AR HITECTURE, HISTORY OF. The origin of civil architecture, or architecture properly so called, is commonly derived from the building of huts in a conical form, spread ing wide at the bottom, and joining in a point at the top, the whole being covered with reeds, leaves, &a. But whatever may have been the form of the first buildings, there is no doubt that the making of regular habitations was one of the first things which suggested to the reason of man ; for we find that Cain, the son of Adam, built a city. Tents, or tem porary residences, which were only suited to such as lead a wandering life, were not in vented before the time of Jubal, the son of Tubal Cain ; since that time, the Tartars have followed the practice, and the original inhabit ants of Amenca did the same. Every nation, in proportion to the degree of civilization which it has attained, has shown a disposition to ex ercise their ingenuity in the construction of their residences. Among the Egyptians, this art was carried to an extraordinary degree of perfection. Their pyramids, labyrinths, and some ruins of their palaces and other edifices, are still to be seen and admired as stupendous monuments of their industry, perseverance, and skill. Near Andera, in Upper Egypt, are the ruins of a palace of gray ceilings of which are supported by columns of such thickness, that four Men can scarcely span them. The grand hall is 112 feet long, 60 high, and 58 broad. The roof of the whole edifice is a terrace, on which once stood an Arabian village. The Babylonians and Per sians vied with the Egyptians, both in the grandeur and splendour of their buildings, as may be judged from the ruins still remaining. A staircase was to be seen some time ago, having 95 steps of white marble still standing, so broad and flat, that 12 horses might con veniently go abreast.
As these vast structures were not fitted for the general convenience of mankind, we must look to the Greeks for the art of architecture as it has since been exercised. From the sim ple construction of wooden huts, Vitruvius supposes the orders of architecture took their rise. When buildings of wood were super seded by solid and stately edifices of stone, they imitated the parts which necessity had in. traduced into the primitive huts ; so that the upright trees, with the atones at each extremi ty of them, were the origin of columns, bases, and capitals; and the beams, joists, rafters, and the materials which formed the covering, gave birth to architraves, friezes, triglyphs, cor nices, with the corona, mutules, and dentiles. To bring all these several parts
to the state of perfection at which they arrived, was the work of long experience and much reasoning, aided by the Invention of many tools. The Greeks improved upon the works of the Egyptians, so as to render them, if not so durable, at least more ornamental, and per haps more really serviceable. The construction of arches was unknown to the ancient As syrians and Babylonians. The roofs of their halls were flat, and covered with prodigiously large stones, some of them large enough to cover the whole room. They had but they were ill proportioned, and the capitaLs, were badly executed. The art of proportion ing the various parts of a building belongs, in a peculiar to the Greeks, from whom we derive the three principal orders : at the same time it must not be denied, that the Jew ish nation had earlier examples of such propor tion; and that, in all probability, the Greeks took their idea of a regular order in architec ture from the temple of Solomon.
In the Doric Order, which is so called from Dorus, the son of Helens, and grandson of Deucalion, the column approaches very nearly to the proportions of those to be found in Solo. mon's temple. This order was firstemployed by Dorus in the building of a temple at Argos, in honour of Juno, and was formed according to the proportions between the foot of a man and the rest of his body, reckoning the foot to be the sixth part of a man's height: they gave to a Doric column, taking in its chap six of its diameters ; that is to say, they it six times as high as it was thick, but they afterwards added a seventh diameter. The Ionic Order, which takes its name from the Ionians, in Upper Asia, was formed ac cording to the proportions of a woman ; linking the height of the column to be eight times greater than the diameter. They also made channeling in the trunk, to imitate the folds in the dress of a woman and by the vo lutes in the cliapiter they represented that part of the hair which hung in curls on each side of the face; besides, the Ionians added abase to their column, which the Dorians originally had not.