Page 289 - Third Book of Reading Lessons

288 THIRD BOOK OF
primitive huts. The upright trees, with stones at each end, became the origin of columns, bases, and capitals; and the beams, joists, and ra ers, which rmed the covering, gave rise to architraves, iezes, and cornices.
3. The Greeks, whose genius prompted them to combine elegance and convenience, derived their ideas of building from the Egyptians. But the mind of man is in uenced by the government under which he lives : the Greeks lost, with their independence, the ascendancy in works of genius, and om that period the Romans encouraged this noble art. Vi­
truvius, the learned Roman architect, bad Julius C ­ sar and Augustus r his patrons, and though em­ ployed in w works of magni cence, his rules r ar­ chitecture were highly esteemed by the ancients, and are still a standard among the moderns. The Ro­ mans carried to the highest perfection the ve orders of architecture; the Tuscan, the oric, the Ionic, the Corinthian, and the Composite ; and though the mod­ erns have materially improved the general structure of buildings, nothing has been added to the beauty and symmetry of these columns.
4. To give an idea of the orders, it must be ob­ served that the whole of each is divided into two parts at least-the column and entablature; and of ur parts at most, when there is a pedestal under tbe column, and an acroterat, or little pedestal, sur­ rounded by the entablature: that the . column has three parts--the base, the sha , and the capital; the entablature has three likewise-the architrave, the ieze, and the cornice.
5. The Tu,scan order had its name and origin in Tuscany, rst inhabited by a colony om Lydia,