This, as already stated, is not entitled to rank as a distinct Order, being, in fact, nothing more than a simplified, if not a spurious and debased variety of the Doric. No authentic examples of it exist: it is known only from what Vitruvius says of it, following whose imperfect account, modern writers and architects have endeavoured to make out something answering to it. Yet what has been so produced is to all intents and purposes Doric,—though not Grecian Doric,—excepting that the shafts are unfluted and the frieze quite plain; which last circumstance, and much more, as has just above been intimated, is a mere trifling discrepancy, since not the triglyphs merely, but the frieze may, it seems, be omitted without thereby forfeiting the character of Doric for the Order. Though the Tuscan is spoken of, it is not practised. Almost the only example of what is called by that name in this country is Inigo Jones’s portico of St. Paul’s, Covent Garden, which, though not devoid of character and effect, is remarkable chiefly for the great width of the intercolumns, and the great projection of its very shallow, and therefore too shelf-like cornice, which, if no other part, must be admitted to differ widely from the comparatively slightly projecting and massive Doric cornice. The Tuscan has, however, been treated differently by different Architects, and some of them have given it what is merely a modification of the Doric cornice without its mutules. Their Tuscan becomes, in fact, very little more than a plainer sort of their own Doric, distinguished from it chiefly, and that only negatively, by the omission of triglyphs on the frieze. One thing which the Moderns have done, both in their Doric and their Tuscan, is to assimilate pilasters to columns, giving to the former precisely the same bases and capitals as the others have, and also generally diminishing their shafts in the same manner. Still all the differences here pointed out, together with many minor ones besides, do not constitute different Orders, unless they are to be multiplied by being subdivided into almost as many distinct Orders as there are varieties of one and the same class. All the Dorics and the Tuscan agree in having the _echino-abacus capital_. Therefore, if we want a quite different and distinct Order, we must turn, as we now do, to the _voluted-capital_ class of columns, or that which bears the name of the IONIC ORDER. [Illustration]