Page:History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 1.djvu/281

 Bk. III. Ch. II. DORIC ORDER. 249 in the Parthenon, it certainly is as complete and as perfect an archi- tectural feature as any style can boast of. When first introduced from Ef>"ypt, it, as before stated, partook of even more than Egyj^tian solidity, but by degrees became attenuated to the weak and lean form of the Roman order of the same name. Woodcut No. 135 illustrates the three stages of progress from the oldest example at Corinth to the order as used in the time of Philip at Delos, the intermediate being the culminating point in the age of Pericles : the first is 4-47 diameters in height, the next 6*025, the last 7015; and if the table were filled up with all the other examples, the gradual attenuation of the shaft would very nearly give the relative date of the example. This fact is in itself sufficient to i-efute the idea of the pillar being copied from a wooden post, as in that case it would have been slenderer at first, and would gradually have departed from the wooden form as the style advanced. This is the case in all carpentry styles. With the Doric order the contrary takes place. The earlier the example the more unlike it is to any wooden original. As the masons advanced in skill and power over their stone material, it came more and more to resemble posts or pillars of wood. The fact appears to be that, either in Egypt or in early Greece, the pillar was originally a pier of brickwork, or of rubble masonry, supporting a wooden roof, of which the architraves, the triglyphs, and the various parts of the cornice, all bore traces down to the latest period. Even as ordinarily represented, or as copied in this country, there is a degree of solidity combined with elegance in this order, and an exquisite proportion of the parts to one another and to the work they have to perform, that command the admiration of every person of taste ; but, as used in Greece, its beauty was very much enhanced by a number of refinements whose existence was not suspected till lately, and even now cannot be detected but by the most practised eye. the archilrave. But even then it is only of the same tliioliness as the beam. In fact tlaere is no difficulty in recognizing the difference between a carpentry and a masonry form. An abacus is as absurd with the former as it is indispensable with the latter ; and of course those who used squared timbers for the roof would not employ unhewn trunks of trees for the supports. On the architrave beam rest the raft- ers, and on these the pin-lins — in India generally ?, inches square, and spaced a foot or 18 inches apart, according to the length of the tiles used. Sometimes one thickness of tiles is employed, and a lay- er of concrete above; sometimes two, sometimes three thicknesses of tiles, but the timber construction is the same in all cases. The one great point to insist upon, however, is that an abacus never was used, and never could have been sug- gested from a timber post or pillar. Tim- ber forms are generally very easily traced, as they are in the roof, but not in the pillars of Doric temples. The base which was afterwards ap- plied by the Romans, probably was sug- gested by the shoe, which in certain sit- uations is a necessary part of a wooden post; but the origin of this feature is probably to be found in Assyria, though in a very different form to that of the Roman order. Its absence in the Grecian Doric is another argument in favor of the masonry origin of ihe pillar in that or- der.