Architectural Development Abstractedly Considered.

may have affected them , they show us more the native uninfluenced character of early Asiatic architecture or a family likeness to the Pelasgian . We may note , unlike the monumental character of Egyptian architecture—the Assyrian and Persian was chiefly palatial . The Ionic forms are justly considered by some to be derived from Persepolitan ones .

It would be interesting to discover how far Assyrian and Persian elements moulded Grecian architecture ; and how far Egyptian features characterised it . as well as the extent of the influence which Lycian ancl Pelasgic forms had in giving Grecian expression . - The admixture of foreign elements confusedly , —without the concurrence of those princiles which are common

p to all styles , or the discretion necessary to their proper combination , and which principles must always direct architectural composition , —would be fraught with results much akin to some of our debased Elizabethan and Jacobean examples , or to the still worse attempts of the ¦ cinque-cents rococo productions of a Louis XIV and XV age .

These attempts , though entitled to be called styles , from the fact of their being the exponents of the disingenuousness and meretriciousness of their respective ages , will always be considered contemptible from the circumstance of their violating those canons of sound taste which have invariably moulded the finest and most distinctive developments of art .

True styles have always required time to acclimatise the _ foreign features they have adopted , as well as to nationalise them with the native elements to which they are united . Thus , the columnar ordinances the Eomans adapted from the Greeks , were gradually transmuted and localised : the masculine Doric of the Parthenon was attenuated and elaborated to the beautiful , though less majestic column seen in the Theatre of Marcellns ; the Grecian Ionic of the Erechtheium was modified to that of the Temple of Concord , though it lost in simplicity

and elegance ; the Corinthian of the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates was enriched and profusely elaborated as at the Pantheon and Temple of Jupiter Stater ; from the Corinthian the Eoman Composite order emerged , ivhich , though a combination , was yet a happy one , and deserves less the strictures of those who would concede no intrinsic merits to Eoman composition ; the Grecian colonnade

was Etruscanised , or Eomanised into the Arcade ; while the severe , simple , and rectangular temple , as the Parthenon , was transfigured into the Pantheon , and the super-eoluunliated Colosseum , in which the arch , dome , and a variety of plan ( truly national adaptations ) relieved the monotony of the beam system , and gave Eoman architecture a locality and a name . The multifarious

requirements of the Eomans needed a more varied architecture . Their temples , basilicas , amphitheatres , thenn _ s , & c , prove how they met these requirements , and how they nationalised their architecture . It must be forgetful of these to say they never possessed a truly national style , or that it lacked originality . Again , the Gothic and Lombard invaders of the Eoman

Empire nationalized to their own wants and tastes the arched system of their predecessors ; infusing into the enervated and expiring forms of Pagan art that Teutonic vigorousness which was destined to develops Mediajval Architecture . They eagerly seized on the arched features , and carried out what the Eomans themselves ivould have done , had they continued free from corruption , a distinct roundarched st

- yle . From the time of Justinian , in the 6 th century , the Byzantine became more distinct and individualized as an Eastern style allied to the Greek Church ; and from Charlemagne ' s accession to the Empire of the West , in the Sth century , the western varieties ofthe Eomanesque had received various local expressions . « Even the intermixture of race , which the Astro-Gothic nations created under Theodoric the Great ' s monarchy after the extinction of the Western Empire , in the latter part of the Sth century , was not destructive to that

indigenousness of character , if we may so call it , which pervaded the Scandinavian and Teutonic races no less than their architecture ; the Roman elements of which , like the old institutions , being preserved under Theodoric ' s rule . The Western styles of the Visigoths also retained the native peculiarities of their several countries , though compounded with new features : Voluntary

native growth , then , is an essential ingredient of national styles , as it is in a language or a literature , and hence the assertion we previously made , that a true style must be a " spontaneous , indigenous development out of preceding styles , " is confirmed , though some may have misinterpreted it . Indeed , we may say that it is to the want of an indigeneous character we must attribute the

debasement of art of the 16 th century , or to a national disaffection . Neither fusion of styles , nor the emanations of creative fancy alone , will ever realize a style adapted to the present day , any more than hasty fusion of different languages or dialects , or the effusions of one or two gifted imaginations , would realise a new language or literature .

What would become of our architecture , for instance , if one were to mix Egyptian with Gothic features ; another , Grecian with Chinese ; a third , Egyptian with Moorish or Italian ? We leave our readers to guess . Creative fancy—though the life of a style , an element in design which counteracts an overdue attachment to literalism or undue imitation , and gives a charm to

many an otherwise prosaic structure , as it sparkles in many a poem , or glows in many a romance—is like the oxygen we breathe , and requires to be kept in check by combination with other elements of an antagonistic kind , to subserve the requirements of a national architecture so essentially utilitarian as our own . Hence the hypothesis may be assumed that architectural design , to be really flexible and expressive of our wants , should represent the various constituent qualities of a nation ' s character : that they should be translated

into those material forms of beauty and of expression , which aptly utter its sentiments , and which a style of art should embody and convey in proper proportions . The undue prominence of any one of these is destructive , as representing only one section or element of national character ; in other words , as this character is the joint effect of many opposite moral and intellectual qualities ,

so a national architecture is the joint result of the like dispositions translated into the language of art . To make a style too versatile , is to destroy its claims to be called one—a certain share of individuality and homogeneity being necessary . The Saracen style , in which creative ancl poetic fancy had more play than any otherstill shows in all its varieties a directing spirit as

, well as the association of local elements . The Syrian and Egyptian developments , derived more or less from the Byzantine , are less distinctive than subsequent ones , though the latter style shows in its later forms of the 13 th and 14 th centuries , as seen in the mosques of Cairo , distinctive peculiarities . The Persian and Indian varieties of the 14 th and 15 th

centuries exhibit a still more advanced stage , though the earlier germs of the former are not to be traced , early Persian architecture having been of a temporary natuz-e . During the 14 th , 15 th , and 16 th centuries , mosques arose out of the zeal of the devotees of Ali and his martyred sons , in which a greater luxuriance of fancy and richness of colouring wore manifested . The Indian development

£ > roduced tombs and mosques in which no Arabic elements are discernible ; the conquerors of this country being of the Tartar race , infused a Tartar character into the old local Hindu style , thereby giving it an individual peculiarity . In Spain the phase it assumed was , perhaps , more characterised by fertility of imagination ; but even here it was controlled by conventional treatment , by Eoman and Byzantine influences , and by local habits—the pointed arch seldom occurring in Southern parts .