in the Egyptian modes. The whole history of taste, even as touched upon in these pages, favors this slow and native growth of an art among every people remarkable for its successful cultivation. The three orders--the Doric, the Ionic, and the Corinthian, exhibit also this gradual process of discovery and advance to perfection. It is historically, as well as poetically true, that ----First, unadorn'd, And nobly plain, the manly Doric rose; The Ionic then with decent matron grace Her airy pillar heaved; luxuriant last The rich Corinthian spread her wanton wreath. The character of genius in Greece likewise favors these views, more exquisitely alive to beauty, to propriety, to decorous simplicity and grandeur, than distinguished for those qualities that more decisively belong to invention--fire, impetuosity, wild irregularity, or rude majesty. Neither then were the primitive elements invented, and thence without aid of more ancient knowledge, the orders or systems of architecture brought to perfection in Greece; nor was any one of these introduced wholly or at once in a state approaching to perfect symmetry and arrangement. In this, as in all their arts, no less than in their literature, the Greeks borrowed, imitated, selected,--and yet they created--they assimilated discordant variety to one solemn breathing harmony--they brought out every latent germ of beauty that lay overwhelmed in the mass of more ancient thought. From the dark yet mighty accumulations of Eastern knowledge and skill, their genius spake forth that light and that perfection which, in human wisdom and taste, still guides, corrects, and animates. Yet their improvements were but so many--important indeed--intermediate gradations in the universal system of obligation which nations owe to each other. But while sound judgment constrains the rejection of the exclusive pretensions of the Greek writers on the particular subject in question, it must be confessed there is in these something more than pleasing. They are not selfish; they are deeply connected with the sympathies and the feelings--the truest, best associations in objects of art. Though we find all the elements of composition in Egyptian architecture, and must believe that the Greek orders were in their origin thence derived; yet the very idea, that the sedate grandeur of the Doric borrowed its majesty from imitation of man's vigorous frame and decorous carriage; or that the chaste proportions of the graceful Ionic were but resemblances of female elegance and modesty,--the belief of all this, so carefully cherished, was calculated to produce the happiest effect upon living manners. So also, though the origin of the Corinthian capital is apparent in an object emblematic over the whole East, and not unknown even in some Christian forms, the mysterious lotus, whose leaves so frequently constitute the adornment of the Egyptian column; still, how dear to the heart the thought of most perfect skill