The fate of this order in the hands of the Romans was different from that of the other two. The Doric and Ionic orders had reached their acme of perfection in the hands of the Grecian artists, and seem to have become incapable of further improvement. The Corinthian, on the contrary, was a recent conception; and although nothing can surpass the elegance and grace with which the Greeks adorned it, the new capital never acquired with them that fulness and strength so requisite to render it an appropriate architectural ornament. These were added to it by the Romans, or rather perhaps by Grecian artists acting under their direction, who thus, as shown in Woodcut No. 181, produced an order which for richness combined with proportion and architectural fitness has hardly been surpassed. The base is elegant and appropriate; the shaft is of the most pleasing proportion, and the fluting gives it just the requisite degree of richness and no more; while the capital, though bordering on over-ornamentation, is so well arranged as to appear just suited to the work it has to do. The acanthus-leaves, it is true, approach the very verge of that degree of direct imitation of nature which, though allowable in architectural ornaments, is seldom advisable; they are, however, disposed so formally, and there still remains so much that is conventional in them, that, though perhaps not justly open to criticism on this account, they are nevertheless a very extreme example. [Illustration: 181. Corinthian Order. From the Temple of Jupiter Stator.] The entablature is not so admirable as the column. The architrave is too richly carved. It is evident, however, that this arose from the artist having copied in carving what the Greeks had only painted, and thereby produced a complexity far from pleasing. The frieze, as we now find it, is perfectly plain; but this undoubtedly was not the case when originally erected. It either must have been painted (in which case the whole order of course was also painted), or ornamented with scrolls or figures in bronze, which may probably have been gilt. The cornice is perhaps open to the same criticism as the architrave, of being over-rich, though this evidently arose from the same cause, viz., reproducing in carving what was originally only painted; which to our Northern eyes at least appears more appropriate for internal than for external decoration, though, under the purer skies where it was introduced and used, this remark may be hardly applicable. The order of the portico of the Pantheon is, according to our notions, a nobler specimen of what an external pillar should be than that of the Temple of Jupiter Stator. The shafts are of one block, unfluted; the capital plainer; and the whole entablature, though as correctly proportional, is far less ornamented and more suited to the greater simplicity of the whole.