In all matters of importance, in which the works of previous writers have been used, the sources have been indicated, so that reference to the originals may be made. Upon the celebrated work of Rondelet above mentioned, on many learned articles in the Encyclopédie Méthodique, and on the works of Durand and other esteemed authors, large contributions have been levied; but these citations, it will be observed, appear for the first time in an English dress. In that part of the work which treats of the doctrine of arches, the chief materials, it will be seen, have been borrowed from Rondelet, whose views the author has adopted in preference to those he himself gave to the world many years ago, in a work which passed through several editions. Again, in the section on shadows, the author has not used his own treatise on Sciography. In the one case, he is not ashamed to confess his inferiority in so important a branch of the architect's studies; and in the other, he trusts that matured experience has enabled him to treat the subject in a form likely to be more extensively useful than that of treading in his former steps. The sciences of which an architect should be cognisant are enumerated by Vitruvius at some length in the opening chapter of his first book. They are, perhaps, a little too much swelled, though the Roman in some measure qualifies the extent to which he would have them carried. "For," he observes, “in such a variety of matters" (the different arts and sciences) “it cannot be supposed that the same person can arrive at excellence in each.” And again: "That architect is sufficiently educated whose general knowledge enables him to give his opinion on any branch when required to do so. Those unto whom nature hath been so bountiful that they are at once geometricians, astronomers, musicians, and skilled in many other arts, go beyond what is required by the architect, and may be properly called mathematicians in the extended sense of that word." Pythius, the architect of the temple of Minerva at Priene, differed, however, from the Augustan architect, inasmuch as he considered it absolutely requisite for an architect to have as accurate a knowledge of all the arts and sciences as is rarely acquired even by a professor devoted exclusively to one. In a work whose object is to compress within a comparatively restricted space so vast a body of information as is implied in an account of what is known of historical, theoretical, and practical architecture, it is of the highest importance to preserve a distinct and precise arrangement of the subjects, so that they may be presented to the reader in consistent order and unity. Without order and method, indeed, the work, though filled with a large and valuable stock of information, would be but an useless mass of knowledge. In treating the subjects in detail, the alphabet has not been made to perform the function of an index, except in the glossary of the technical terms, which partly serves at the same time the purpose of a dictionary, and that of an index to the principal subjects noticed in the work. The following is a synoptical view of its contents, exhibiting its different parts, and the mode in which they arise from and are dependent on each other. [A List of the Contents was here inserted.] Perfection is not attainable in human labour, and the errors and defects of Without deprecating the anger of the critic, or fearing what may be urged "Si quid novisti rectius istis September 30, 1842. J. G. ADVERTISEMENT. GWILT'S ENCYCLOPÆDIA, first published in 1842, has now passed PATERNOSTER Row: June 1888. |