The revolutions in Greece, which abolished the regal, while they respected and increased the pontifical authority, the gradual additions of magnificence and convenience to the places of sacrifice, producing at length the regular temple; the change of design from the circle to the quadrangle; all these can now only be conjectured as to their causes and progressive vicissitudes. One thing appears certain, that the earliest approaches to the perfect temple were erections of wood; and this materially contributed to fix the character of later architecture: yet there still remain temples of stone, whose date transcends the epochs of known history. During this interval, Grecian architecture assumed regularity and science, for the earliest dawnings of authentic information light us to monuments of a systematic style, differing from the Egyptian in the rejection of all variety of ornament, yet, like it, solemn, massive, and imposing. This is the order which, subsequently, under the name of Doric, extended over the whole of Greece and her colonies. To this the most ancient species of the art, various origin has been assigned; but from our imperfect knowledge of contemporary events, and from the impossibility of extending research, it is plain that nothing can with certainty be known. The most ably supported, but not less improbable theory, is that of Dr Wilkins, already referred to, who supposes the order to have been directly introduced from Syria, and Solomon's temple; his reasonings and calculations on this subject present a rare combination of ingenuity, learning, and practical science. The premises, however, are assumed, namely, that the word translated 'chapiter' in the common version of the book of Kings, means not only the capital, but includes the entablature also; a gratuitous assumption, opposed by the dimensions still visible in the parent source of Egyptian columns, and which, even granted, would not prove an identity in purpose and proportion with the Greek order. The hypothesis of Vitruvius is fanciful, namely, that the proportion of the human foot to the height of the body, was adopted as the rule for the proportion of the base to the elevation of the column. The most probable view seems to be, that this order sprung up as the fruit of continued observation on the practice of Egyptian art, as compared with the methods of wooden erection employed among the early Greeks themselves. This would necessarily give an intermediate style in simplicity and lightness; the pine, common in the ancient forests of Greece, truncated for any purpose, gives at once a very near approximation to the shaft; the same tree converted into a squared beam, gives the horizontal binding or architrave; the merely ornamental or subordinate members would be suggested in progressive operations of experience, or they might be introduced by selection; for, as already noted, every ornament of succeeding art, though not under the same combinations, is to be found