“The third species, which is called Corinthian, resembles in its character the graceful and elegant appearance of a virgin, in whom, from her tender age, the limbs are of a more delicate form, and whose ornaments should be unobtrusive. The invention of the capital of this order is said to be founded on the following occurrence: A Corinthian virgin, of a marriageable age, fell a victim to a violent disorder. After her interment her nurse, collecting in a basket those articles to which she had shown a partiality when alive, carried them to her tomb, and placed a tile on the basket for the longer preservation of its contents. The basket was accidentally placed on the root of an acanthus plant, which, pressed by the weight, shot forth, toward spring, its stems and large foliage, and in the course of its growth reached the angles of the tile, and thus formed volutes at the extremities. Callimachus, who for his great ingenuity and taste was called by the Athenians Catetechnos, happening at this time to pass by the tomb, observed the basket and the delicacy of the foliage which surrounded it. Pleased with the form and novelty of the combination, he constructed from the hint thus afforded columns of this species in the country about Corinth.” The comments of Sir Henry Wotton in his “Elements of Architecture,” written in England during the latter part of the sixteenth century, upon this legendary account of the source of the three orders given by Vitruvius, are sufficiently attractive and quaint in language and spelling to warrant their being quoted also: “The Dorique order is the gravest that hath been received into civil use, preserving in comparison of those that follow a more _masculine aspect_ and little trimmer than the Tuscan that went before, save a sober garnishment now and then of _lions’ heads_ in the _cornice_ and of _triglyph_ and _metopes_ always in the _frize_.... To discern him will be a piece rather of good _heraldry_ than of _architecture_, for he is knowne by his place when he is in company and by the peculiar ornament of his _frize_, before mentioned, when he is alone.... The _Ionique order_ doth represent a kind of feminine slenderness; yet, saith Vitruvius, not like a housewife, but in a decent dressing hath much of the _matrone_.... Best known by his trimmings for the bodie of this _columne_ is perpetually _chaneled_, like a thick-pleighted gowne. The _capitall_, dressed on each side, not much unlike women’s wires, in a spiral wreathing, which they call the _Ionian voluta_.... The _Corinthian_ is a columne lasciviously decked like a courtezan, and therefore in much participating (as all inventions do) of the place where they were first born, Corinth having beene, without controversie, one of the wantonest towns in the world.”