As for the Composite order, which, as has been already stated, is but a mixture of the Ionic and Corinthian, it would seem that Sir Henry has very little patience. He says with a contempt which he makes little effort to conceal: “The last is the _compounded order_, his _name_ being a briefe of his _nature_: for his pillar is nothing in effect but a _medlie_, or an _amasse_ of all the preceding _ornaments_, making a new kinde of stealth, and though the most richly tricked, yet the poorest in this, that he is a borrower of his beautie.” There are those who in relentless search for truth at the expense of sentiment and poetry would spoil the pretty story which Vitruvius tells of the invention of the Corinthian capital by claiming for Egypt the distinction of being the mother-country of the order, and ascribing to that form of the Egyptian capital that bells out toward the abacus, and which is surrounded by open lotus leaves, as the archetype of the last of the three Grecian orders. There is, however, more probability to the story of Callimachus than there is similarity between the Egyptian and Corinthian capitals, in our opinion. If we accept Callimachus as the originator of the Corinthian, although there does not appear any name of an architect to receive the individual credit for the invention of the Doric order, we may as well accept the deduction which Vitruvius draws in respect to Hermogenes, an Ionian architect, who is said to have flourished about 600 B.C., and credit him at the same time with being the first to introduce the feminine proportions and attributes into his art, and with having perfected, if he did not originate, the queenly Ionic order. “When Hermogenes was employed to erect the temple of Bacchus at Teos,” says Vitruvius, “the marble was prepared for one in the Doric style; but the architect changed his mind, from the idea that other proportions, afterward called Ionic, were more suitable for the purpose, almost inducing the inference that Hermogenes was the inventor of those delicate proportions; he appears unquestionably to have displayed great skill and ingenuity in all his designs, and to have entertained the opinion that sacred buildings should not be constructed with Doric proportions, as they obliged the adoption of false and incongruous arrangements.” Another fact which Vitruvius does not touch upon might tend to point to Hermogenes as the originator of the Ionic order. He was a native of Alabanda in Caria, and if it is true, as some authorities believe, the volute was an ornament in early use in Asia Minor, he was doubtless familiar with it; and, appreciating its graceful possibilities, introduced it into the matronly Ionic.