The eternal durability to which, in all things, the hierarchy aspired, pointed out a style of architecture, especially in their sacred buildings, retaining, as most substantial, only the simplest forms and the largest masses. Hence, in these mysterious structures, whatever deficiency may be perceived in beauty or grace, is compensated by vastness and simplicity, the most powerful elements of the grand. In beholding these mighty fabrics, then, even laying aside the associations of unnumbered centuries, if neither the most refined nor agreeable emotions be experienced, the imagination is exalted to a high pitch of awe, astonishment, and admiration. Long withdrawing lines, unbroken surfaces, simple contours, immense blocks, even while the individual forms are destitute of proportion, harmony, or grace, will ever produce a solemn sublimity of effect. But it now occurs to inquire, before the merit of rational design can be granted, or these architectonic labours admitted among the works of genius,--Do these lofty effects arise from principle, or are they purely accidental? Are they the meditated results of science and taste, or are they merely inevitable consequences of the large and enduring style which the political system recommended? Upon the nature of the reply to these questions will, in a great measure, depend the rank of the Greeks, as original inventors and refiners of taste in architecture. Now, there can be no doubt that in these, to use Strabo's expression, 'barbarous monuments of painful labour,' the sublimity and imposing solemnity of the general effect is incidental, not inherent. It is the grandeur of mass, not of proportion. The imagination is subdued, indeed, by vastness, but neither is the fancy delighted by tracing a well preserved resemblance to any acknowledged prototype, nor is the judgment instructed by the contemplation of a harmony consistent in itself, though deriving its elements from no immediate source. We discover neither imitation nor creative taste, for imitation is ever destroyed by some monstrous incongruity, and originality becomes aimless through interminable variety of accessories. As a science, then, beyond the rules necessarily imposed by the leading intention of durability, we detect nothing in the architecture of Egypt like the universal harmony given to it in Greece. The same is the character of Indian art, with still more of incongruous union; for here the massive simplicity of the original, or at least earliest source, for so we have already shown Egyptian art to be, is broken down and loaded with frittered and pretending ornament, Syria, or the vast district lying between, furnishes nothing beyond conjecture, or rather in the only instance, that of Solomon's labours, where we attain some information on which implicit reliance may be placed--clear manifestations are discovered of mixed art, in which that of Egypt predominated. Thus, in the whole