For more than two successive centuries, the history of the art would conduct to consideration of the labours of the Greek princes in the East, when Asia received back the early information given to Europe. How vast the interval of obligation! But of all the labours of those times, great as they must have been, when one alone of the Seleucidan dynasty founded forty cities, only a few remains in Ionia, with one or two in Greece, are known, or have been explored. To this period are doubtless to be referred ruins in the Greek style, said to exist in Syria and Persia, while, as already noticed, the Romans justly claim those more commonly visited; but over all these hangs an obscurity perhaps now impenetrable. Innovations upon the severe purity of ancient taste were now certainly introduced; still the art had not suffered any lapse; the essential principles appear to have been fully understood, and sufficiently respected. This, indeed, is the case, to a degree of veneration not generally supposed, at least in the remains of Asia Minor, while now, in complete possession of a new and mighty element of design--the arch; never before had architecture exhibited so great capabilities, or powers adequate to the most gigantic works, whether of use or magnificence. In this state the art passed into the hands of the Romans, when universal conquest had left them masters of the world. Thence commences a new era in the history of architecture, distinguished, however, rather by new applications than by fresh inventions. The art continued essentially Greek, for, though to the Etruscans, and subsequently to the early Romans, an order has been ascribed, no specimen of this Tuscan capital has come down to our times, and consequently there exist no means of tracing the narrative or descriptions of Vitruvius. But by the account even of this native writer, the public buildings of the regal and consular times were rude enough, exhibiting a state of the science as already described among the early nations of the East--vertical supports of stone, with wooden bearers. This continued to be their style of design and practice, till extending empire brought the Romans acquainted with the arts of the Dorian settlements on the east and southern shores of Italy. The situation of the capital, however, distant from accessible materials, the simplicity--not to say homeliness of manners--and the constant bent of the national genius towards foreign conquest, at first denied power to profit by accession of science, or subsequently diverted attention away from its pleasures and its advantages. Down to the conquest of Asia and the termination of the republic, Rome continued a 'city of wood and brick.' Only with the establishment of the empire and the reign of Augustus, with the wealth of the world at command, and the skill of Greece to direct the application, commences the valuable history of architecture among the Romans.