is by no means an unwarrantable license, for had no greater liberty been taken with the Orders and the modes of applying them, they would have remained comparatively quite pure. In apology for the plinth beneath a base, it may be said to produce a pleasing agreement between both extremities of the column,—in the Doric Order at least, where the square plinth beneath the circular torus of the base answers to the square abacus (which is itself another plinth, though differently named) placed upon the circular echinus of the capital. Passing over several particulars which our confined limits will not permit us to notice, we may remark, that if greatly altered, not to say corrupted, from its primitive character, the Doric Order, as treated by the moderns, has been assimilated to the other Orders,—so much so as, though still differing from them in its details, to belong to the same general style. One advantage, if no other, of which is, that it may, should occasion require, be used along with the other Orders; whereas the original or Grecian Doric is so obstinately inflexible that it cannot be made to combine with any thing else, or to bend to modern purposes. So long as a mere portico or colonnade, and nothing more, is required, backed by a wall unperforated by windows, its character and characteristic system of intercolumniation can be kept up, but no longer; or if it is to be done, it is more than has yet been accomplished. Nothing could be more preposterous, or show greater want of proper æsthetic feeling, or greater disregard of æsthetic principles, than the attempt to combine, as was done by Nash in the Park façade of Buckingham Palace, a Grecian Doric Order with a Corinthian one. So totally irreconcileable are the two _styles_, that it was like placing Tudor or florid Perpendicular Gothic upon the early Lancet style. Besides, in that instance, the Doric, though affecting to be Greek, was depravated most offensively, as may still be seen in what is now left in the two low wings, the architrave and frieze being thrown together into one blank surface. TUSCAN ORDER. [Illustration]