GLOSSARY, containing also LIST OF PRINCIPAL ARCHITECTS and their Works, &c. Perfection is not attainable in human labour, and the errors and defects Without deprecating the anger of the critic, or fearing what may be "Si quid novisti rectius istis P.S.-The author begs here to acknowledge the unremitting zeal of the 414. in fig. 582., letter A omitted at springing of arch inside, and letter B at the outside of the springing. 430. line 25. from bottom, for √49} × 49} +22 × 221=54}}}, read √49 × 49} + 22} × 22}= 54. 432. line 5., for BC, read DC. 432. line 4. from bottom, for √14207=119 ft. 2 in., read √14207=119 ft. 2 in. ENCYCLOPÆDIA OF ARCHITECTURE. BOOK I. HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. CHAP. I. ON THE ORIGIN OF ARCHITECTURE. SECT. I. WANTS OF MAN, AND FIRST BUILDINGS. Of 1. PROTECTION from the inclemency of the seasons was the mother of architecture. little account at its birth, it rose into light and life with the civilisation of mankind; and, proportionately as security, peace, and good order were established, it became, not less than its sisters, painting and sculpture, one method of transmitting to posterity the degree of importance to which a nation had attained, and the moral value of that nation amongst the kingdoms of the earth. If the art, however, be considered strictly in respect of its actual utility, its principles are restricted within very narrow limits; for the mere art, or rather science, of construction, has no title to a place among the fine arts. Such is in various degrees to be found among people of savage and uncivilised habits; and until it is brought into a system founded upon certain laws of proportion, and upon rules based on a refined analysis of what is suitable in the highest degree to the end proposed, it can pretend to no rank of a high class. It is only when a nation has arrived at a certain degree of opulence and luxury that architecture can be said to exist in it. Hence it is that architecture, in its origin, took the varied forms which have impressed it with such singular differences in different countries; differences which, though modified as each country advanced in civilisation, were, in each, so stamped, that the type was permanent, being refined only in a higher degree in their most important examples. 2. The ages that have elapsed, and the distance by which we are separated from the nations among whom the art was first practised, deprive us of the means of examining the shades of difference resulting from climate, productions of the soil, the precise spots upon which the earliest societies of man were fixed, with their origin, number, mode of life, and social institutions; all of which influenced them in the selection of one form in preference to another. We may, however, easily trace in the architecture of nations, the types of three distinct states of life, which are clearly discoverable at the present time; though in some cases the types may be thought doubtful. |