'I'wo rows of stately days, on either hand, In sculptur'd gold and labour'd silver stand.
These Vulcan form'd with art divine, to wait, Immortal guardians. at Alcinous' gate, . Alive each animated frame appears, And still to live beyond the power of years.
Pair thrones within from space to space were rais'd, Where various carpets with enproid erv blaed, The work of matrons : these the prin. cess.prest, Day following day, a long continued feast, Refulgent pedestals the walls surround, Which boys ofgold with flaming torches crown'd.
: However, these representations of ani mals were not employed as columns to support an entablature, but merely as or naments.
In Stewart's antiquities of Athens, we find a most beautiful specimen of Caryatic figures supporting an entablature, con sisting of an architrave cornice of a very elegant profile. Among tbe,Roman an tiquities, there are likewise to be found various frag:ments of male figures, which may be conjectured, from their attitudes and ornaments, to have been the supports of the entablatures of buildings.
Besides Persians and Caryatides, it is sometimes customary to support the en tablatures with figures, of which the up per part is the head and breast of the hu man body., and the lower part an invert ed frustrum of a square pyramid, with the feet sometimes projecting out below, as if the body had been partly cased: figures of this form are called terms or ternuni, which owe their origin to the stones used by the ancients in marking out the limits of property belongingto individuals. Nu ma Pompilius, in circler to render these boundaries sacred, converted the Teimi nus into a deity, and built a temple on the 'I'arpe;an Mount, which was dedicated to him, whom he represented by a stone, which, in course of time, IVIS sculptured into the form of a human head and should ers, and other parts, as has already been defined. He was on particular occasions adorned with garlands, with which he ap peared of a very pleasant figure. Persian figures are generally charged with a Do ric entablature ; Caryatic figures with Ionic or Corinthian, or with an Ionic archi trave cornice ; and the Termini with an entablature of any of the three Grecian orders, according as they themselves are decorated.. Male figures may be intro duced with propriety in arsenals or galle ries of armour; in guard rooms, and other military places, where they rrught repre Gent the figures of captives, or else of martial virtues, such as Strength, Valour, 1Visdom, Prudence, Fortitude, and the like. As these irtres should be of a
striking character, they may be of any co lossal size that will agree with the archi tecture of the other parts of the building's. In composing Caryatides, the most grace ful attitudes and pleasant features should Ise chosen : and, to prevent stiffness, their drapery and features should be varied from each other, in the different figures of the range ; yet a general form of figure should be preserved throughout the whole of them.
Caryatides should always be of a mode rate size, otherwise they might appearhi deous to the fair sex, and destroy those endearments so fascinating in the sex re presented by them. They may be em ployed, as Le Clerc observes, to sustain the covering of a throne, and represented under the figures and symbols of heroic virtues : if to adorn a sacred building, they must have an affinity to religion; and, when placed in banqueting rooms, ball rooms, or other apartments of recreation, they should be of kinds proper to inspire mirth and promote festivity. As Termini are susceptible of a variety of decorations, they may be employed as embellishments for gardens and fields, representing Jupi ter as protector of boundaries, or some of the rural deities, as I'an, Flora, Pomo na, Vertumnus, Ceres, Priapus, Faunus, Sylyanus, Nymphs, and Satyrs.
They are also much employed in chim mey-pieces, and other interior composi tions.
Order* above Orders. When two or more orders are placed one above the other, the laws of solidity require that the strongest should be phicedlowermost ; and also, that their axes should be in the same vertical lines. When the columns of the orders are of the same diameter, their altitudes increase from the. Tuscan, Doric, and Ionic, to the Corinthian ; and, consequently, in this progression, the Tus can is stronger than the Doric, the Doric stronger than the Ionic, and the Ionic stronger than the Corinthian: therefore, if the Doric be the lowest order, the Ionic is the succeeding order; and if there be s third order, the Corinthian is in conse quence the next. But since the different stories of a building should rather he of a decreasing progression upwards, than even of an equal altitude to each other, it follows that the superior columns should not only be diminished, in order to lessen the insisting weightfrom the inferior, but also to accommodate the heights of win dows.