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When the Roman architecture was to be restored, the able men (and they were many, who undertook to gather its rules) had before them two different sources; the preserved remains of Roman building, and the didactic book of the Roman architect Vitruvius; both highly valuable, each highly assisting to the other, and yet in various instances, discordant, and both together abounding with uncertainties and difficulties. Vitruvius lived with Horace and Virgil and Livy, in the best days of the Roman style, in every line, when taste was fresh from Greece; and he followed mostly Grecian writers. The buildings, furnishing example, were of different ages; and, among the most splendid, were found considerable differences, from Vitruvius, and from one another. But Vitruvius, writing for his own times, and using the technical terms then familiar, but wanting explanation for times when they would cease to be in common use, his work abounds with phrases, the exact value of which is no longer to be clearly ascertained. Many eminent architects therefore, in the early days of the revival of the art, Palladio, Scrfio, Vignola, Scamozzi, Alberti, and others publishing their ideas on the subject, differed greatly, even about the most important proportions of the orders; and Bramante and Michael Angelo, who preceded them, and Bernini and others who followed, have shown, in their works,

still other differences; all, however, conforming to principles of ancient Roman design, and adapting them generally with taste and judge.

ment.

By these able men beautiful edifices were raised in various parts of Italy; while the style, mixed of corrupt Plantagenet architecture and abortive Roman, as barbarous, as truly Gothic as the coarsest Saxon or Norman, prevailed in England. But, when classical learning flourished, when Homer and Sophocles, and Virgil and Horace were extensively read, when Shakespear had written, and Milton was writing, such a style could not hold public favor. An architect of genius only was wanting to lead the public taste at once to better things, and such a man arose in Inigo Jones.

This elegant designer began his course in the ill-mingled school of James the first's time. His talents appear to have gained him early fame; and saint John's college at Oxford, and Sherborne-house in Gloucestershire, and some others, defective as the style is, show ideas above his masters. But, fortunately, the way to Italy was no longer shut, as it had been. A disposition in the crown toward the Roman church, threatening to the civil interests, as well as the established religion of the country, favored the advancement of the fine arts. Jones, going to Italy, presently gave his former ideas

of design to the winds. Studying in the schools already formed there, and diligently observing what was best of Roman antiquity remaining, he returned to England fraught with conceptions, for which he found the public mind fortunately prepared; and, under his lead, the general architectonic taste reverted nearly to what it had been, in the time of the Cæsars. Then every intervening style, the later Roman, the Saxon and Norman, the best of what arose under the Plantagenet reigns, and that worst, which followed under Elizabeth and James, were condemned together, under one general term of reproach, GOTHIC

Jones appears to have had a finer feeling for simple elegance, and simple grandeur, than any, moderns, or perhaps even ancients, from whose works he gained his taste. He delighted in powerful effects of light and shade, produced by simple combinations of well-proportioned forms, and, in that kind of architectonic beauty, which, in his cotemporary poet's phrase,

Appears; when unadorn'd, adorn'd the most.

His design of Covent-garden square, with its church, is an eminent example of this; which, no doubt, would have been more perfect, had the existing relics of the best early Grecian architecture been known to him. His southern front of (Somerset-house, however differing in little matters

of form, was, in taste, purely Attic. Its destruction is ill compensated by any architectonic merit in the expensive building by which it has been superseded; where, in the northern front especially, small and highly wrought ornaments (elegant, be it admitted, if in fit place) have been intruded, far more to the architect's benefit, in his per-centage, than to any good effect in the building; which, in incongruous situation, stands, like an athletic courtier, in superb and delicate attire, waiting, among a dirty crowd, in a dirty street, distressed for want of his coach.

LETTER XXI.

Roman Architecture in England.-Wren.-Saint Paul's

Cathedral.

I REMEMBER it the remark of a very acute critic, at Rome, of very extensive observation, and long experience, that, to lead the public taste from right to wrong requires a superiority of talent; and that, accordingly, they were three very able men, who overbore, in Italy, the fine taste introduced by the Medicis, with their Michael Angelos and Raphaels. You will probably be aware that he adverted to Pietro da Cortona for painting, Bernini for statuary, and Borromini for architecture. Possibly also you may remember the story told of Bernini, returning, in elderhood, from France to Rome, with a very considerable fortune. Curious to look around the works he had executed in his early days, he expressed great delight at the view of his statue of saint Bibicua; gratified with assurance, which his eyes gave to his now mature judgement, that he had ever done any thing so truly good, and deserving to earn him fame with posterity; adding however, "But if I had always wrought in this style, I "should have remained a beggar."

Already, in Italy, the fine taste of the Medici age had given way to the genius of fortune-hunting

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