gether, and the admirable aptitude both of the whole, and of the parts, for their purposes (exclusively of the celebrated mechanism of the roof) deserves perhaps more the attention of the curious critic, and of the discerning student in architecture, than any other building of that university, of date posterior to the disuse of the Plantagenet style.

Vanbrugh, who succeeded Wren in eminence and public favor, had a bold, inventive genius, not under coercion of any pure taste. Like Borromini, he would scorn what before had been most approved, and supersede it by a style wholly his own; not meretricious, however, like Borromini's, and delicately curled, but, on the contrary, though hardly less fantastical, yet mas

sive and masculine.

Whatever merit was in Vanbrugh's works, (and merit I readily allow) a continuance of public' predilection for them could not have failed to produce a style altogether vicious, when his genius ceased to direct. English architecture therefore, in my opinion, has no small obligation to lord Burlington; who had influence to lead back the public taste to the Italian of the Medicean age, and its archetype the Roman of the Augustan. If Gibbs had as little genius as some have said, and as some of his works indeed indicate, it is highly to the credit of those models, which lord

Burlington recommended, that, through diligent study of them, such a man was inabled to design and execute one of the finest buildings of modern Europe, the church of saint Martin-in-the-fields.

Ir

LETTER XXIII.

Revival of Grecian Architecture.

seems to have been through lord Burlington's example and influence that a kind of fashion arose, among young men of rank and fortune in England, to direct their minds to architecture, so far as to aim at some critical skill in it. Notwithstanding that brutal arrogance of the Turkish government in its prosperity, which made access to those countries, where the fine arts attained their earliest and greatest excellence, difficult and dangerous, those countries had been explored by philosophers, but not by architects. That arrogance abating with the rapid decay of the overbearing vigor of the Turkish empire, those countries became more open to curiosity. What had been called the grand tour in foreign parts, for finishing the education, and completing the acquirements, of young men of rank and fortune, was extended; and, among others, the late earls of Sandwich

and Besborough stretched their travels into the Levant. A meeting, on their return, of many travelled young men, who fostered a love for the arts, produced the establishment of the society of Dilettanti, yet existing. It was not till after lord Burlington's death that Mr. Bouverie, Mr. Dawkins, and Mr. Wood, having explored the antiquities of Greece and Ionia, engaged in the bold undertaking of bringing to public knowledge the wonderful remains of Balbec and Palmyra, then of uncertain fame. About the same time a preference, in uncommon amount, of fancy and fame to ease and profit, urged the learned architect, James Stuart, to employ his extraordinary diligence and skill in a long, and sometimes hazardous, residence at Athens, to make those accurate delineations and descriptions of the best relics of antiquity there, through which they are now known to all the world.

The greatness, and richness, and altogether the splendor of the remains of Palmyra and Balbec, exhibited in the publication under Mr. Wood's direction, made the immediate impression on the public mind that might be expected. They produced a considerable degree of public favor for the style of those magnificent ruins; and some architects of the day, of considerable talents, fostered the taste. The temple of Balbec, or, in its Grecian name, Heliopolis, being of an earlier

age, is, in style, superior. Yet, in contemplating the buildings of Palmyra, under all the circumstances of the place and times, it may well be wondered, not that they exhibit a wide deviation from the purity of the early Grecian taste, but that, after so many centuries, and so many conquests and revolutions, in the establishment of a new capital of a new empire, very far from Greece, amid deserts of sand, the deviation from the purity of the early Grecian taste should not be wider; that not only most of the great principles of the best Grecian style were preserved, but very nearly the manner of application, and even all the ornamental forms; though too much deviating into a luxuriant delicacy, and a feminine profusion of decoration.

The work, which James Stuart lived to give to the world, did not immediately lay equal hold on the public fancy. But meanwhile the disposition to prosecute exploration continued to prevail; and three other works, exhibiting buildings of very different styles and distant ages, all highly interesting to the curious architect and every lover of architecture, resulted.

It appears, in this country, extraordinary, that in the fair region of Italy, and in that portion of it which formed the kingdom of a Bourbon prince, and scarcely sixty miles from his capital, were some of the most perfect and most in

teresting remains of ancient architecture, unknown to the curious of all Europe, till, about the time of which I have been speaking, they were brought to general knowledge by a British artist. The ruins of Pæstum, imperfectly given in Major's publication, now with great exactness in Wilkins's, first informed modern Europe what the very early style of Grecian architecture was.

About the same time two eminent men of the profession, brothers, engaged in the laborious and expensive adventure of exploring the style of the Roman empire in its decline, and giving it to the world, in their description and representations of the ruins of Diocletian's palace of Spalatro in Dalmatia. As Palmyra shows the last known great effort of the Grecian, so the buildings of Diocletian, at Rome and in Dalmatia, exhibit what was among the last of the Roman school.

It was not long after these exertions of individuals, in exploring and bringing to general knowledge the most magnificent relics of ancient building, that the society of Dilettanti, desirous of having that completed which yet remained imperfect, engaged the learned Dr. Chandler of Oxford to go, with two able artists, Revett and Pars, to investigate the ruins of that portion of the globe, singularly the nurse of science, and all the fine arts, the western coast of Asia Minor. Their publication, however, which followed, did