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A

ENCYCLOPÆDIA

OF

ARCHITECTURE.

BOOK I.

HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE.

CHAP. I.

ON THE ORIGIN OF ARCHITECTURE.

SECT. I.

WANTS OF MAN, AND FIRST BUILDINGS.

1. PROTECTION from the inclemency of the seasons was the ancestor of architecture. Of ttle account at its birth, it rose into light and life with the civilisation of mankind; and, roportionately as security, peace, and good order were established, it became, not less than its sisters, painting and sculpture, one method of transmitting to posterity the degree of importance to which a nation had attained, and the moral value of that nation amongst the kingdoms of the earth. If the art, however, be considered strictly in respect of its actual utility, its principles are restricted within very narrow limits; for the mere art, or rather science, of construction, has no title to a place among the fine arts. Such is in various degrees to be found among people of savage and uncivilised habits; and until it is brought into a system founded upon certain laws of proportion, and upon rules based on a refined analysis of what is suitable in the highest degree to the end proposed, it can pretend to no rank of a high class. It is only when a nation has arrived at a certain degree of opulence and luxury that architecture can be said to exist in it. Hence it is that architecture, in its origin, took the varied forms which have impressed it with such singular differences in different countries; differences which, though modified as each country advanced in civilisation, were, in each, so stamped, that the type was permanent, being refined only in a higher degree in their most important examples.

2. The ages that have elapsed, and the distance by which we are separated from the nations among whom the art was first practised, deprive us of the means of examining the shades of difference resulting from climate, productions of the soil, the precise spots upon which the earliest societies of man were fixed, with their origin, number, mode of life, and social institutions; all of which influenced them in the selection of one form in preference to another. We may, however, easily trace in the architecture of nations, the types of three distinct states of life, which are clearly discoverable at the present time; though in some cases the types may be thought doubtful.

B

SECT. II.

ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF BUILDING.

3. The original classes into which mankind were divided were, we may safely assume, those of hunters, of shepherds, and of those occupied in agriculture; and the buildings for protection which each would require, must have been characterised by their several occupations. The hunter and fisher found all the accommodation they required in the clefts

and caverns of rocks; and the indolence which those states of life induced, made them insensible or indifferent to greater comfort than such naturally-formed habitations afforded. We are certain that

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thus lived such tribes. Jeremiah (chap. xlix. 16.), speaking of the judgment upon Edom, says. "O thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, that holdest the height of the hill:" a text which of late has received ample illustration from travellers, and especially from the labours of Messrs. Leon de Laborde and Linant, in the splendid engravings of the ruins of Petra (fig. 1.). To the shepherd, the inhabitant of the plains wandering from one spot to another, as pasture became inadequate to the support of his flocks, another species of dwelling was more appropriate; one which he could remove with him in his wanderings: this was the tent, the type of the architecture of China, whose people were, like all the Tartar races, nomades or scenites, that is, shepherds or dwellers in tents. Where a portion of the race fixed its abode for the purposes of agriculture, a very dif ferent species of dwelling was necessary. Solidity was required as well for the personal comfort of the husbandman as for preserving, from one season to another, the fruits of the earth, upon which he and his family were to exist. Hence, doubtless, the hut, which most authors have assumed to be the type of Grecian architecture.

Fig. 1.

4. Authors, says the writer in the Encyc. Methodique, in their search after the origin of architecture, have generally confined their views to a single type, without considering the modification which would be necessary for a mixture of two or more of the states of mankind; for it is evident that any two or three of them may co-exist, a point upon which more will be said in speaking of Egyptian architecture. Hence have arisen the most discordant and contradictory systems, formed without sufficient acquaintance with the customs of different people, their origin, and first state of existence.

5. The earliest habitations which were constructed after the dispersion of mankind from the plains of Sennaar (for there, certainly, as we shall hereafter see, even without the evidence of Scripture, was a great multitude gathered together), were, of course, proportioned to the means which the spot afforded, and to the nature of the climate to which they were to be adapted. Reeds, canes, the branches, bark, and leaves of trees, clay, and similar materials would be first used. The first houses of the Egyptians and of the people of Palestine were of reeds and canes interwoven. At the present day the same materials serve to form the houses of the P'eruvians. According to Pliny (1. vii.), the first houses of the Greeks were only of clay; for it was a considerable time before that nation was acquainted with the process of hardening it into bricks. The Abyssinians still build with clay and reeds. Wood, however, offers such facilities of construction, that still, as of old, where it abounds, its adoption prevails. At first, the natural order seems to be that which Vitruvius describes in the first chapter of his second book. "The first attempt," says our author, "was the mere erection of a few spars, united together with twigs, and covered with mud. Others built their walls of dried lumps of turf, connected these walls together by means of timbers laid across horizontally, and covered the erections with reeds and boughs, for the purpose of sheltering themselves from the inclemency of the seasons. Finding, however, that flat coverings of this sort would not effectually shelter them in the winter season, they made their roofs of two inclined planes, meeting each other in a ridge at the summit, the whole of which they covered with clay, and thus carried off the rain." The same author

afterwards observes, "The woods about Pontus furnish such abundance of timber, that they build in the following manner. Two trees are laid level on the earth, right and left. at such distance from each other as will suit the length of the trees which are to cross and

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stices, which the thickness of the trees alternately leave, is filled in with chips and mud. On a similar principle they form their roofs, except that gradually reducing the length of the trees which traverse from side to side, they assume a pyramidal form. They are covered with boughs, and thus, after a rude fashion of vaulting, their quadrilateral roofs are formed." The northern parts of Germany, Poland, and Russia still exhibit traces of this method of building, which is also found in Florida, Louisiana, and elsewhere, in various places. See fig. 2.

6. We shall not, in this place, pursue the discussion on the timber hut, which has certainly, with great appearance of probability, been so often said to contain within it the types of Grecian architecture, but shall, under that head, enlarge further on the subject.

SECT. III.

DIFFERENT SORTS OF DWELLINGS ARISING FROM DIFFERENT OCCUPATIONS.

7. The construction of the early habitations of mankind required little skill and as little knowledge. A very restricted number of tools and machines was required. The method of felling timber, which uncivilised nations still use, namely, by fire, might have served all purposes at first. The next step would be the shaping of hard and infrangible stones into cutting tools, as is still the practice in some parts of the continent of America. These, as the metals became known, would be supplanted by tools formed of them. Among the Peruvians, at their invasion by the Spaniards, the only tools in use were the hatchet and the adze; and we may fairly assume that similar tools were the only ones known at a period of high antiquity. The saw, nails, the hammer, and other instruments of carpentry were unknown. The Greeks, who, as Jacob Bryant says, knew nothing of their own history, ascribe the invention of the instruments necessary for working materials to Dædalus; but only a few of these were known even in the time of Homer, who confines himself to the hatchet with two edges, the plane, the auger, and the rule. He particularises neither the square, compasses, nor saw. Neither the Greek word npwv (a saw), nor its equivalent, is to be found in his works. Daedalus is considered, however, by Goguet as a fabulous person altogether, the word meaning, according to him, nothing more than a skilful workman, a meaning which, he observes, did not escape the notice of Pausanias. The surmise is borre out by the non-mention of so celebrated a character, if he had ever existed, by Homer, and, afterwards, by Herodotus. The industry and perseverance of man, however, in the end, overcame the difficulties of construction. For wood, which was the earliest material, at length were substituted bricks, stone, marble, and the like; and edifices were reared of unparalleled magnificence and solidity. It seems likely, that bricks would have been in use for a considerable period before stone was employed in building. They were, probably, after moulding, merely subjected to the sun's rays to acquire hardness. These were the materials whereof the Tower of Babel was constructed. These also, at a very remote period, were used by the Egyptians. Tiles seem to have been of as high an antiquity as bricks, and to have been used, as in the present day, for covering roofs.

8 The period at which wrought stone was originally used for architectural purposes is

quite unknown, as is that in which cement of any kind was first employed as the medium of uniting masonry. They were both, doubtless, the invention of that race which we have mentioned as cultivators of land, to whom is due the introduction of architecture, properly so called. To them solid and durable edifices were necessary as soon as they had fixed upon a spot for the settlement of themselves and their families.

9. Chaldæa, Egypt, Phoenicia, and China are the first countries on record in which architecture, worthy the name, made its appearance. They had certainly attained considerable proficiency in the art at a very early period; though it is doubtful, as respects the three first, whether their reputation is not founded rather on the enormous masses of their works, than on beauty and sublimity of form. Strabo mentions many magnificent works which he attributes to Semiramis; and observes that, besides those in Babylonia, there were monuments of Babylonian industry throughout Asia. He mentions λόφοι (high altars), and strong walls and battlements to various cities, as also subterranean passages of communication, aqueducts for the conveyance of water under ground, and passages of great length, upwards, by stairs. Bridges are also mentioned by him (lib. xvi.). Moses has preserved the names of three cities in Chaldæa which were founded by Nimrod (Gen. x. 10.). Ashur, we are told, built Nineveh; and (Gen. xix. 4.) as early as the age of Jacob and Abraham, towns had been established in Palestine. The Chinese attribute to Fohi the encircling of cities and towns with walls; and ja respect of Egypt, there is no question that in Homer's time the celebrated city of Thebes had been long in existence. works in India are of very early date; and we shall hereafter offer some remarks, when speaking of the extraordinary monument of Stonehenge, tending to prove, as Jacob Bryant supposes, that the earliest buildings of both nations, as well as those of Phoenicia and other countries, were crected by colonies of some great original nation. If the Peruvians and Mexicans, without the aid of carriages and horses, without scaffolding, cranes, and other machines used in building, without even the use of iron, were enabled to raise monuments which are still the wonder of travellers, it would seem that the mechanical arts were not indispensable to the progress of architecture; but it is much more likely that these were understood at an exceedingly remote period in Asia, and in so high a degree as to have lent their aid in the erection of some of the stupendous works to which we have alluded.

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10. The art of working stone, which implies the use of iron and a knowledge of the method of tempering it, was attributed to Athôthis, the successor of Menes. It seems, however, possible that the ancients were in possession of some secret for preparing bronze tools which were capable of acting upon stone. Be that as it may, no country could have been called upon earlier than Egypt to adopt stone as a material, for the climate does not favour the growth of timber; hence stone, marble, and granite were thus forced into use; and we know that, besides the facility of transport by means of canals, as early as the time of Joseph waggons were in use. (Gen. xlv. 19.) We shall hereafter investigate the hypothesis of the architecture of Greece being founded upon types of timber buildings, merely observing here, by the way, that many of the columns and entablatures of Egypt had existence long before the earliest temples of Greece, and therefore that, without recurrence to timber construction, prototypes for Grecian architecture are to be found in the venerable remains of Egypt, where it is quite certain wood was not generally employed as a material, and where the subterranean architecture of the country offers a much more probable origin of the style.

CHAP. II.

ARCHITECTURE OF VARIOUS COUNTRIES.

SECT. I.

DRUIDICAL AND CELTIC ARCHITECTURE.

11. If rudeness, want of finish, and the absence of all appearance of art, be criteria for judgment on the age of monuments of antiquity, the wonderful remains of Abury and Stonehenge must be considered the most ancient that have preserved their form so as to indicate the original plan on which they were constructed. The late Mr. Godfrey Higgins a gentleman of the highest intellectual attainments, in his work on the Celtic Druids (pub lished 1829), has shown, as we think satisfactorily, that the Druids of the British Isles were a colony of the first race of people, learned, enlightened, and descendants of the persons who escaped the deluge on the borders of the Caspian Sea; that they were the earliest occupiers of Greece, Italy, France, and Britain, and arrived in those places by a route nearly

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