of the
famous work of Stuart and Revett on "The Antiquities of Athens," in
1762, that the world was made familiar with the external expressions
of Greek Architecture. This publication at once created a curious
revolution in the practice of architecture,--a revolution extending in
its effects throughout Europe. A fever arose to reproduce Greek temples;
and to such an extent was this vacant and thoughtless reproduction
carried out, that at one time it bid fair to supplant the older
Renaissance. The spirit of the new Renaissance, however, was one of mere
imitation, and had not the elements of life and power to insure its
ultimate success. No attempt was made to acclimate the exotic to suit
the new conditions it was thus suddenly called upon to fulfil; for the
_sentiment_ which actuated it, and the Love with which it was created,
were not understood. It was the mere setting up of old forms in new
places; and the Grecian porticos and pediments and columns, which were
multiplied everywhere from the models supplied by Stuart and Revett,
and found their way profusely into this New World, still stare upon us
gravely with strange alien looks. The impetuous current of modern life
beats impatiently against that cumbrous solidity of peristyle which
sheltered well in its day the serene philosophers of the Agora, but
which is now the merest impediment in the way of modern traffic and
modern necessities. But presently the spirit of formalism, engendered by
the old Renaissance, took hold of the revived Greek lines, and
stiffened them into acquiescence with a base mathematical system, which
effectually deprived them of that life and reproductive power which
belong only to a state of artistic freedom. They were reduced to rule
and deadened in the very process of their revival.

So the Greek Ideal, though strangely transplanted thus into the noise of
modern streets, was not awakened from its long repose by the clatter and
roaring of our new civilization. As regarded the uses of life, it still
slept in petrifactions of Pentelic marble. And when those petrifactions
were repeated in modern quarries, it was merely the shell they gave; the
spirit within had not yet broken through.

Greek lines, therefore, owed their earliest revival to the vagaries of a
capricious taste, and the desire to give zest to the architecture of the
day by their novelty. It was not for the sake of the new life there was
in them, and of that pliable spirit of refineme