Читать книгу The Englishman's House: A Practical Guide for Selecting and Building a House онлайн

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Proceeding from the teachings of nature, the Greeks learned gradually to introduce new types, consistent in the main with the original mode, but of great variety in detail. By further refinement of this, but close adherence to the facts or the analogies of nature, the Grecian art became developed in the invention of other Orders, the names of which are sufficiently known to all interested in architecture. Limited space prevents our entering into a class of analyses of the characteristics of each. Little doubt exists of the Doric Order having been the first produced, and following it were the Ionic, Corinthian, Composite, and Tuscan, which constitute the five Orders in general of architecture.

Perhaps the best epoch of ancient architecture was that during which, subsequent to the battle of Marathon, the Greeks commenced to rebuild the remains of Persian buildings, and to re-construct Athens. The ruins of this period yet with us, attest the advance which Grecian architectural art had attained. The ingenuity and refinement of Greek art gradually spread to Rome, the Romans adopting the Doric Order under the modification known as the Tuscan. The art having been introduced into Etruria by the Pelasgi, under the celebrated Augustus, Rome attained that magnificence which has ever since rendered its name famous as a seat of the arts. Amongst the great erections of this period was the Pantheon, one of the grandest efforts of genius that the world has yet known. Under subsequent emperors architecture also progressed, and the name of Trajan is identified with the erection of triumphal arches, &c., the ruins of which still receive the admiration of every qualified judge in art.