the Orders freely; or perhaps still better, had they worked out ideas of their own for columns and entablatures, whenever they had occasion for them either as matters of necessity, or as mere decoration. Had the Italians allowed themselves greater latitude in that respect, they would, in all probability, have been far less licentious upon the whole than they frequently were, and their buildings would have been more homogeneous—more of a piece. But they must, forsooth, be Doric, Ionic, or Corinthian, ofttimes all the three at once, and a very great deal else into the bargain. Therefore the affecting to retain the ancient Orders in their purity served no other purpose than that of making all the more evident how completely their first intention and character had been lost sight of. The clinging with scrupulous punctilio to what had become dead-letter forms after the system which had produced them had been abandoned and exchanged for another and widely different one, was merely superstition and pedantry. It might show acquaintance with traditional learning and the writings of Vitruvius; but it also showed dulness of æsthetic feeling, or, what is not much better, deficiency of æsthetic power. There was, however, one mode of applying columns, which, although generally regarded as the most licentious and unorthodox,—nay, even preposterous, because quite contrary to all classical practice and precedent,—has at least one propriety, that of being rational, since columns there officiate as columns—as real supports; whereas in a great deal of Modern Architecture that is admired for the correct taste it displays, columns and their entablatures are mere expletives, instead of actual component parts of the fabric, and simulate a mode of construction neither required for nor practised in the fabric itself. The particular mode here alluded to is that in which arches are not only introduced together with columns, but the arches and columns are so indissolubly married together that they cannot be divorced, inasmuch as the arches are supported by the columns themselves, the former springing immediately from the capitals of the latter.[7] Such combination, it might be supposed, would be gladly admitted as sufficiently legitimate, both because in accordance with rational architectonic principles, and because it greatly extends the resources of the Art; nevertheless, such is the omnipotence of prejudice, that instead of being welcomed and adopted by us, it has been decried as a barbarism. As an irresistible and crushing argument against it, we are told that columns were not _originally_ intended to be so applied;—admirable logic, truly! There are a great many other things besides columns which have in course of time come to be applied to uses not originally contemplated. In regard to that combination of columns and arches according to which the latter spring immediately from the others, and are supported by them, there are two questions: