dancing add to the circle of
domestic enjoyments, and fowling and fishing occupy his days of leisure.
No sign of soldiers or of warlike strife appears in any of these pictures; no
arms, no chariots or horses. No camels suggest foreign travel. Everything
there represented speaks of peace at home and abroad,[27] of agricultural
wealth and consequent content. In all these pictures the men are represented
with an ethnic and artistic truth that enables us easily to recognise their race
and station. The animals are not only easily distinguishable, but the
characteristic peculiarities of each species are seized with a power of
generalisation seldom if ever surpassed; and the hieroglyphic system which
forms the legend and explains the whole, was as complete and perfect then
as at any future period.
More striking than even the paintings are the portrait-statues which have
recently been discovered in the secret recesses of these tombs; nothing more
wonderfully truthful and realistic has been done since that time, till the
invention of photography, and even that can hardly represent a man with
such unflattering truthfulness as these old coloured terra-cotta portraits of
the sleek rich men of the pyramid period.
Wonderful as all this maturity of art may be when found at so early a
period, the problem becomes still more perplexing when we again ask
ourselves how long a people must have lived and recorded their experience
before they came to realise and aspire to an eternity such as the building of
these pyramids shows that they sacrificed everything to attain. One of their
great aims was to preserve the body intact for 3000 years, in order that the
soul might again be united with it when the day of judgment arrived. But
what taught them to contemplate such periods of time with confidence, and,
stranger still, how did they learn to realise so daring an aspiration?
Nor is our wonder less when we ask ourselves how it happened that such
a people became so thoroughly organised at that early age as to be willing
to undertake the greatest architectural works the world has since seen in
honour of one man from among themselves? A king without an army, and
with no claim, so far as we can see, to such an honour beyond the common
consent of all, which could hardly have been obtained except by the title of
long inherited services acknowledged by the community at large.
It would be difficult to find any other example which so fully illustrates
the value of architecture as a mode of writing history as this. It is possible

there may have been nations as old and as early civilised as the Egyptians:
but they were not builders, and their memory is lost. It is to their
architecture alone that we owe the preservation of what we know of this old
people. And it is the knowledge so obtained that adds such interest to the
study of their art.

In the present state of our knowledge it may seem an idle speculation to
suggest that the Egyptian and Chinese are two fragments of one great
primordial race, widely separated now by the irruption of other Turanian
and Aryan races between them; but this at least is certain, that in manners
and customs, in arts and polity, in religion and civilisation, these two
peoples more closely resemble one another than any other two nations
which have existed since, even when avowedly of similar race and living in
proximity to one another.
At the earliest period at which Chinese history opens upon us, we find
the same amount of civilisation maintaining itself utterly unprogressively to
the present day. The same peaceful industry and agricultural wealth
accompanied by the same outwardly pleasing domestic relations and
apparent content. The same exceptional mode of writing. The same want of
power to assimilate with surrounding nations. Both hating war, but
reverencing their kings, and counting their chronology by dynasties exactly
as the Egyptians have always done. Their religions seem wonderfully alike,
and both are characterised by the same fearlessness of death, and the same
calm enjoyment in the contemplation of its advent.[28]
In fact there is no peculiarity in the old kingdom of Egypt that has not its
counterpart in China at the present day, though more or less modified,
perhaps, by local circumstances; and there is nothing in the older system
which we cannot understand by using proper illustrations, derived from
what we see passing under our immediate observation in the far East. The
great lesson we learn from the study of the history of China as bearing on
that of Egypt is, that all idea of the impossibility of the recorded events in
the latter country is taken away by reference to the other. Neither the
duration of the Egyptian dynasties, nor the early perfection of her
civilisation, or its strange persistency, can be objected to as improbable.
What we know has happened in Asia in modern times may certainly have
taken place in Africa, though at an earlier period.

CHAPTER II.

THE PYRAMIDS AND CONTEMPORARY MONUMENTS.

Leaving these speculations to be developed more fully in the sequel, let us
now turn to the pyramids—the oldest, largest, and most mysterious of all
the monuments of man’s art now existing. All those in Egypt are situated on
the left bank of the Nile, just beyond the cultivated ground, and on the edge
of the desert, and all the principal examples within what may fairly be
called the Necropolis of Memphis. Sixty or seventy of these have been
discovered and explored, all which appear to be royal sepulchres. This
alone, if true would suffice to justify us in assigning a duration of 1000
years at least to the dynasties of the pyramid builders, and this is about the
date we acquire from other sources.
The three great pyramids of Gizeh are the most remarkable and the best
known of all those of Egypt. Of these the first, erected by Cheops, or, as he
is now more correctly named, Khufu, is the largest; but the next, by
Chephren (Khafra), his successor, is scarcely inferior in dimensions; the
third, that of Mycerinus (Menkaura), is very much smaller, but excelled the
two others in this, that it had a coating of beautiful red granite from Syene,
while the other two were revêted only with the beautiful limestone of the
country. Part of this coating still remains near the top of the second; and
Colonel Vyse[29] was fortunate enough to discover some of the coping-
stones of the Great Pyramid buried in the rubbish at its base. These are
sufficient to indicate the nature and extent of the whole, and to show that it
was commenced from the bottom and carried upwards; not at the top, as it
has sometimes been thoughtlessly asserted.[30]

No. 7. Section of Great Pyramid.

Since Colonel Vyse’s discovery, however, further casing-stones have
been found in situ by Mr. Flinders Petrie, whose measurements, taken in
1880-82, and published in the following year,[31] are the most accurate yet
made. The dimensions hitherto given have shown a difference of as much
as eighteen inches in the length of the sides, which, if the pyramid had been
set out on a perfectly clear level ground, would have detracted from the
perfection which has been claimed for its setting out. This difference,
however, it appears now, was due to the fact that the various observers had
measured from angle to angle of the corner sockets, and had “assumed that
the faces of the stones placed in them rose up vertically from the edge of the
bottom until they reached the pavement (whatever level that might be),
from which the sloping face started upwards.” This, however, was not the
case; the sloping sides of the Pyramid continued down to the rock surface,
and the base was eventually partially covered over by a level pavement or
platform;[32] the parts covered over varying in extent according to the depth
they were carried down. Mr. Petrie utilized the angle sockets for the
purpose of obtaining the true diagonals of the casing, and having computed
a square which passed through the points of casing found on each side, and

having also its corners lying on the diagonals of the sockets, obtained the
dimensions of the original base of the Great Pyramid casing on the artificial
platform or pavement, which was as follows:—
Sq. In. Ft. In.

North side 9069·4 or 755 9·4
East side 9067·7 or 755 7·7
South side 9069·5 or 755 8·6
West side 9068·6 or 755 8·8
The mean being 755 ft. 8·8 in., and the extreme difference being 1·7 of an
inch only.
The actual height of the Great Pyramid from level of platform was 481 ft.
4 in., and the angle of casing 51° 52ʺ.
In the Second Pyramid, the bottom corner of casing (which was in
granite) had a vertical base 10 or 12 in. high, against which the pavement
was laid; and the following were the dimensions obtained:—
Sq. In. Ft. In.

North side 8471·9 or 705 11·9
East side 8475·2 or 706 3·2
South side 8476·9 or 706 4·9
West side 8475·5 or 706 3·5
The mean being 706 ft. 2·9 in., and the extreme difference in the length of
side 5 in.
The height was 472 ft., and the angle of casing 53° 10ʹ.
The Third Pyramid was never quite finished, and there is some difficulty
in determining the exact level of platform. The mean length of the sides was
calculated by Mr. Petrie as 346 ft. 1·6 in., its height 215 ft., and the angle of
its casing 51° 10ʹ.
From this it will be seen that the area of the Great Pyramid (more than 13
acres) is more than twice the extent of that of St. Peter’s at Rome, or of any
other building in the world.[33] Its height is equal to the highest spire of any
cathedral in Europe; for, though it has been attempted to erect higher

buildings, in no instance has this yet been successfully achieved. Even the
Third Pyramid covers more ground than any Gothic cathedral, and the mass
of materials it contains far surpasses that of any erection we possess in
Europe.
All the pyramids (with one exception) face exactly north, and have their
entrance on that side—a circumstance the more remarkable, as the later
builders of Thebes appear to have had no notion of orientation, but to have
placed their buildings and tombs so as to avoid regularity, and facing in
every conceivable direction. Instead of the entrances to the pyramids being
level, they all slope downwards—generally at angles of about 26° to the
horizon—a circumstance which has led to an infinity of speculation, as to
whether they were not observatories, and meant for the observation of the
pole-star, &c.[34] All these theories, however, have failed, for a variety of
reasons it is needless now to discuss; but among others it may be mentioned
that the angles are not the same in any two pyramids, though erected within
a few years of one another, and in the twenty which were measured by
Colonel Vyse they vary from 22° 35ʹ to 34° 5ʹ. The angle of the inclination
of the side of the pyramid to the horizon is more constant, varying only
from 51° 10ʹ to 52° 32ʹ, and in the Gizeh pyramid it would appear that the
angle of the passage was intended to have been about one-half of this.
Mr. Petrie gives a synopsis of the various theories connected with the
Great Pyramid, which applies not only to the outside form but to the several
chambers and passages in the interior. “There are three great lines of
theory,” he says,[35] “throughout the Pyramid, each of which must stand or
fall as a whole, they are scarcely contradictory, and may almost subsist
together;” these are (1) the Egyptian cubit (20·62 in.) theory; (2) the π
proportion or radius and circumference theory; (3) the theory of areas,
squares of lengths and diagonals.
Of the two first, and applying these only to the exterior by the cubit
theory, the outside form of pyramid is 280 cubits high and 440 cubits length
of side, or 7 in height to 11 of width. This is confirmed by the π theory,
where we get the very common proportion that the height is to the
circumference as the radius is to the circumference of a circle inscribed
within its base; thus taking the mean height of 481 ft. 4 in., we have 481·33
× 2 × 3·1416 = 3024, whilst the side 755·75 × 4 = 3023, so near a

coincidence that it can hardly be accidental, and if it was intended, all the
other external proportions follow as a matter of course.
Even if this theory should not be accepted as the true one, it has at least
the merit of being nearer the truth than any other yet proposed. I confess it
appears to me so likely that I would hardly care to go further, especially as
all the astronomical theories have signally failed, and it seems as if it were
only to some numerical fancy that we must look for a solution of the puzzle.
Be this as it may, the small residuum we get from all these pyramid
discussions is, that they were built by the kings of the early dynasties of the
old kingdom of Egypt as their tombs. The leading idea that governed their
forms was that of durability—a quasi-eternity of duration is what they
aimed at. The entrances were meant to be concealed, and the angle of the
passages was the limit of rest at which heavy bodies could be moved while
obtaining the necessary strength where they opened at the outside, and the
necessary difficulty for protection inside, without trenching on
impossibility. By concealment of the entrance, the difficulties of the
passages, and the complicated but most ingenious arrangement of
portcullises, these ancient kings hoped to be allowed to rest in undisturbed
security for at least 3000 years. Perhaps they were successful, though their
tombs have since been so shamefully profaned.
To the principal dimensions of the Great Pyramid given above, it may be
added that the entrance is 55 ft. 8 in. above the base, on the 19th course,
which is deeper than the 11 to 14 courses above and below; at present there
remain 203 courses, to which must be added 12 to 14 missing. Their
average height is nearly 2 ft. 6 in., but they diminish in height—generally
speaking, but not uniformly—towards the top. The summit now consists of
a platform 32 ft. 8 in. square; so that about 27 ft. is wanting, the present
actual height being 454 ft. It contains two chambers above-ground, and one
cut in the rock at a considerable depth below the foundations.
The passages and chambers are worthy of the mass; all are lined with
polished granite; and the ingenuity and pains that have been taken to render
them solid and secure, and to prevent their being crushed by the
superincumbent mass, raise our idea of Egyptian science higher than even
the bulk of the building itself could do.
Fig. 1.

Towards the exterior,
where the pressure is
not great, the roof is
flat, though it is
probable that even
there the weight is
throughout discharged
by 2 stones, sloping up
at a certain angle to
where they meet, as at
the entrance. Towards
the centre of the
pyramid, however, the
passage becomes 28
feet high, the 7 upper
courses of stone
overhanging one
another as shown in the
annexed section (fig.
1), so as to reduce the
bearing of the covering
stone. Nowhere,
however, is this Fig 2.
ingenuity more shown
than in the royal No. 8. Section of King’s Chamber and of Passage
chamber, which in Great Pyramid. Scale 50 ft. to 1 in.
measures 17 ft. 1 in. by
34 ft. 3 in., and 19 ft. in
height. The walls are lined and the roof is formed of splendid slabs of
Syenite, but above the roof 4 successive chambers, as shown in the annexed
section (fig. 2), have been formed, each divided from the other by slabs of
granite, polished on their lower surfaces, but left rough on the upper, and
above these a 5th chamber is formed of 2 sloping blocks to discharge the
weight of the whole. The first of these chambers has long been known; the
upper four were discovered and first entered by Colonel Vyse, and it was in
one of these that he discovered the name of the founder. This was not
engraved as a record, but scribbled in red paint on the stones, apparently as

a quarrymark, or as an address to the king, and accompanied by something
like directions for their position in the building. The interest that attaches to
these inscriptions consists in the certainty of their being contemporary
records, in their proving that Khufu was the founder of the Great Pyramid,
and consequently fixing its relative date beyond all possibility of cavil. This
is the only really virgin discovery in the pyramids, as they have all been
opened either in the time of the Greeks or Romans, or by the Mahometans,
and an unrifled tomb of this age is still a desideratum. Until such is hit upon
we must remain in ignorance of the real mode of sepulture in those days,
and of the purpose of many of the arrangements in these mysterious
buildings.
The portcullises which invariably close the entrances of the sepulchral
chamber in the pyramids are among the most curious and ingenious of the
arrangements of these buildings. Generally they consist of great cubical
masses of granite, measuring 8 or 10 ft. each way, and consequently
weighing 50 or 60 tons, and even more. These were fitted into chambers
prepared during the construction of the building, but raised into the upper
parts, and, being lowered after the body was deposited, closed the entrance
so effectually that in some instances it has been found necessary either to
break them in pieces, or to cut a passage round them, to gain admission to
the chambers. They generally slide in grooves in the wall, to which they fit
exactly, and altogether show a degree of ingenuity and forethought very
remarkable, considering the early age at which they were executed.
In the Second Pyramid one chamber has been discovered partly above-
ground, partly cut in the rock. In the Third the chambers are numerous, all
excavated in the rock; and from the tunnels that have been driven by
explorers through the superstructures of these two, it is very doubtful
whether anything is to be found above-ground.[36]
All the old pyramids do not follow the simple outline of those at Gizeh.
That at Dahshur, for instance, rises to half the height, with a slope of 54° to
the horizon, but is finished at the angle of 45°, giving it a very exceptional
appearance. The pyramids of Sakkara and Medum are of the class known as
mastaba pyramids, the term mastaba (Arabic for bench) being given to the
sloping-sided tombs of about 76° angle and from 10 to 20 ft. high.
No. 9.

No. 10. Pyramid of Sakkara. (From
Colonel Vyse’s work.) Scale 100 ft to 1 in.

The annexed plan and section of Sakkara (Woodcut Nos. 9 and 10), both
to the scale of 100 ft. to 1 in., show the peculiar nature of their construction,
which seems to have been cumulative; that is to say, they have been
enlarged in successive periods, the original casing of the earlier portions
having been traced. Mr. Petrie says: “Both of these structures have been
several times finished, each time with a close-jointed polished casing of the
finest white limestone, and then, after each completion, it has been again
enlarged by another coat of rough masonry and another line casing outside.”

These two pyramids are the only two genuine stepped pyramids, all the
others having had an uniform casing on one slope (excepting Dahshur, as
above mentioned). The Pyramid of Sakkara is the only pyramid that does
not face exactly north and south. It is nearly of the same general dimensions
as the Third Pyramid, that of Mycerinus; but its outline, the disposition of
its chambers, and the hieroglyphics found in its interior, all would seem to
point it out as an imitation of the older form of mausolea by some king of a
far more modern date.

Medum.

Mr. Flinders Petrie’s discoveries in 1891 determined the age and the
construction of the Pyramid of Medum,[37] erected by Seneferu, a king of the
third dynasty, being therefore the oldest pyramid known. Its construction
resembles that of the small pyramid of Rikheh and the oblong step pyramid
of Sakkara, that is to say, it is a cumulative mastaba, the primal mastaba
being about 150 ft. square, and from 37 to 45 ft. high. The outer coatings
added were seven in number, and the original mass was carried up and
heightened as the circuit was increased, and lastly an outer casing covered
over all the steps which had resulted during the construction. The average
length of the base was 473 ft. 6 in., the total height being 301 ft. 7 in.
According to Mr. Petrie, the Pyramid of Medum, as those of Sakkara and
Rikheh, were of a transitional form, in which the original mastaba had been
greatly enlarged and subsequently covered over with a casing of pyramidal
outline. “That type once arrived at, there was no need for subsequent kings
to retain the mastaba form internally, and Khufu and his successors laid out
their pyramids of full size at first and built them up at an angle of 51°, and
not at 75°, that which is found in the ordinary mastabas.” Mr. Petrie also
discovered the temple of the pyramid in the middle of its east side, and
almost uninjured. It consisted of a passage entered at the south end of east
front, then a small chamber and a courtyard adjoining the side of the
pyramid, containing two steles and one altar between them.
In the sepulchral pit of Rahotep, near the pyramid, Mr. Petrie found two
arches thrown across a passage to relieve the thrust of the overlapping sides,
which carries the use of that feature back to the 4th dynasty.

Tombs.

Around the Pyramids from Abouraash, north of Gizeh to Medum, south
of Sakkara, a distance of over 15 miles, forming the Necropolis of
Memphis, numberless smaller sepulchres are found, which appear to have
been appropriated to private individuals, as the pyramids were—so far as
we can ascertain—reserved for kings, or, at all events, for persons of royal
blood. These tombs are now known under the term of mastabas, to which
we have already referred. The mastaba is a rectangular building varying in
size from 15 to 150 ft. in width and length, and from 10 to 80 ft. in height.
Their general form is that of a truncated pyramid with an angle of 75° to the
horizon, low, and looking exceedingly like a house with sloping walls, with
only one door leading to the interior, though they may contain several
apartments, and no attempt is made to conceal the entrance. The chambers
consist (1) of reception rooms and (2) of serdabs, which are closed cells
containing the terra-cotta statuettes which represent the Ka’s or doubles of
the deceased. These chambers occupy a part only of the mastaba, the
remainder being solid masonry or brickwork. The body seems to have been
hidden from profanation by being hid in a pit sunk in the rock, the entrance
to which was concealed, and could be approached only through the solid
core of the mastaba.
Unlike the pyramids, the walls are covered with the paintings above
alluded to, and everything in this “eternal dwelling”[38] of the dead is made
to resemble the abodes of the living; as was afterwards the case with the
Etruscans. It is owing to this circumstance that we are able not only to
realise so perfectly the civil life of the Egyptians at this period, but to fix
the dates of the whole series by identifying the names of the kings who built
the pyramids with those on the walls of the tombs that surround them.[39]
Like all early architecture, that of these tombs shows evident symptoms
of having been borrowed from a wooden original. The lintels of the
doorways are generally rounded, and the walls mere square posts, grooved
and jointed together, every part of it being as unlike a stone architecture as
can possibly be conceived. Yet the pyramids themselves, and those tombs
which are found outside them, are generally far removed from the forms
employed in timber structures; and it is only when we find the Egyptians
indulging in decorative art that we trace this more primitive style. There are

two doorways of this class in the British Museum and many in that of
Berlin. One engraved in Lepsius’s work (Woodcut No. 11) gives a fair idea
of this style of decorative art, in the most elaborate form in which we now
know it. It is possible that some of its forms may have been derived from
brick architecture, but the lintel certainly was of wood, and so it may be
suspected were the majority of its features. It certainly is a transitional
form, and though we only find it in stone, none of its peculiarities were
derived from lithic arts. Perhaps one of the best illustrations of the
architectural forms of that day was the sarcophagus of Mycerinus,
unfortunately lost on its way to England. It represented a palace, with all the
peculiarities found on a larger scale in the buildings which surround the
pyramid, and with that peculiar cornice and still more singular roll or
ligature on the angles, most evidently a carpentry form, but which the style
retained to its latest day.

11. Doorway in Tomb at the
Pyramids. (From Lepsius.)

12. Sarcophagus of Mycerinus, found in Third
Pyramid.

In many of these tombs square piers are found supporting the roofs
sometimes, but rarely, with an abacus, and generally without any carved
work, though it is more than probable they were originally painted with
some device, upon which they depended for their ornament. In most
instances they look more like fragments of a wall, of which the intervening
spaces had been cut away, than pillars in the sense in which we usually
understand the word; and in every case in the early ages they must be
looked upon more as utilitarian expedients than as parts of an ornamental
style of architecture.

Temples.

Till recently no temples had been discovered which could with certainty
be ascribed to the age of the pyramid builders; one, however, was excavated
in 1853, from the sand close beside the great Sphinx, with which it was
thought at one time to have been connected. Mr. Petrie, however, found the
remains of a causeway 15 ft. wide and over a quarter of a mile long, leading
to a second temple in front of the pyramid of Khafra; as also the traces of
other temples in front of the Great Pyramid and of that of Menkaura.
Further temples have been discovered at Abouseer, Dahshur and other
pyramids, so that, as Mr. Petrie says, p. 209, “to understand the purpose of
the erection of the Pyramids it should be observed that each has a temple on
the eastern side of it. Of the temples of the second and third Pyramids the

ruins still remain; and of the temple of the Great Pyramid the basalt
pavement and numerous blocks of granite show its site.” “The worship of
the deified king was carried on in the temple, looking toward the Pyramid
which stood on the west of it; just as private individuals worshipped their
ancestors in the family tombs” (already referred to) “looking towards the
false doors[40] which are placed in the west side of the tomb, and which
represent the entrances to the hidden sepulchres.”
The temple of the Sphinx,[41] (or, as it is
now called, the granite temple,) though at
present almost buried, was apparently a
free-standing building, a mass of masonry,
the outer surfaces of which were built in
limestone, and carved with long grooves,
horizontal and vertical, skilfully crossed,
resembling therefore the carved fronts of
many tombs at Sakkara and Gizeh and the
sarcophagus of Mycerinus (Woodcut No.
12). The temple measured 140 ft. in each
direction, and the walls were 40 ft. high. It 13. Plan of Temple near the
was arranged in two storeys, the upper Sphinx.
one being an open court. In the lower
storey were: A, a hall 55 ft. long by 33 ft.
wide and 18 ft. 6 in. high, with two rows of massive granite piers
supporting beams of the same material to carry the stone roof: B, a second
hall into which the first hall opened, and at right angles to it, measuring 81
ft. long by 22 ft. wide and 19 ft. high, with one row of granite piers down
the centre; both of these being lighted by narrow slits just below the granite
roof:[42] C, a side chamber with six loculi, in two levels, each 19 ft. long: D, a
sloping passage lined with granite and oriental alabaster, leading to the
causeway which placed it in communication with the Second Pyramid, and:
E, a hall 60 ft. long by 12 ft. wide and 30 ft. high (rising therefore above the
pavement of the upper court), with a large recess at each end containing a
statue. These recesses were high above doors which led to smaller chambers
also containing statues.
The internal walls were lined with immense blocks of granite from Syene
and of alabaster beautifully polished, but with sloping joints and uneven
beds, a form of masonry not unknown in that age. No sculpture or

inscription of any sort is found on the walls of the temple,[43] or ornament or
symbol in the sanctuary. Statues and tablets of Khafra, the builder of the
Second Pyramid, were found in the well, and this, and the fact that the
causeway extended to the temple in front of his pyramid, shows clearly that
it belonged to his time.[44]

In the present transitional state of our knowledge of the architectural art
of the pyramid builders, it is difficult to form any distinct judgment as to its
merits. The early Egyptians built neither for beauty nor for use, but for
eternity, and to this last they sacrificed every other feeling. In itself nothing
can be less artistic than a pyramid. A tower, either round or square, or of
any other form, and of the same dimensions, would have been far more
imposing, and if of sufficient height—the mass being the same—might
almost have attained sublimity; but a pyramid never looks so large as it is,
and not till you almost touch it can you realise its vast dimensions. This is
owing principally to all its parts sloping away from the eye instead of
boldly challenging observation; but, on the other hand, no form is so stable,
none so capable of resisting the injuries of time or force, and none,
consequently, so well calculated to attain the object for which the pyramids
were erected. As examples of technic art, they are unrivalled among the
works of men, but they rank low if judged by the æsthetic rules of
architectural art.
The same may be said of the tombs around them: they are low and solid,
but possess neither beauty of form nor any architectural feature worthy of
attention or admiration, but they have lasted nearly uninjured from the
remotest antiquity, and thus have attained the object their builders had
principally in view in designing them.
Their temple architecture, on the other hand, may induce us to modify
considerably these opinions. The one described above—which is the only
one I personally have any knowledge of—is perhaps the simplest and least
adorned temple in the world. All its parts are plain—straight and square,
without a single moulding of any sort, but they are perfectly proportioned to
the work they have to do. They are pleasingly and effectively arranged, and
they have all that lithic grandeur which is inherent in large masses of
precious materials.

Such a temple as that near the Sphinx cannot compete either in richness
or magnificence with the great temples of Thebes, with their sculptured
capitals and storied walls, but there is a beauty of repose and an elegance of
simplicity about the older example which goes far to redeem its other
deficiencies, and when we have more examples before us they may rise still
higher in our estimation.
Whatever opinion we may ultimately form regarding their architecture,
there can be little doubt as to the rank to be assigned to their painting and
sculpture. In these two arts the Egyptians early attained a mastery which
they never surpassed. Judged by the rules of classic or of modern art, it
appears formal and conventional to such an extent as to render it difficult
for us now to appreciate its merits. But as a purely Phonetic form of art—as
used merely to enunciate those ideas which we now so much more easily
express by alphabetic writings—it is clear and precise beyond any picture-
writings the world has since seen. Judged by its own rules, it is marvellous
to what perfection the Egyptians had attained at that early period, and if we
look on their minor edifices as mere vehicles for the display of this pictorial
expression, we must modify to some extent the judgment we would pass on
them as mere objects of architectural art.

CHAPTER III.

FIRST THEBAN KINGDOM.

XIth and XIIth DYNASTY OF MANETHO.
B.C. 2528?
Sankhkara reigned 46 years.
Amenemhat reigned 38 years.
Osirtasen reigned 48 years.
Amenemhat III. (Lampares) reigned 8 years.
(Builder of Labyrinth.)
His successors reigned 42 years.
B.C. 2340?

The great culminating period of the old kingdom of Egypt is that belonging
to the 4th and 5th dynasties. Nine-tenths of the monuments of the pyramid-
builders which have come down to our time belong to the five centuries
during which these two dynasties ruled over Egypt (B.C. 3500-3000).
The 6th dynasty was of a southern and more purely African origin. On
the tablets of Apap[45] (Apophis), its most famous monarch, we find the
worship of Khem and other deities of the Theban period wholly unknown to
the pyramid kings. The next four dynasties are of fainéant kings, of whom
we know little, not “Carent quia vate sacro,” but because they were not
builders, and their memory is lost. The 11th and 12th usher in a new state of
affairs. The old Memphite pyramid-building kingdom had passed, with its
peaceful contentment, and had given place to a warlike idolatrous race of
Theban kings, far more purely African, the prototypes of the great

monarchy of the 18th and 19th dynasties, and having no affinity with
anything we know of as existing in Asia in those times.
Their empire lasted apparently for more than 300 years in Upper Egypt;
but for the latter portion of that period they do not seem to have reigned
over the whole country, having been superseded in Lower Egypt by the
invasion of the hated Hyksos, or Shepherd kings, about the year 2300 B.C.,
and by whom they also were finally totally overthrown.
When we turn from the contemplation of the pyramids, and the
monuments contemporary with them, to examine those of the 12th dynasty,
we become at once aware of the change which has taken place. Instead of
the pyramids, all of which are situated on the western side of the Nile, we
have obelisks, which, without a single exception, are found on its eastern
side towards the rising sun, apparently in contradistinction to the valley of
the dead, which was towards the side on which he set. The earliest and one
of the finest of these obelisks is that still standing at Heliopolis, inscribed
with the name of Osirtasen, one of the first and greatest kings of this
dynasty. It is 67 ft. 4 in. in height, without the pyramidion which crowns it,
and is a splendid block of granite, weighing 217 tons. It must have required
immense skill to quarry it, to transport it from Syene, and finally, after
finishing it, to erect it where it now stands and has stood for 4500 years.
We find the sculptures of the same king at Wady Halfah, near the second
cataract, in Nubia; and at Sarabout el Kadem, in the Sinaitic Peninsula. He
also commenced the great temple of Karnac at Thebes, which in the hands
of his successors became the most splendid in Egypt, and perhaps it is not
too much to say the greatest architectural monument in the whole world.
As might be expected, from our knowledge of the fact that the Hyksos
invasion took place so soon after his reign, none of his structural buildings
now remain entire in which we might read the story of his conquests, and
learn to which gods of the Pantheon he especially devoted himself. We must
therefore fall back on Manetho for an account of his “conquering all Asia in
the space of nine years, and Europe as far as Thrace.”[46] While there is
nothing to contradict this statement, there is much that renders it extremely
probable.

The Labyrinth.

It is to this dynasty also that we owe the erection of the Labyrinth, one of
the most remarkable, as well as one of the most mysterious monuments of
Egypt. All Manetho tells us of this is, that Lampares, or Mœris, “built it as a
sepulchre for himself;” and the information we derive from the Greeks on
this subject is so contradictory and so full of the wonderful, that it is
extremely difficult to make out either the plan or the purpose of the
building. As long ago as 1843, the whole site was excavated and thoroughly
explored by the officers of the Prussian expedition under Lepsius; but, like
most of the information obtained by that ill-conditioned party, such data as
have been given are of the most unsatisfactory and fragmentary form. The
position which Lepsius claimed for the Labyrinth has been found by Mr.
Petrie[47] to be incorrect; the remains supposed to be those of the walls and
chambers are of much later date, being only the houses and tombs of the
population which destroyed the great structure. The village thus created was
established on the outer portion of the site when the destruction of the
buildings was first commenced. Mr. Petrie calculates that the Labyrinth was
symmetrical with the pyramid, and had the same axis: that it occupied a site
of about 1000 feet wide by 800 ft. deep; thus covering an area sufficiently
large to accommodate all the Theban temples on the east bank, and in
addition one of the largest on the west bank. The essential difference
between the Labyrinth and all other temples was that it consisted of a series
of eighteen large peristylar courts with sanctuaries and other chambers. Of
these, according to Herodotus, there were six, side by side, facing north; six
others, opposite, facing south, and a wall surrounding the whole. Herodotus,
however, was allowed to see portions only of the Labyrinth, probably those
nearest to the entrance. Beyond this, on the north side, Mr. Petrie suggests
the existence of a third series of peristylar courts (described by Strabo),
with sanctuaries and other chambers, and south of these, halls of columns,
and smaller halls, through which Strabo entered. In the hall of twenty-seven
columns, mentioned by Strabo, Mr. Petrie places the columns in one row to
form a vestibule to the entrances to the courts similar to the temple of
Abydos. The whole disposition of the plan, the style of the courts and their
peristyles must be conjectural, as no remains of blocks of stone or columns
in sufficient preservation have been found on which to base a restoration.
On some architrave blocks were found inscriptions of Amenemhat III. and
Sebekneferu. The last remains were taken away within our own time by the
engineers of the new railway, and apparently with the consent of the

officials of the Boulak Museum, who reported that they had been quarried
from the native rock.

Pyramids.

The Hawara Pyramid, on the north of the Labyrinth, and erected by the
same King Amenemhat III., has been examined by Mr. Petrie and described
by him.[48] As the rock on which it was built was little more than hardened
sand, a pit was excavated, into which a monolithic chamber of granite,
brought from Upper Egypt, and weighing 100 tons, was lowered. The
sarcophagus and two other coffins having been placed in it, the chamber
was covered over with three granite beams, 4 feet thick, one of which was
raised in a hollow chamber, and supported there till after the King’s death
and the deposit of his body in the sarcophagus. Round the granite monolith
were built walls which carried two courses of stone blocks, the lower
horizontal, the upper courses sloping one against the other, as in the Great
Pyramid. The rest of the pyramid was constructed in brick, and to prevent
the brickwork settling down and splitting on the pointed roof-stones, an
arch of five courses of brick, measuring 3 feet deep, was thrown across,
resting on bricks laid in mud between the arch and the stonework. The
brickwork above the arch was laid in sand, and the whole pyramid covered
with a casing of limestone. The size of the pyramid Mr. Petrie calculates to
have been about 334 ft. wide and 191 ft. high.
A second pyramid belonging to this dynasty, and erected by Osirtasen II.,
has also been examined and described by Mr. Petrie.[49] This pyramid
(Illahun) is of peculiar construction, being partly composed of the natural
rock dressed into form to a height of 40 feet, above which rose the built
portion, which was different from that of any other pyramid, being built
with a framing of cross walls. The walls ran right through the diagonals up
to the top of the building, and had offset walls at right angles to the sides,
the walls being of stone in the lower part, and brick above; the filling-in
between the walls was of mud and brick, and the whole pyramid, brick,
stone, and rock, was covered with a casing of limestone.

An Egyptian Town.

14. Plans of Houses, Kahun.

The most remarkable discovery made by Mr. Petrie in the Fayum[50] was
the finding of the plan, more or less complete, of the town or village of
Kahun, which was built for the workmen and overseers of the Illahun
pyramid, and deserted shortly after its completion. The plan would seem to
have been laid out from one design, and consisted: of an acropolis or raised
space, where the house of the chief controller of the works was placed, and
which might have been occupied by the King when he came to inspect the
works: a series of large houses (Woodcut No. 14), arranged very much in
the same way as those of Pompeii, and containing a great number of halls,
courts, and rooms; and many streets of workmen’s dwellings of two or three
rooms each. The walls were all built in crude brick, the rooms being
covered over with roofs formed of beams of wood, on which poles were
placed, and to these bundles of straw and reeds lashed down, the whole
being covered inside and outside with mud. In those rooms, which exceeded
8 or 9 ft. in width, columns of stone or wood were employed to assist in
carrying the roof; such columns being octagonal or with sixteen sides,
fluted or ribbed like the reed or lotus column at Beni-Hasan. The lower
portion of a fluted column in wood was found, existing still in situ on its
base, which shows that description of column to have had a wooden origin.

Tombs.

The most interesting series of monuments of this dynasty which have
come down to our time are the tombs of Beni-Hasan, in Middle Egypt.
They are situated on the eastern side of the Nile, as are also those of Tel-el-
Amarna, Sheykh-Said, Kôm-el-ahman, and others. The character of the
sculptures which adorn their walls approaches that found in the tombs
surrounding the pyramids, but the architecture differs widely. They are all
cheerful-looking halls, open to the light of day, many of them with pillared
porches, and all possessing pretensions to architectural ornament, either
internal or external.

15. Tomb at Beni-Hasan.

One of the most interesting of the tombs has in front of it a portico-in-
antis of two columns, in architecture so like the order afterwards employed
by the Greeks, as to have been frequently described as the Proto-Doric
order.[51] The same class of column is also used internally, supporting a plain
architrave beam, from which spring curvilinear roofs of segmented form,
which there is no doubt are imitations of constructive arch forms.

16. Proto-Doric 17. Reed Pillar
Pillar at Beni- from Beni-Hasan.
Hasan.

18. Lotus pier, Zawyet-el-Mayyitûr. (From
Lepsius.)

There is another form of pillar used at Beni-Hasan at that early age[52]
which is still further removed from stone than even the Proto-Doric. It
imitates a bundle of four reeds or lotus-stalks bound together near the top,
and bulging above the ligature so as to form a capital. Such a pier must
evidently have been originally employed in wooden architecture only, and
the roof which it supports is in this instance of light wooden construction,
having the slight slope requisite in the dry climate of Egypt. In after ages
this form of pillar became a great favourite with the Egyptian architects,
and was employed in all their great monuments, but with a far more
substantial lithic form than we find here, and in conjunction with the hollow
—or, as we should call it, Corinthian—formed capital, of which no example
is found earlier than the 18th dynasty.
These are meagre records, it must be confessed, of so great a kingdom;
but when we come to consider the remoteness of the period, and that the
dynasty was overthrown by the Shepherds, whose rule was of considerable
duration, it is perhaps in vain to expect that much can remain to be
disinterred which would enable us to realise more fully the architectural art
of this age.

SHEPHERDS.

Till very recently our knowledge of the Shepherd kings was almost
entirely derived from what was said of them by Manetho, in the extracts
from his writings so fortunately preserved by Josephus, in his answer to
Apion. Recent explorations have however raised a hope that even their
monuments may be so far recovered as to enable us to realise to some
extent at least who they were and what their aspirations.
Manetho tells us they came from the East, but fearing the then rising
power of the Assyrians, they fortified Avaris as a bulwark against them, and
used it during their sojourn in Egypt to keep up their communications with
their original seat. Recent explorations have enabled M. Mariette to identify
San, Zoan, or Tanis, a well-known site on the Bubastite branch of the Nile,
with this Avaris. And already he has disinterred a sphinx and two seated
statues which certainly belong to the reign of the Shepherd king Apophis.[53]
The character of these differs widely from anything hitherto found in
Egypt. They present a physiognomy strongly marked with an Asiatic type—
an arched nose, rude bushy hair, and great muscular development;
altogether something wholly different from everything else found in Egypt
either before or afterwards.
This is not much, but it is an earnest that more remains to be discovered,
and adds another to the proofs that are daily accumulating, how implicitly
Manetho may be relied upon when we only read him correctly, and how
satisfactory it is to find that every discovery that is made confirms the
conclusions we had hesitatingly been adopting.
It appears from such fragmentary evidence as has hitherto been gleaned
from the monuments, that the Shepherds’ invasion was neither sudden nor
at once completely successful, if indeed it ever was so, for it is certain that
Theban and Xoite dynasties co-existed with the Shepherds during the whole
period of their stay, either from policy, like the protected princes under our
sway in India, or because their conquest was not so complete as to enable
them to suppress the national dynasties altogether.
Like the Tartars in China they seem to have governed the country by
means of the original inhabitants, but for their own purposes; tolerating
their religion and institutions, but ruling by the superior energy of their race
the peace-loving semi-Semitic inhabitants of the Delta, till they were in

their turn overthrown and expelled by the more warlike but more purely
African races of the southern division of the Egyptian valley.

CHAPTER IV.

PHARAONIC KINGDOM.

PRINCIPAL KINGS OF THE GREAT THEBAN PERIOD.

XVIIIth Dynasty. B.C. 1830
Amenhotep I. reigned 25 years.
Thothmes I. reigned 13 years.
Amenhotep II. reigned 20 years.
Hatshepsu (Queen) reigned 21 years.
Thothmes II. reigned 12 years.
Thothmes III. reigned 26 years.
Thothmes IV. reigned 10 years.
Amenhotep III. reigned 21 years.
Interregnum of Sun-worshipping Kings.
Horemheb (Horus) reigned 36 years.
XIXth Dynasty.
Rameses I. reigned 12 years.
Meneptah I. reigned 32 years.
Rameses II. reigned 68 years.
Meneptah II. reigned 5 years.
Exode B.C. 1312
XXth Dynasty.
Rhampsinitus-Rameses reigned 55 years.
Ramessidæ reigned 66 years.

Amenophis reigned 20 years.

The five centuries[54] which elapsed between the expulsion of the Shepherds
and Exode of the Jews comprise the culminating period of the greatness and
greatest artistic development of the Egyptians. It is practically within this
period that all the great buildings of the “Hundred pyloned city of Thebes”
were erected. Memphis was adorned within its limits with buildings as
magnificent as those of the southern capital, though subsequently less
fortunate in escaping the hand of the spoiler; and in every city of the Delta
wherever an obelisk or sculptured stone is found, there we find almost
invariably the name of one of the kings of the 18th or 19th dynasties. In
Arabia, too, and above the cataracts of the far-off Meroë, everywhere their
works and names are found. At Arban,[55] on the Khabour, we find the name
of the third Thothmes; and there seems little doubt but that the Naharaina or
Mesopotamia was one of the provinces conquered by them, and that all
Western Asia was more or less subject to their sway.
Whoever the conquering Thebans may have been, their buildings are
sufficient to prove, as above mentioned, that they belonged to a race
differing in many essential respects from that of the Memphite kingdom
they had superseded.
The pyramid has disappeared as a form of royal sepulchre, to be replaced
by a long gloomy corridor cut in the rock; its walls covered with wild and
fetish pictures of death and judgment: a sort of magic hall, crowded with
mysterious symbols the most monstrous and complicated that any system of
human superstition has yet invented.
Instead of the precise orientation and careful masonry of the old
kingdom, the buildings of the new race are placed anywhere, facing in any
direction, and generally affected with a symmetriphobia that it is difficult to
understand. The pylons are seldom in the axis of the temples; the courts
seldom square; the angles frequently not right angles, and one court
succeeding another without the least reference to symmetry.
The masonry, too, is frequently of the rudest and clumsiest sort, and
would long ago have perished but for its massiveness: and there is in all
their works an appearance of haste and want of care that sometimes goes far
to mar the value of their grandest conceptions.

In their manners, too, there seems an almost equal degree of discrepancy.
War was the occupation of the kings, and foreign conquest seems to have
been the passion of the people. The pylons and the walls of the temples are
covered with battle-scenes, or with the enumeration of the conquests made,
or the tribute brought by the subjected races. While not engaged in this, the
monarch’s time seems to have been devoted to practising the rites of the
most complicated and least rational form of idolatry that has yet been
known to exist among any body of men in the slightest degree civilised.
If the monuments of Memphis had come down to our times as perfect as
those of Thebes, some of these differences might be found less striking. On
the other hand, others might be still more apparent; but judging from such
data as we possess—and they are tolerably extensive and complete—we are
justified in assuming a most marked distinction; and it is indispensably
necessary to bear it in mind in attempting to understand the architecture of
the valley of the Nile, and equally important in any attempt to trace the
affinities of the Egyptian with any other races of mankind. So far as we can
now see, it may be possible to trace some affinities with the pyramid
builders in Assyria or in Western Asia; but if any can be dimly predicated of
the southern Egyptian race, it is in India and the farther east; and the line of
communication was not the Isthmus of Suez, but the Straits of
Babelmandeb and the Indian Ocean.

THEBES.

Although, as already mentioned, numerous buildings of the great
Pharaonic dynasties are to be found scattered all along the banks of the
Nile, it is at Thebes only that the temples are so complete as to enable us to
study them with advantage, or to arrive at a just appreciation of their
greatness. That city was practically the capital of Egypt during the whole of
the 18th and 19th dynasties, and has been fortunate in having had no great
city built near it since it fell into decay; unlike Memphis in this respect,
which has been used as a quarry during the last 14 or 15 centuries. It has
also had the advantage of a barrier of rocky hills on its western limits,
which has prevented the sand of the desert from burying its remains, as has
been the case at Abydus and elsewhere.

The ruins that still remain are found scattered over an area extending
about 21⁄4 miles north and south, and 31⁄2 miles east and west. The principal
group is at Karnac, on the eastern bank of the Nile, consisting of one great
temple 1200 feet long, and five or six smaller temples grouped
unsymmetrically around it. About two miles farther south is the temple at
Luxor 820 feet long, and without any dependencies.
On the other side of the river is the great
temple of Medeenet-Habû, built by the first
king of the 19th dynasty, 520 feet in length;
the Rameseum, 570 feet long, and the temple
at Koorneh, of which only the sanctuary and
the foundations of the Propyla now exist. Of
the great temple of Thothmes and Amenophis
very little remains above ground—it having
been situated within the limits of the
inundation—except the two celebrated
colossi, one of which was known to the
Greeks as the vocal Memnon. When complete
it probably was, next after Karnac, the most
extensive of Theban temples. There are
several others, situated at the foot of the
Libyan hills, which would be considered as
magnificent elsewhere, but sink into
insignificance when compared with those just
enumerated.
Most of these, like our mediæval
cathedrals, are the work of successive kings,
who added to the works of their ancestors
without much reference to congruity of plan;
19. Rameseum at Thebes. but one, the Rameseum, was built wholly by
Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. the great Rameses in the 15th century B.C.,
and though the inner sanctuary is so ruined
that it can hardly be restored, still the general arrangement, as shown in the
annexed woodcut, is so easily made out that it may be considered as a
typical example of what an Egyptian temple of this age was intended to
have been. Its façade is formed by two great pylons, or pyramidal masses of

masonry, which, like the two western towers of a
Gothic cathedral, are the appropriate and most
imposing part of the structure externally. Between
these is the entrance doorway, leading, as is
almost invariably the case, into a great square
courtyard, with porticoes always on two, and
sometimes on three, sides. This leads to an inner
court, smaller, but far more splendid than the first.
On the two sides of this court, through which the
central passage leads, are square piers with
colossi in front, and on the right and left are
double ranges of circular columns, which are
continued also behind the square piers fronting
the entrance. Passing through this, we come to a
hypostyle hall of great beauty, formed by two
ranges of larger columns in the centre, and three
rows of smaller ones on each side. These
hypostyle halls almost always accompany the
larger Egyptian temples of the great age. They
derive their name from having, over the lateral
columns, what in Gothic architecture would be
called a clerestory, through which the light is
admitted to the central portion of the hall.
Although some are more extensive than this, the 20. Central Pillar, from
arrangement of all is nearly similar. They all Rameseum, Thebes.
possess two ranges of columns in the centre, so
tall as to equal the height of the side columns
together with that of the attic which is placed on them. They are generally
of different orders; the central pillars having a bell-shaped capital, the under
side of which was perfectly illuminated from the mode in which the light
was introduced; while in the side pillars the capital was narrower at the top
than at the bottom, apparently for the sake of allowing its ornaments to be
seen.
Beyond this are always several smaller apartments, in this instance
supposed to be nine in number, but they are so ruined that it is difficult to be
quite certain what their arrangement was. These seem to have been rather
suited to the residences of the king or priests than to the purposes of a

temple, as we understand the word. Indeed, Palace-Temple, or Temple-
Palace, would be a more appropriate term for these buildings than to call
them simply Temples. They do not seem to have been appropriated to the
worship of any particular god, but rather for the great ceremonials of
royalty—of kingly sacrifice to the gods for the people, and of worship of
the king himself by the people, who seems to have been regarded, if not as a
god, at least as the representative of the gods on earth.
Though the Rameseum is so grand from its dimensions, and so beautiful
from its design, it is far surpassed in every respect by the palace-temple at
Karnac, which is perhaps the noblest effort of architectural magnificence
ever produced by the hand of man.
Its principal dimensions are 1200 ft. in length, by about 360 in width, and
it covers therefore about 430,000 square ft., or nearly twice the area of St.
Peter’s at Rome, and more than four times that of any mediæval cathedral
existing. This, however, is not a fair way of estimating its dimensions, for
our churches are buildings entirely under one roof; but at Karnac a
considerable portion of the area was uncovered by any buildings, so that no
comparison is just. The great hypostyle hall, however, is internally 330 ft.
by 170, and, with its two pylons, it covers more than 85,000 square feet—
nearly as large as Cologne, one of the largest of our northern cathedrals; and
when we consider that this is only a part of a great whole, we may fairly
assert that the entire structure is among the largest, as it undoubtedly is one
of the most beautiful, buildings in the world.
The original part of this great group was, as before mentioned, the
sanctuary or temple built by Osirtasen, the great monarch of the 12th
dynasty, before the Shepherd invasion. It is the only thing that seems to
have been allowed to stand during the five centuries of Shepherd
domination, though it is by no means clear that it had not been pulled down
by the Shepherds, and reinstated by the first kings of the 18th dynasty, an
operation easily performed with the beautiful polished granite masonry of
the sanctuary. Be this as it may, Amenhotep, the first king of the restored
race, enclosed this in a temple about 120 ft. square. Thothmes I. built in
front of it a splendid hall, surrounded by colossi, backed by piers; and
Thothmes III. erected behind it a palace or temple, which is one of the most
singular buildings in Egypt. The hall is 140 ft. long by 55 in width
internally, the roof is supported by two rows of massive square columns,

and two of circular pillars of most exceptional form, the capitals of which
are reversed, and somewhat resembling the form usually found in Assyria,
but nowhere else in Egypt. Like almost all Egyptian halls, it was lighted
from the roof in the manner shown in the section. With all these additions,
the temple was a complete whole, 540 ft. in length by 280 in width, at the
time when the Sun-worshippers broke in upon the regular succession of the
great 18th dynasty.

21. Section of Palace of Thothmes III., Thebes.

When the original line was resumed, Meneptah commenced the building
of the great hall, which he nearly completed. Rameses, the first king of the
19th dynasty, built the small temple in front; and the so-called Bubastite
kings of the 22nd dynasty added the great court in front, completing the
building to the extent we now find it. We have thus, as in some of our
mediæval cathedrals, in this one temple a complete history of the style
during the whole of its most flourishing period; and, either for interest or
for beauty, it forms such a series as no other country, and no other age, can
produce. Besides those buildings mentioned above, there are other temples
to the north, to the east, and more especially to the south, and pylons
connecting these, and avenues of sphinxes extending for miles, and
enclosing-walls, and tanks, and embankments—making up such a group as
no city ever possessed before or since. St. Peter’s, with its colonnades, and
the Vatican, make up an immense mass, but as insignificant in extent as in
style when compared with this glory of ancient Thebes and its surrounding
temples.

22. Plan of Hypostyle Hall at Karnac. Scale 100 ft. to 1 in.

23. Section of central portion of Hypostyle Hall at Karnac.
Scale 50 ft. to 1 in.

The culminating point and climax of all this group of building is the
hypostyle hall of Meneptah. The plan and section of its central portion on

the next page, both to the usual scale, will explain its general arrangement;
but no language can convey an idea of its beauty, and no artist has yet been
able to reproduce its form so as to convey to those who have not seen it an
idea of its grandeur. The mass of its central piers, illumined by a flood of
light from the clerestory, and the smaller pillars of the wings gradually
fading into obscurity, are so arranged and lighted as to convey an idea of
infinite space; at the same time, the beauty and massiveness of the forms,
and the brilliancy of their coloured decorations, all combine to stamp this as
the greatest of man’s architectural works; but such a one as it would be
impossible to reproduce, except in such a climate and in that individual
style in which, and for which, it was created.
On the same side of the Nile, and probably at one time connected with it
by an avenue of sphinxes, stands the temple of Luxor, hardly inferior in
some respects to its great rival at Karnac; but either it was never finished,
or, owing to its proximity to the Nile, it has been ruined, and the materials
carried away. The length is about 830 ft., its breadth ranging from 100 to
200 ft. Its general arrangement comprised, first, a great court at a different
angle from the rest, being turned so as to face Karnac. In front of this stand
two colossi of Rameses the Great, its founder, and two obelisks were once
also there, one of which is now in Paris. Behind this was once a great
hypostyle hall, but only the two central ranges of columns are now
standing. Still further back were smaller halls and numerous apartments,
evidently meant for the king’s residence, rather than for a temple or place
exclusively devoted to worship.
The palace at Luxor is further remarkable as a striking instance of how
regardless the Egyptians were of regularity and symmetry in their plans.
Not only is there a considerable angle in the direction of the axis of the
building, but the angles of the courtyards are in scarcely any instance right
angles; the pillars are variously spaced, and pains seem to have been
gratuitously taken to make it as irregular as possible in nearly every respect.
All the portion at the southern end was erected by Amenhotep III., the
northern part completed by Rameses the Great, the same who built the
Rameseum already described as situated on the other bank of the Nile.
Besides these there stood on the western side of the Nile the
Memnonium, or great temple of Amenhotep III., now almost entirely
ruined. It was placed on the alluvial plain, within the limits of the

inundation, which has tended on the one hand to
bury it, and on the other to facilitate the removal of
its materials. Nearly the only remains of it now
apparent are the two great seated colossi of its
founder, one of which, when broken, became in
Greek, or rather Roman times, the vocal Memnon,
whose plaintive wail to the rising sun, over its own
and its country’s desolation, forms so prominent an
incident in the Roman accounts of Thebes.[56]

24. Caryatide Pillar,
from the Great Court
at Medeenet-Habû.

25. South Temple of
Karnac. Scale 100 ft. to
1 in.

26. Section through Hall of
Columns, South Temple of Karnac.

Scale 50 ft. to 1 in.

Not far from this stands the great temple known as that of Medeenet-
Habû, built by the first king of the 19th dynasty. Its dimensions are only
slightly inferior to those of the Rameseum, being 520 ft. from front to rear,
and its propylon 107 ft. wide. Its two great courts are, however, inferior in
size to those of that building. The inner one is adorned by a series of
Caryatide figures (Woodcut No. 24), which are inferior both in conception
and execution to those of the previous reigns; and indeed throughout the
whole building there is an absence of style, and an exaggeration of detail,
which shows only too clearly that the great age was passing away when it
was erected. The roof of its hypostyle hall, and of the chambers beyond it,
is occupied by an Arab village, which would require to be cleared away
before it could be excavated; much as this might be desired, the details of
its courts would not lead us to expect anything either very beautiful or new
from its disinterment. Further down the river, as already mentioned, stood
another temple, that of Koorneh, built by the same Meneptah who erected
the great hall of Karnac. It is, however, only a fragment, or what may be
called the residential part of a temple. The hypostyle hall never was erected,
and only the foundations of two successive pylons can be traced in front of
it. In its present condition, therefore, it is one of the least interesting of the
temples of Thebes, though elsewhere it would no doubt be regarded with
wonder.
Another building of this age, attached to the southern side of the great
temple of Karnac, deserves especial attention as being a perfectly regular
building, erected at one time, and according to the original design, and
strictly a temple, without anything about it that could justify the supposition
of its being a palace.
It was erected by the first king of the 19th dynasty, and consists of two
pylons, approached through an avenue of sphinxes. Within this is an
hypæthral court, and beyond that a small hypostyle hall, lighted from
above, as shown in the section (Woodcut No. 26). Within this is the cell,
surrounded by a passage, and with a smaller hall beyond, all apparently
dark, or very imperfectly lighted. The gateway in front of the avenue was
erected by the Ptolemys, and, like many Egyptian buildings, is placed at a
different angle to the direction of the building itself. Besides its intrinsic

beauty, this temple is interesting as being far more like the temples erected
afterwards under the Greek and Roman domination than anything else
belonging to that early age.
At Tanis, or Zoan, near the mouth of the Nile, the remains of a temple
and of 13 obelisks can still be traced. At Soleb, on the borders of Nubia, a
temple now stands of the Third Amenhotep, scarcely inferior in beauty or
magnificence to those of the capital.
At Sedinga, not far below the third cataract, are the
remains of temples erected by Amenhotep III. of the 18th
dynasty, which are interesting as introducing in a
completed form a class of pillar that afterwards became a
great favourite with Egyptian architects (Woodcut No.
27). Before this time we find these Isis heads either
painted or carved on the face of square piers, but so as
not to interfere with the lines of the pillars. Gradually
they became more important, so as to form a double
capital, as in this instance. In the Roman times, as at
Denderah (Woodcut No. 41, p. 143), all the four faces of
the pier were so adorned, though it must be admitted in
very questionable taste.
It would be tedious to attempt to enumerate without
illustrating all the fragments that remain of temples of
this age. Some are so ruined that it is difficult to make
out their plan. Others, like those of Memphis or Tanis, so
entirely destroyed, that only their site, or at most only
their leading dimensions, can be made out. Their loss is
of course to be regretted; but those enumerated above are
sufficient to enable us to judge both of the style and the
magnificence of the great building epoch.
27. Pillar, from
Sedinga.

28. Smaller Temple at
Abydus.

29. Plan of Temple of Abydus.

At Abydus the remains of two great temples have been found; one of
Rameses II., with great court surrounded by piers with osireide figures on
them; two halls of columns, a sanctuary, and other small chambers in the
rear. The other, completed only and decorated with sculpture by Rameses
II., the temple having been built by his father, Sethi I. This second temple
differs in the arrangement of its plan from other examples (Woodcut No.
29); it was preceded by two great courts; at the further end of the second
court was a peristyle with twelve piers, from which, through three doors, a
hall of twenty-four columns was reached; the columns here were so
arranged as to suggest seven avenues, beyond which were seven doors
leading to a second hall with thirty-six columns, similarly disposed to those
in the first hall. These avenues led to seven sanctuaries, the roofs of which
were segmental, the arched form of vault being cut out of solid blocks of
stone (Woodcut No. 29A). Beyond the sepulchral destination, which roofs
of these sanctuaries suggest, nothing is known from inscriptions as to their
precise use. Through one of the sanctuaries other halls of columns and
chambers were reached which lie in the rear of the building, and on the
south side, and approached from the second great hall of columns, many
other halls, chambers, and staircases leading to the roof. The special interest
to the Egyptologist, however, of this temple lies in the fact that it was on the
walls of one of these that the so-called tablet of Abydus was discovered—
now in the British Museum—which first gave a connected list of kings, the
predecessors of Rameses, and sufficiently extensive to confirm the lists of
Manetho in a manner satisfactory to the ordinary inquirer. A second list, far
more complete, has recently been brought to light in the same locality, and
contains the names of 76 kings, ancestors of Meneptah, the father of
Rameses. It begins, as all lists do, with Menes; but even this list is only a
selection, omitting many names found in Manetho, but inserting others
which are not in his lists.[57] Before the discovery of this perfect list, the
longest known were that of the chamber of the ancestors of Thothmes III.,
at Karnac, containing when perfect 61 names, of which, however, nearly
one-third are obliterated; and that recently found at Saccara, containing 58
names originally, but of which several are now illegible.
It is the existence of these lists which gives such interest and such reality
to the study of Architecture in Egypt. Fortunately there is hardly a building
in that country which is not adorned with the name of the king in whose
reign it was erected. In royal buildings they are found on every wall and

every pillar. The older cartouches are simple and easily remembered; and
when we find the buildings thus dated by the builders themselves, and their
succession recorded by subsequent kings on the walls of their temples, we
feel perfectly certain of our sequence, and nearly so of the actual dates of
the buildings; they are, moreover, such a series as no other country in the
world can match either for historic interest or Architectural magnificence.

Rock-cut Tombs and Temples.

But in Egypt Proper and in Nubia the Egyptians were in the habit of
excavating monuments from the living rock, but with this curious
distinction, that, with scarcely an exception, all the excavations in Egypt
Proper are tombs, and no important example of a rock-cut temple has yet
been discovered. In Nubia, on the other hand, all the excavations are
temples, and no tombs of importance are to be found anywhere. This
distinction may hereafter lead to important historical deductions, inasmuch
as on the western side of India there are an infinite number of rock-cut
temples, but no tombs of any sort. Every circumstance seems to point to the
fact that, if there was any connection between Africa and India, it was with
the provinces in the upper part of the Valley of the Nile, and not with Egypt
Proper. This, however, is a subject that can hardly be entered on here,
though it may be useful to bear in mind the analogy alluded to.

30. Plan and Section of Rock-cut Temple at Abû Simbel.
Scale for plan 100 ft. to 1 in.; section 50 ft. to 1 in.

Like all rock-cut examples all over the world, these Nubian temples are
copies of structural buildings only more or less modified to suit the
exigencies of their situation, which did not admit of any very great
development inside, as light and air could only be introduced from the one
opening of the doorway.
The two principal examples of this class of monument are the two at Abû
Simbel, the larger of which is the finest of its class known to exist
anywhere. Its total depth from the face of the rock is 150 ft., divided into 2
large halls and 3 cells, with passages connecting them.
Externally the façade is about 100 ft. in height, and adorned by 4 of the
most magnificent colossi in Egypt, each 70 ft. in height, and representing
the king, Rameses II., who caused the excavation to be made. It may be
because they are more perfect than any others now found in that country,
but certainly nothing can exceed their calm majesty and beauty, or be more
entirely free from the vulgarity and exaggeration which is generally a
characteristic of colossal works of this sort.

The smaller temple at the same place has six standing figures of deities
countersunk in the rock, and is carved with exceeding richness. It is of the
same age with the large temple, but will not admit of comparison with it
owing to the inferiority of the design.
Besides these, there is a very beautiful though small example at
Kalabsheh (known as the Bayt el Wellee, “the house of the saint”), likewise
belonging to the age of Rameses II., and remarkable for the beauty of its
sculptural bas-reliefs, as well as for the bold Proto-Doric columns which
adorn its vestibule. There are also smaller ones at Dêrr and Balagne, at the
upper end of the valley. At Wâdy Saboua and Gerf Hussên, the cells of the
temple have been excavated from the rock, but their courts and propylons
are structural buildings added in front—a combination only found once in
Egypt, at Thebes (Dêr-el-Bahree), and very rare anywhere else, although
meeting the difficulties of the case better than any other arrangement,
inasmuch as the sanctuary has thus all the imperishability and mystery of a
cave, and the temple at the same time has the space and external appearance
of a building standing in the open air.
This last arrangement is found also as a characteristic of the temples of
Gebel Barkal, in the kingdom of Meroë, showing how far the rock-cutting
practice prevailed in the Upper Valley of the Nile.
The plan on which the Temple of Dêr-el-Bahree is constructed is curious,
and differs entirely from that of any other in Egypt. It is built in stages up a
slope at the foot of the mountain, flights of steps leading from one court to
the other. The temple was built by Queen Hatshepsu or Amen-noo-het, the
sister of Thothmes II. and Thothmes III., and consisted of three courts rising
in terraces one above the other; at the back of these were two ranges of
porticoes, the upper one set back behind the lower and built into the vertical
face of the rock with which the sanctuary and antechambers were cut. As all
the temples above mentioned are contemporary with the great structures in
Egypt, it seems strange that the eternity of a rock-cut example did not
recommend this form of temple to the attention of the Egyptians
themselves. But with the exception of Dêr-el-Bahree and a small grotto,
called the Speos Artemidos, near Beni-Hasan, and two small caves at
Silsilis, near the Cataract, the Egyptians seem never to have attempted it,
trusting apparently to the solidity of their masonic structures for that
eternity of duration they aspired to.

Mammeisi.

In addition to the temples above
described, which are all more or less
complex in plan, and all made up of
various independent parts, there exists
in Egypt a class of temples called
mammeisi, dedicated to the
mysterious accouchement of the
mother of the gods. Small temples of
this form are common to all ages, and
belong as well to the 18th dynasty as
to the time of the Ptolemys. One of
them, built by Amenhotep III. at
Elephantine, is represented in plan
and elevation in the annexed cut. It is
of a simple peristylar form, with
columns in front and rear, the latter
being now built into a wall, and seven
square piers on each flank. These
temples are all small, and, like the
Typhonia, which somewhat resemble
them, were used as detached chapels
or cells, dependent on the larger
temples. What renders them more
31. Mammeisi at Elephantine. than usually interesting to us is the
fact that they were undoubtedly the
originals of the Greek peristylar
forms, that people having borrowed nearly every peculiarity of their
architecture from the banks of the Nile. We possess tangible evidence of
peristylar temples and Proto-Doric pillars erected in Egypt centuries before
the oldest known specimen in Greece. We need therefore hardly hesitate to
award the palm of invention of these things to the Egyptians, as we should
probably be forced to do for most of the arts and sciences of the Greeks if
we had only knowledge sufficient to enable us to trace the connecting links
which once joined them together, but which are now in most instances lost,
or at least difficult to find.

Tombs.

Of the first 10 dynasties of Egyptian kings little now remains but their
tombs—the everlasting pyramids—and of the people they governed, only
the structures and rock-cut excavations which they prepared for their final
resting-places.
The Theban kings and their subjects erected no pyramids, and none of
their tombs are structural—all are excavated from the living rock; and from
Beni-Hasan to the Cataract the plain of the Nile is everywhere fringed with
these singular monuments, which, if taken in the aggregate, perhaps
required a greater amount of labour to excavate and to adorn than did even
all the edifices of the plain. Certain it is that there is far more to be learnt of
the arts, of the habits, and of the history of Egypt from these tombs than
from all the other monuments. No tomb of any Theban king has yet been
discovered anterior to the 18th dynasty; but all the tombs of that and of the
subsequent dynasty have been found, or are known to exist, in the Valley of
Bibán-el-Molook, on the western side of the plain of Thebes.
It appears to have been the custom with these kings, so soon as they
ascended the throne, to begin preparing their final resting-place. The
excavation seems to have gone on uninterruptedly year by year, the painting
and adornment being finished as it progressed, till the hand of death ended
the king’s reign, and simultaneously the works of his tomb. All was then left
unfinished; the cartoon of the painter and the rough work of the mason and
plasterer were suddenly broken off, as if the hour of the king’s demise
called them, too, irrevocably from their labours.
The tomb thus became an index of the length of a king’s reign as well as
of his magnificence. Of those in the Valley of the Kings the most splendid is
that opened by Belzoni, and now known as that of Meneptah, the builder of
the hypostyle hall at Karnac. It descends, in a sloping direction, for about
350 ft. into the mountain, the upper half of it being tolerably regular in plan
and direction; but after progressing as far as the unfinished hall with two
pillars, the direction changes, and the works begin again on a lower level,
probably because they came in contact with some other tomb, or in
consequence of meeting some flaw in the rock. It now terminates in a large
and splendid chamber with a coved roof, in which stood, when opened by
Belzoni, the rifled sarcophagus;[58] but a drift-way has been excavated

beyond this, as if it had been intended to carry the tomb still further had the
king continued to reign.

32. Plan and Section of Tomb of Meneptah at Thebes. Scale
for plan 100 ft. to 1 in.; section 50 ft. to 1 in.

The tomb of Rameses Maiamoun, the first king of the 19th dynasty, is
more regular, and in some respects as magnificent as this, and that of
Amenhotep III. is also an excavation of great beauty, and is adorned with
paintings of the very best age. Like all the tombs, however, they depend for
their magnificence more on the paintings that cover the walls than on
anything which can strictly be called architecture, so that they hardly come
properly within the scope of the present work: the same may be said of
private tombs. Except those of Beni-Hasan, already illustrated by Woodcuts
Nos. 16 to 18, these tombs are all mere chambers or corridors, without
architectural ornament, but their walls are covered with paintings and
hieroglyphics of singular interest and beauty. Generally speaking, it is
assumed that the entrances of these tombs were meant to be concealed and
hidden from the knowledge of the people after the king’s death. It is hardly
conceivable, however, that so much pains should have been taken, and so
much money lavished, on what was designed never again to testify to the
magnificence of its founder. It is also very unlike the sagacity of the
Egyptians to attempt what was so nearly impossible; for though the
entrance of a pyramid might be so built up as to be unrecognisable, a
cutting in the rock can never be repaired or disguised, and can only be
temporarily concealed by heaping rubbish over it. Supposing it to have been
intended to conceal the entrances, such an expedient was as clumsy and
unlikely to have been resorted to by so ingenious a people as it has proved

futile, for all the royal tombs in the valley of Bibán-el-Molook have been
opened and rifled in a past age, and their sites and numbers were matters of
public notoriety in the times of the Greeks and Romans. Many of the
private tombs have architectural façades, and certainly never were meant to
be concealed, so that it is not fair to assume that hiding their tombs’
entrances was ever a peculiarity of the Thebans, though it certainly was of
the earlier Memphite kings.

Obelisks.

Another class of monuments, almost exclusively Egyptian, are the
obelisks, which form such striking objects in front of almost all the old
temples of the country.
Small models of obelisks are found in the tombs of the age of the
pyramid builders, and represented in their hieroglyphics; but the oldest
public monument of the class known to exist is that at Heliopolis, erected
by Osirtasen, the great king of the 12th dynasty. It is, like all the others, a
single block of beautiful red granite of Syene, cut with all the precision of
the age, tapering slightly towards the summit, and of about the average
proportion, being about 10 diameters in height; exclusive of the top it is 67
ft. 4 in.
The two finest known to exist are, that now in the piazza of the Lateran,
originally set up by Thothmes III., 105 ft. in height, and that still existing at
Karnac, attributed to Thothmes II., 107 ft. in height. Both are now ascribed
to Queen Hatshepsu their sister, who is recorded to have boasted that they
were quarried, transported, and set up within the short space of seven
months. Those of Luxor, erected by Rameses the Great, one of which is
now in Paris, are above 77 ft. in height; and there are two others in Rome,
each above 80 ft.
Rome, indeed, has 12 of these monuments within her walls—a greater
number than exist, erect at least, in the country whence they came; though
judging from the number that are found adorning single temples, it is
difficult to calculate how many must once have existed in Egypt. Their use
seems to have been wholly that of monumental pillars, recording the style
and title of the king who erected them, his piety, and the proof he gave of it

in dedicating these monoliths to the deity whom he especially wished to
honour.
It has been already remarked that, with
scarcely an exception, all the pyramids are on
the west side of the Nile, all the obelisks on the
east; with regard to the former class of
monument, this probably arose from a law of
their existence, the western side of the Nile
being in all ages preferred for sepulture, but with
regard to the latter it seems to be accidental.
Memphis doubtless possessed many monuments
of this class, and there is reason to believe that
the western temples of Thebes were also
similarly adorned. They are, however,
monuments easily broken; and, from their form,
so singularly useful for many building purposes,
that it is not to be wondered at if many of them
have disappeared during the centuries that have
elapsed since the greater number of them were
erected.

Domestic Architecture.

Except one small royal pavilion at Medeenet
33. Lateran Obelisk.
Habû, no structure now remains in Egypt that
Scale 50 ft. to 1 in., for
can fairly be classed as a specimen of the
comparison with scale
domestic architecture of the ancient Egyptians;
of other buildings.
but at the same time we possess, in paintings and
sculptures, so many illustrations of their
domestic habits, so many plans, elevations, and views, and even models of
their dwellings of every class, that we have no difficulty in forming a
correct judgment not only of the style, but of the details, of their domestic
architecture.
Although their houses exhibited nothing of the solidity and monumental
character which distinguished their temples and palaces, they seem in their
own way to have been scarcely less beautiful. They were of course on a

smaller scale, and built of more perishable materials, but they appear to
have been as carefully finished, and decorated with equal taste to that
displayed in the greater works. We know also, from the tombs that remain
to us, that, although the government of Egypt was a despotism of the
strictest class, still the wealth of the land was pretty equally diffused among
all classes, and that luxury and splendour were by no means confined either
to the royal family or within the precincts of the palace. There is thus every
reason to believe that the cities which have passed away were worthy of the
temples that adorned them, and that the streets were as splendid and as
tasteful as the public buildings themselves, and displayed, though in a more
ephemeral form, the same wealth and power which still astonish us in the
great monuments that remain.
Mr. Maspero, in his work on Egyptian archæology, translated by Miss
Amelia B. Edwards[59] devotes a chapter to the description of the existing
remains of private dwellings and military architecture. The examples of the
former are of comparatively small buildings, and were invariably built in
crude or unburnt brick; in the neighbourhood of Memphis Mr. Maspero
found walls still standing, from 30 to 40 ft. in height. The plans which are
delineated on the walls of the tombs of the 18th dynasty enable us to judge
of the extent and magnificence of the more important examples. These as a
rule would seem to have features which are evidently derived from temple
architecture, that is to say, the palaces are preceded by pylons and the courts
enclosed and surrounded with porticoes. Of military architecture the oldest
fortresses are those at Abydos, El Kab, and Semneh; at Abydos the earliest
example consists of a parallelogram of crude brickwork measuring 410 ft.
by 223 ft. The walls, which now stand from 24 to 36 ft. high, have lost
somewhat of their original height: they are about 6 ft. thick at the top and
were not built in uniform layers, but in huge vertical panels easily
distinguished by the nature of the brickwork. In one division the course of
the bricks is strictly horizontal, in the next it is slightly concave, and forms
a very flat reversed arch, of which the extrados rests on the ground. The
alternation of these two methods is regularly repeated. The object of this
arrangement was possibly to resist earthquake shocks.

34. Pavilion at Medeenet
Habû. Scale 100 ft. to 1
in.

35. View of Pavilion at Medeenet Habû.

No building can form a greater contrast with the temple behind it than
does the little pavilion erected at Medeenet Habû by Rameses, the first king
of the 19th dynasty. As will be seen by the annexed plan (Woodcut No. 34),
it is singularly broken and varied in its outline, surrounding a small court in
the shape of a cross. It is 3 storeys in height, and, properly speaking,
consists of only 3 rooms on each floor, connected together by long winding
passages. There is reason, however, to believe that this is only a fragment of
the building, and foundations exist which render it probable that the whole
was originally a square of the width of the front, and had other chambers,
probably only in wood or brick, besides those we now find. This would
hardly detract from the playful character of the design, and when coloured,

as it originally was, and with its battlements or ornaments complete, it must
have formed a composition as pleasing as it is unlike our usual conceptions
of Egyptian art.
The other illustration represents in the Egyptians’ own quaint style a
three-storeyed dwelling, the upper storey apparently being, like those of the
Assyrians, an open gallery supported by dwarf columns. The lower
windows are closed by shutters. In the centre is a staircase leading to the
upper storey, and on the left hand an awning supported on wooden pillars,
which seems to have been an indispensable part of all the better class of
dwellings. Generally speaking, these houses are shown as situated in
gardens laid out in a quaint, formal style, with pavilions, and fishponds, and
all the other accompaniments of gardens in the East at the present day.
In all the
conveniences and
elegances of building
they seem to have
anticipated all that has
been done in those
countries down to the
present day. Indeed, in
all probability the
ancient Egyptians
surpassed the modern
in those respects as
much as they did in the
more important forms
36. Elevation of a House. From an Egyptian of architecture.
Painting.

CHAPTER V

GREEK AND ROMAN PERIOD.

CONTENTS.
Decline of art—Temples at Denderah—Kalábsheh—Philæ.

The third stage of Egyptian art is as exceptional as the two which preceded
it, and as unlike anything else which has occurred in any other lands.
From the time of the 19th dynasty, with a slight revival under the
Bubastite kings of the 22nd dynasty, Egypt sank through a long period of
decay, till her misfortunes were consummated by the invasion of the
Persians under Cambyses, 525 B.C. From that time she served in a bondage
more destructive, if not so galling, as that of the Shepherd domination, till
relieved by the more enlightened policy of the Ptolemys. Under them she
enjoyed as great material prosperity as under her own Pharaohs; and her
architecture and her arts too revived, not, it is true, with the greatness or the
purity of the great national era, but still with much richness and material
splendour.
This was continued under the Roman domination, and, judging from
what we find in other countries, we would naturally expect to find traces of
the influence of Greek and Roman art in the buildings of this age. So little,
however, is this the case, that before the discovery of the reading of the
hieroglyphic signs, the learned of Europe placed the Ptolemaic and Roman
temples of Denderah and Kalábsheh before those of Thebes in order of date;
and could not detect a single moulding in the architectural details, nor a
single feature in the sculpture and painting which adorned their walls,
which gave them a hint of the truth. Even Cleopatra the beautiful is
represented on these walls with distinctly Egyptian features, and in the

same tight garments and conventional forms as were used in the portrait of
Nophre Ari, Queen of Rameses, or in those of the wives of the possessors of
tombs in the age of the pyramids, 3000 years before. Egypt in fact
conquered her conquerors, and forced them to adopt her customs and her
arts, and to follow in the groove she had so long marked out for herself, and
followed with such strange pertinacity.
Some of the temples of this age are, as far as dimensions and richness of
decorations are concerned, quite worthy of the great age, though their plans
and arrangements differ to a considerable extent. There is no longer any
hesitation as to whether they should be called temples or palaces, for they
all are exclusively devoted to worship,—and to the worship of a heavenly
God, not of a deified king.
What these arrangements are will be well understood from the annexed
plan of that of Edfû (Woodcut No. 37), which, though not the largest, is the
most complete of those remaining. It is 450 ft. in length and 155 in width,
and covers upwards of 70,000 ft.; its dimensions may be said to be equal to
those of the largest of our mediæval cathedrals (Cologne or Amiens, for
instance). Parts only—viz., the court C, and areas M M M—of the whole
structure are roofed, and therefore it can scarcely be compared with
buildings entirely under one roof.
In front of the temple are two large and splendid pylons, with the
gateway in the centre, making up a façade 225 ft. in extent. Although this
example has lost its crowning cornice, its sculptures and ornaments are still
very perfect, and it may altogether be considered as a fair specimen of its
class, though inferior in dimensions to many of those of the Pharaonic age.
Within these is a court, 140 ft. by 161, surrounded by a colonnade on three
sides, and on the fourth side the porch or portico which, in Ptolemaic
temples, takes the place of the great hypostyle halls of the Pharaohs. It is
lighted from the front over low screens placed between each of the pillars, a
peculiarity scarcely ever found in temples of earlier date, though apparently
common in domestic edifices, or those formed of wood, certainly as early
as the middle of the 18th dynasty, as may be seen from the annexed
woodcut (No. 39), taken from a tomb of one of the sun-worshipping kings,
who reigned between Amenhotep III. and Horus. From this we pass into an
inner and smaller porch, and again through two passages to a dark and
mysterious sanctuary, surrounded by darker passages and chambers, well

calculated to mystify and strike with
awe any worshipper or neophyte
who might be admitted to their
gloomy precincts.

37. Plan of Temple at Edfû,
Apollinopolis Magna. Scale 100 ft.
to 1 in.

38. View of Temple at Edfû as it was, before it was cleared
out and the dwellings on the roof removed.

The celebrated temple at Denderah is similar to this, and slightly larger,
but it has no fore-court, no propylons, and no enclosing outer walls. Its
façade is given in the woodcut (No. 40). Its Isis-headed columns are not
equal to those of Edfû in taste or grace; but it has the advantage of situation,
and this temple is not encumbered either by sand or huts, which still
disfigure so many Egyptian temples. Its effect, consequently, on travellers is
always more striking.
The Roman temple at Kalábsheh (Woodcuts Nos. 42 and 43), above the
Cataract, is a fair specimen of these temples on a smaller scale. The section
(Woodcut No. 43) shows one of the modes by which a scanty light was
introduced into the inner cells, and their gradation in height. The position,
too, of its propylons is a striking instance of the irregularity which
distinguishes all the later Egyptian styles from that of the rigid, proportion-
loving pyramid builders of Memphis.

39. Bas-relief at Tel el Amarna.

40. Façade of Temple at Denderah. Scale 50 ft. to 1 in.

This irregularity of plan was nowhere carried to such an extent as in the
Ptolemaic temple on the island of Philæ (Woodcut No. 45). Here no two
buildings, scarcely any two walls, are on the same axis or parallel to one
another. No Gothic architect in his wildest moments ever played so freely
with his lines or dimensions, and none, it must be added, ever produced
anything so beautifully picturesque as this. It contains all the play of light
and shade, all the variety, of Gothic art, with the massiveness and grandeur
of the Egyptian style; and as it is still tolerably entire, and retains much of
its colour, there is no building out of Thebes that gives so favourable an

impression of Egyptian art as this. It is true it is far less sublime than many,
but hardly one can be quoted as more beautiful.
Notwithstanding its irregularity, this temple has the advantage of being
nearly all of the same age, and erected according to one plan, while the
greater buildings at Thebes are often aggregations of parts of different ages;
and though each is beautiful in itself, the result is often not quite so
harmonious as might be desired. In this respect the Ptolemaic temples
certainly have the advantage, inasmuch as they are all of one age, and all
completed according to the plan on which they were designed; a
circumstance which, to some extent at least, compensates for their marked
inferiority in size and style, and the littleness of all the ornaments and
details as compared with those of the Pharaonic period. It must at the same
time be admitted that this inferiority is more apparent in the sculpture of the
Ptolemaic age than in its architecture. The general design of the buildings is
frequently grand and imposing, but the details are always inferior; and the
sculpture and painting, which in the great age add so much to the beauty of
the whole, are in the Ptolemaic age always frittered away, ill-arranged,
unmeaning, and injurious to the general effect instead of heightening and
improving it.

41. Pillar, from
the Porticocat
Denderah.

42. Plan of Temple at
Kalábsheh. Scale 100 ft. 1 in.

On the east side of the island is the very beautiful structure known as
“Pharaoh’s bed” (n). It is an oblong rectangular building of late date,
surrounded by an intercolumnar screen with 18 columns. It was roofed with
stone slabs supported on wooden beams, the sockets to receive which still
exist. There is a doorway on the west wall, and another on the east wall
opening on to a stone terrace or quay. Similar structures are believed to
have existed at Thebes, close to the river, and connected by causeways with
the temples; they may therefore have served as halls from which the
processions started after disembarking from the boats on the river.
Strange as it may at first sight appear, we know less of the manners and
customs of the Egyptian people during the Greek and Roman domination,
than we do of them during the earlier dynasties. All the buildings erected
after the time of Alexander which have come down to our time are
essentially temples. Nothing that can be called a palace or pavilion has
survived, and no tombs, except some of Roman date at Alexandria, are

known to exist. We have consequently no pictures of gardens, with their
villas and fish-ponds; no farms, with their cattle; no farmyards, with their
geese and ducks; no ploughing or sowing; no representations of the
mechanical arts; no dancing or amusements; no arms or campaigns.
Nothing, in short, but worship in its most material and least intellectual
form.

43. Section of Temple at Kalábsheh. 50 ft. to 1 in.

It is a curious inversion of the usually received dogmata on this subject,
but as we read the history of Egypt as written on her monuments, we find
her first wholly occupied with the arts of peace, agricultural and
industrious, avoiding war and priestcraft, and eminently practical in all her
undertakings. In the middle period we find her half political, half religious;
sunk from her early happy position to a state of affairs such as existed in
Europe in the Middle Ages. In her third and last stage we find her fallen
under the absolute influence of the most degrading superstition. We know
from her masters that she had no political freedom and no external
influence at this time; but we hardly expected to find her sinking deeper and
deeper into superstition, at a time when the world was advancing forward
with such rapid strides in the march of civilisation, as was the case between
the ages of Alexander and that of Constantine. It probably was in
consequence of this retrograde course that her civilisation perished so
absolutely and entirely under the influence of the rising star of Christianity;
and that, long before the Arab conquest, not a trace of it was left in any
form. What had stood the vicissitudes of 3000 years, and was complete and
stable under Hadrian, had vanished when Constantine ascended the throne.

44. View of Temple at Philæ.

45. Plan of Temple at Philæ. Scale 100 ft. to 1 in.

If, however, their civilisation passed so suddenly away, their buildings
remain to the present day; and taken altogether, we may perhaps safely
assert that the Egyptians were the most essentially a building people of all
those we are acquainted with, and the most generally successful in all they
attempted in this way. The Greeks, it is true, surpassed them in refinement
and beauty of detail, and in the class of sculpture with which they
ornamented their buildings, while the Gothic architects far excelled them in
constructive cleverness; but with these exceptions no other styles can be put
in competition with them. At the same time, neither Grecian nor Gothic
architects understood more perfectly all the gradations of art, and the exact
character that should be given to every form and every detail. Whether it
was the plain flat-sided pyramid, the crowded and massive hypostyle hall,
the playful pavilion, or the luxurious dwelling—in all these the Egyptians
understood perfectly both how to make the general design express exactly
what was wanted, and to make every detail, and all the various materials,
contribute to the general effect. They understood, also, better than any other
nation, how to use sculpture in combination with architecture, and to make
their colossi and avenues of sphinxes group themselves into parts of one
great design, and at the same time to use historical paintings, fading by
insensible degrees into hieroglyphics on the one hand, and into sculpture on
the other—linking the whole together with the highest class of phonetic
utterance. With the most brilliant colouring, they thus harmonised all these
arts into one great whole, unsurpassed by anything the world has seen
during the thirty centuries of struggle and aspiration that have elapsed since
the brilliant days of the great kingdom of the Pharaohs.

Serapeum and Apis Mausoleum.

The remains of the Serapeum and the burial-places of the sacred bulls
(who, when alive, were worshipped at Memphis), were discovered by M.
Mariette in 1860-61. Of the former, sufficient traces were found to show
that it resembled in its arrangement the ordinary Egyptian temple, viz., with
pylons, preceded by an avenue of sphinxes, and an enclosed space behind,
with halls and chambers, in one of which was the opening to the inclined
passage leading to the subterranean galleries. The earlier tombs of the 18th,
19th, and 20th dynasties were hewn in the rocky platform. From the 22nd to

the 25th dynasty the bulls were buried in a subterranean gallery. The same
system was adopted from the 26th dynasty till the time of the later
Ptolemies (circa 50 B.C.), but the galleries were of greater size and
magnificence, having an extent of 400 yards, and the bulls were interred in
immense granite sarcophagi placed in niches, on both sides of the galleries,
but never opposite to one another. The chief historical value of the
discovery rests in the steles, or inscribed tablets, some 500 in number,
placed there as ex-votos by pious visitors, the principal examples of which
are now in the Gizeh Museum or in the Louvre.

CHAPTER VI.

ETHIOPIA.

CONTENTS.
Kingdom of Meroë—Pyramids.

It was long a question with the learned whether civilisation ascended or
descended the Nile—whether it was a fact, as the Greeks evidently
believed, that Meroë was the parent State whence the Egyptians had
migrated to the north, bringing with them the religion and the arts which
afterwards flourished at Thebes and Memphis—or whether these had been
elaborated in the fertile plains of Egypt, and only in later times had
extended to the Upper Nile.
Recent discoveries have rendered it nearly certain that the latter is the
correct statement of the facts—within historic times at least—that the fertile
and easily cultivated Delta was first occupied and civilised; then Thebes,
and afterwards Meroë. At the same time it is by no means improbable that
the Ethiopians were of the same stock as the Thebans, though differing
essentially from the Memphites, and that the former may have regarded
these remote kindred with respect, perhaps even with a degree of half-
superstitious reverence due to their remote situation in the centre of a
thinly-peopled continent, and have in consequence invented those fables
which the Greeks interpreted too literally.
If any such earlier civilisation existed in these lands, its records and its
monuments have perished. No building is now found in Meroë whose date
extends beyond the time of the great king Tirhakah, of the 25th Egyptian
dynasty, B.C. 724 to 680, unless it be those bearing the name of one king,
Amoum Gori, who was connected with the intruding race of sun-

worshippers, which broke in upon the continuous succession of the kings of
the 18th dynasty. Their monuments were all purposely destroyed by their
successors; and almost the only records we have of them are the grottoes of
Tel el Amarna, covered with their sculptures, which bear, it must be
confessed, considerable resemblance in style to those found in Ethiopia.
Even this indication is too slight to be of much value; and we must wait for
some further confirmation before founding any reasoning upon it.
The principal monuments of Tirhakah are two temples at Gibel Barkal, a
singular isolated mount near the great southern bend of the river. One is a
large first-class temple, of purely Egyptian form and design, about 500 ft. in
length by 120 or 140 in width, consisting of two great courts, with their
propylons, and with internal halls and sanctuaries arranged much like those
of the Rameseum at Thebes (Woodcut No. 19), and so nearly also on the
same scale as to make it probable that the one is a copy of the other.
The other temple placed near this, but as usual unsymmetrically, consists
of an outer hall, internally about 50 ft. by 60, the roof of which is supported
by four ranges of columns, all with capitals representing figures of Typhon
or busts of Isis. This leads to an inner cell or sanctuary, cut in the rock.[60]

46. Pyramids at Meroë. (From Hoskins’s ‘Travels in
Ethiopia.’)

Fig. 1.—Plan of Principal Group. Scale 100 ft. to 1 in.

Fig. 2.—Section and Elevation of that marked A. Scale 50 ft.
to 1 in.

There are smaller remains strewed about, indicating the existence of a
city on the spot, but nothing of architectural importance.

The most remarkable monuments of the Ethiopian kingdom are the
pyramids, of which three great groups have been discovered and described.
The principal group is at a place called Dankelah, the assumed site of the
ancient Meroë, in latitude 17° north. Another is at Gibel Barkal; the third at
Nourri, a few miles lower down than the last named, but probably only
another necropolis of the same city.
Compared with the great Memphite examples, these pyramids are most
insignificant in size—the largest at Nourri being only 110 ft. by 100; at
Gibel Barkal the largest is only 88 ft. square; at Meroë none exceed 60 ft.
each way. They differ also in form from those of Egypt, being much steeper,
as their height is generally equal to the width of the base. They also all
possess the roll-moulding on their angles, and all have a little porch or
pronaos attached to one side, generally ornamented with sculpture, and
forming either a chapel, or more probably the place where the coffin of the
deceased was placed. We know from the Greeks that, so far from
concealing the bodies of their dead, the Ethiopians had a manner of
preserving them in some transparent substance, which rendered them
permanently visible after death.[61]
To those familiar with the rigid orientation of those of Lower Egypt,
perhaps the most striking peculiarity of the pyramids is the more than
Theban irregularity with which they were arranged, no two being ever
placed, except by accident, at the same angle to the meridian, but the whole
being grouped with the most picturesque diversity, as chance appears to
have dictated.
Among their constructive peculiarities it may be mentioned that they
seem all to have been first built in successive terraces, each less in

dimensions than that below it, something like the great pyramid at Sakkara
(Woodcut No. 9), these being afterwards smoothed over by the external
straight-lined coating.
Like the temples of Gibel Barkal, all these buildings appear to belong to
the Tirhakah epoch of the Ethiopian kingdom. It is extremely improbable
that any of them are as old as the time of Solomon, or that any are later than
the age of Cambyses, every indication seeming to point to a date between
these two great epochs, and to the connection of African history with that of
Asia.
The ruins at Wady-el-Ooatib, a little further up the Nile than Meroë,
should perhaps be also mentioned here, if only from the importance given
to them by Heeren, who thought he had discovered in them the ruins of the
temple of Jupiter Ammon. They are, however, all in the debased style of the
worst age of Ptolemaic or Roman art in that country. They are wholly
devoid of hieroglyphics, or any indication of sanctity or importance, and
there can be little doubt that they are the remains of a caravansera on the
great commercial route between Egypt and Axum, along which the greater
part of the trade of the East arrived at Alexandria in the days of its
magnificence.

Although widely differing in date from the monuments just described—
except the last—this may be the place to mention a group of the most
exceptional monuments of the world—the obelisks of Axum. It is said they
were originally 55 in number, four of them equal to that shown in the
annexed woodcut, which represents the only one now standing; but there
are fragments of several of these lying about, and some of the smaller ones
still standing, all of the same class and very similar in design to the large
one. Its height, according to Lord Valentia, is 60 ft., its width at base nearly
10, and it is of one stone. The idea is evidently Egyptian, but the details are
Indian. It is, in fact, an Indian nine-storeyed pagoda, translated in Egyptian
in the first century of the Christian era!

47. Obelisks at Axum. (From Lord Valentia’s ‘Travels.’)

The temple most like it in India is probably that at Budh Gya. That, in its
present form, is undoubtedly more modern, but probably retains many of its
original features. It also resembles the tower at Chittore,[62] but towers are
from their form such frail structures, that certainly nine-tenths of those that
once existed have perished; and it is only because they are so frequent still
in China and other Buddhist countries that we are sure that the accounts are
true which represent them as once as frequent as in the country of their
birth. Be this as it may, this exceptional monolith exactly represents that
curious marriage of Indian with Egyptian art which we would expect to find
in the spot where the two people came in contact, and enlisted architecture
to symbolise their commercial union.

BOOK II.

CHAPTER I.

ASSYRIAN ARCHITECTURE.

INTRODUCTORY.

It is by no means impossible that the rich alluvial plain of Shinar may have
been inhabited by man as early as the Valley of the Nile; but if this were so,
it is certain that the early dwellers in the land have left no trace of their
sojourn which has as yet rewarded the research of modern investigators. So
far indeed our knowledge at present extends, we have proof of the existence
of the primitive races of mankind in the valleys of France and England at a
far earlier period than we trace their remains on the banks of either the
Euphrates or the Nile. It is true these European vestiges of prehistoric man
are not architectural, and have consequently no place here, except in so far
as they free us from the trammels of a chronology now admitted to be too
limited in duration, but which has hitherto prevented us from grasping, as
we might have done, the significance of architectural history in its earliest
dawn.
Unfortunately for our investigation of Chaldean antiquity, the works of
Berosus, the only native historian we know of, have come down to us in
even a more fragmentary state than the lists of Manetho, and the
monuments have not yet enabled us to supply those deficiencies so
completely, though there is every prospect of their eventually doing so to a
considerable extent. In the meanwhile the most successful attempt to restore
the text which has been made, is that of Herr Gutschmid,[63] and it is
probable that the dates he assigns are very near the truth. Rejecting the 1st
dynasty of 86 Chaldeans and their 34,080 years as mythical, or as merely
expressing the belief of the historian that the country was inhabited by a

Chaldean race for a long time before the Median invasion, he places that
event 2458 B.C. His table of dynasties then runs thus.—
Years. B.C.
II. 8 Medes 224 commencing 2458
III. 11 Chaldeans 258 2234
IV. 49 Chaldeans 458 1976
V. 9 Arabians 245 1518
VI. 45 Assyrians 526 1273
VII. 8 Assyrians 122 747
VIII. 6 Chaldeans 87 625
Persian conquest 538
As every advance that has been made, either in deciphering the
inscriptions or in exploring the ruins since this reading was proposed, have
tended to confirm its correctness, it may fairly be assumed to represent very
nearly the true chronology of the country from Nimrod to Cyrus. Assuming
this to be so, it is interesting to observe that the conquest of Babylonia by
the Medes only slightly preceded the invasion of Egypt by the Hyksos, and
that the fortification of Avaris “against the Assyrians”[64] was synchronous
with the rise of the great Chaldean dynasty, most probably under Nimrod,
B.C. 2234. If this is so, the whole of the old civilisation of Egypt under the
pyramid-building kings had passed away before the dawn of history in
Babylonia. The Theban kings of the 12th dynasty had spread their
conquests into Asia, and thus it seems brought back the reaction of the
Scythic invasion on their own hitherto inviolate land, and by these great
interminglings of the nations Asia was first raised to a sense of her
greatness.
What we learn from this table seems to be that a foreign invasion of
Medes—whoever they may have been—disturbed the hitherto peaceful
tenor of the Chaldean kingdom some twenty-five centuries before the
Christian era.
They, in their turn, were driven out to make place for the Chaldean
dynasties, which we have every reason to suppose were those founded by
Nimrod about the year 2235 B.C.

This kingdom seems to have lasted about seven centuries without any
noticeable interruption, and then to have been overthrown by an invasion
from the west about the year 1518 B.C. Can this mean the Egyptian conquest
under the kings of the great 18th dynasty?
The depression of the Chaldeans enabled the Assyrians to raise their
heads and found the great kingdom afterwards known as that of Nineveh,
about the year 1273. For six centuries and a half they were the great people
of Asia, and during the latter half of that period built all those palaces which
have so recently been disinterred.
They were struck down in their turn by the kings of Babylonia, who
established the second Chaldean kingdom about the year 625, but only to
give place to the Persians under Cyrus in the year 538, after little more than
a century of duration.
As in the Valley of the Nile, the first kingdom was established near the
mouths of the Euphrates, and flourished there for centuries before it was
superseded by the kingdom of Nineveh, in the same manner as Thebes had
succeeded to the earlier seat of power in the neighbourhood of Memphis.
Owing to the fortunate employment of sculptured alabaster slabs to line
the walls of the palaces during the great period of Assyrian prosperity, we
are enabled to restore the plan of the royal palaces of that period with
perfect certainty, and in consequence of the still more fortunate introduction
of stone masonry during the Persian period—after they had come into
contact with the Greeks—we can understand the construction of these
buildings, and restore the form of many parts which, being originally of
wood, have perished. The Plains of Shinar possessed no natural building
material of a durable nature, and even wood or fuel of any kind seems to
have been so scarce that the architects were content too frequently to resort
to the use of bricks only dried in the sun. The consequence is that the
buildings of the early Chaldeans are now generally shapeless masses, the
plans of which it is often extremely difficult to follow, and in no instance
has any edifice been discovered so complete that we can feel quite sure we
really know all about it. Fortunately, however, the temples at Wurka and
Mugheyr become intelligible by comparison with the Birs Nimroud and the
so-called tomb of Cyrus, and the palaces of Nineveh and Khorsabad from
the corresponding ones at Susa and Persepolis. Consequently, if we attempt
to study the architecture of Chaldea, of Assyria, or of Persia, as separate

styles, we find them so fragmentary, owing to the imperfection of the
materials in which they were carried out, that it is difficult to understand
their forms. But taken as the successive developments of one great style, the
whole becomes easily intelligible; and had the southern excavations been
conducted with a little more care, there is perhaps no feature that would
have been capable of satisfactory explanation. Even as it is, however, the
explorations of the last fifteen years have enabled us to take a very
comprehensive view of what the architecture of the valley of the Euphrates
was during the 2000 years it remained a great independent monarchy. It is a
chapter in the history of the art which is entirely new to us, and which may
lead to the most important results in clearing our ideas as to the origin of
styles. Unfortunately, it is only in a scientific sense that this is true. Except
the buildings at Persepolis, everything is buried or heaped together in such
confusion that the passing traveller sees nothing. It is only by study and
comparison that the mind eventually realises the greatness and the beauty of
the most gorgeous of Eastern monarchies, or that any one can be made to
feel that he actually sees the sculptures which a Sardanapalus set up, or the
tablets which a Nebuchadnezzar caused to be engraved.
Owing to the fragmentary nature of the materials, it must perhaps be
admitted that the study of the ancient architecture of Central Asia is more
difficult and less attractive than that of other countries and more familiar
forms. On the other hand, it is an immense triumph to the philosophical
student of art to have penetrated so far back towards the root of Asiatic
civilisation. It is besides as great a gain to the student of history to have
come actually into contact with the works of kings whose names have been
familiar to him as household words, but of whose existence he had until
lately no tangible proof.
In addition to this it must be admitted that the Assyrian exploration
commenced in 1843 by M. Botta, at Khorsabad, and brought to a temporary
close by the breaking out of the war in 1855, have added an entirely new
chapter to our history of architecture; and, with the exception of that of
Egypt, probably the most ancient we can ever now hope to obtain. It does
not, it is true, rival that of Egypt in antiquity, as the Pyramids still maintain
a pre-eminence of 1000 years beyond anything that has yet been discovered
in the valley of the Euphrates, and we now know, approximately at least,
what we may expect to find on the banks of that celebrated river. There is
nothing certainly in India that nearly approaches these monuments in