receding stylobate as a base
for the fluted columns, rising at regular distances in all their severe
proportion and matchless harmony, with their richly carved capitals
supporting an entablature of heavy stones, most elaborately moulded and
ornamented with the figures of plants and animals; and rising above
this, on the ends of the temple, or over a portico several columns deep,
the pediment, covered with chiselled cornices, with still richer
ornaments rising from the apices and at the feet, all carved in white
marble, and then spread over an area larger than any modern churches,
making a forest of columns to bear aloft those ponderous beams of stone,
without anything tending to break the continuity of horizontal lines, by
which the harmony and simplicity of the whole are regulated! So
accurately squared and nicely adjusted were the stones and pillars of
which these temples were composed, that there was scarcely need even of
cement. Without noise or confusion or sound of hammers did those
temples rise, since all their parts were cut and carved in the distant
quarries, and with mathematical precision. And within the cella, nearly
concealed by surrounding columns, were the statues of the gods, and the
altars on which incense was offered, or sacrifices made. In every part,
interior and exterior, do we see a matchless proportion and beauty,
whether in the shaft or the capital or the frieze or the pilaster or the
pediment or the cornices, or even the mouldings,--everywhere grace and
harmony, which grow upon the mind the more they are contemplated. The
greatest evidence of the matchless creative genius displayed in those
architectural wonders is that after two thousand years, and with all the
inventions of Roman and modern artists, no improvement has been made;
and those edifices which are the admiration of our own times are deemed
beautiful as they approximate the ancient models, which will forever
remain objects of imitation. No science can make two and two other than
four; no art can make a Doric temple different from the Parthenon
without departing from the settled principles of beauty and proportion
which all ages have indorsed. Such were the Greeks and Romans in an art
which is one of the greatest indices of material civilization, and which
by them was derived from geometrical forms, or the imitation of Nature.

The genius displayed by the ancients in sculpture is even more
remarkable than their skill in architecture. Sc