To elucidate this part of our subject at all satisfactorily would require a great number of drawings; accordingly we must make shift as well as we can without them, leaving the student to turn to other works for examples,—should he, as we trust he will, have imbibed from our remarks any relish for the study of the Orders by accurate comparison of various examples of one and the same Order. Neither the Romans nor their modern successors appear to have comprehended the genius of the Ionic Order any more than of the Doric. Their best imitations, both of the one and the other, were of but a bungling kind. They certainly had no great affection for either, for we find comparatively very few instances of them in Roman remains. As treated by them, the Ionic capital was not only greatly impoverished, but deformed also,—impoverished by the volutes being greatly reduced in size, and consequently in importance also, as characteristic marks of the Order,—and deformed, owing to the tasteless treatment of it in other respects. Instead of the gracefully flowing _festoon_ hem, or mouldings over the echinus, which seems to connect the two volutes or sides of the face of the capital together, there is a straight line without any moulding to it, and the echinus, projecting before it, produces an appearance of clumsiness—of the several members not being properly adjusted to each other. As in all the Greek examples, the echinus of the capital, which passes behind the volutes, is invariably carved with that sort of pattern which workmen call ‘eggs and darts,’ _ova_ or egg-shaped ornaments, almost naturally resulting from the contour of the moulding before it is cut; and the echinus of the Ionic, being always so carved, is on that account distinguished by the name of _ovolo_,—not because its section or profile is any portion of an oval or elliptic curve; for among other things the Roman style differs from the Greek in having all its moulding, both convex and concave, formed of portions of circles, by which its details become less elegant in contour. But we cannot enter into such niceties in a mere rudimentary work. Even in the best Roman and modern examples, the volutes are decidedly inferior to Greek, being comparatively tame and meagre, yet coarse also. Italian Architects have sometimes made them so small and insignificant that they give scarcely any character to the capital, or render it distinguishable, at a little distance, from the Doric, its general mass being no greater. The spiral makes fewer revolutions, and the _hem_ or moulding which forms it is flat, as is also the inter-spiral or general surface of the volute, which has never any secondary spirals upon it, though that and the _intervolute_ are sometimes enriched with foliage.