Page:History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 1.djvu/298

 2^6 GRECIAN ARCHITECTURE. Part I. took to prevent tlieir being mistaken for one. The porticoes of two of them are on different levels, and the third or caryatide porch is of a different height and different style. Every one of these features is perfectly symmetrical in itself, and the group is beautifully balanced and arranged ; and yet no Gothic architect in his wildest moments could have conceived anything more picturesquely irregular than the whole becomes. Indeed there can be no greater mistake than to suppose that Greek arcliitecture was fettered by any fixed laws of formal symmetry: each detail, every feature, every object, such as a hall or temple, which could be considered as one complete and se]iarate whole, was perfectly symmetrical and regular ; but no two buildings — no two apartments — if for different purposes, were made iS??ilJ 157. View of Erechtheium. (From In wood.) to look like one. On the contrary, it is (]uite curious to observe what pains they took to arrange their buildings so as to produce variety and contrast, instead of formality or singleness of effect. Temples, when near one anotlicr, were never placed ])arallel, nor were even their propylfea and adjuncts ever so arranged as to be seen together or in one line. The Egyptians, as before remarked, had the same feeling, but carried it into even the details of the same building, Avhich the Greeks did not. In this, indeed, as in almost every other artistic mode of exjn-ession, they seem to have hit exactly the happy medium, so as to ]»roduce the greatest harmony with the greatest variety, and to satisfy the minutest scrutiny and the most refined taste, while their buildings produced an immediate and striking effect on even the most careless and casual beholders.