Page:Repository of Arts, Series 1, Volume 01, 1809, January-June.djvu/339



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HISTORY OF THE USEFUL AND POLITE ARTS. (Continued from page 201.)

no nation that ever existed has architecture been indebted for so many improvements, as to the Greeks. What furnished them with the first hints for these improvements, we have not, at this remote period, the means of ascertaining. The nations whom we have already mentioned, were ignorant of the method of constructing arches; the roofs of all their halls were flat, and covered with stones of such prodigious size, that a single one was often sufficient to cover a whole room. Their manner of building was also destitute of what we call taste; the columns were ill proportioned, and their capitals executed in the most wretched manner imaginable.

This was observed by the Greeks, who improved upon the proportions formerly used, and were the inventors of three of the five orders of architecture, the Doric, the Ionic, and the Corinthian. The origin of the two first is related by Vitruvius; in addition to whose account it may be observed, that the volutes, which are the peculiar ornament of the Ionic capital, are by some said to represent natural curling down of a piece of bark from the top of a beam, which is supposed to have been the first kind of column. The Corinthian order was not invented till long after the others, and is reported to have taken its rise from the following accident: A basket had been set upon the ground, and covered with a square tile. A plant No. V. Vol. I. Nn