The debt of gratitude, therefore, which posterity has owed the originators in ancient Greece of the three noble orders of architecture—namely, the Doric, Ionic and Corinthian—can scarcely be overestimated, for it is to those three orders or styles that all subsequent architects have turned for the fundamental truths of their art. They may not have followed each or all with conventional strictness; but they have not succeeded in escaping from borrowing many of the features there everlastingly fixed by the unerring geniuses of classic times. “Famous Greece! That source of art, and cultivated thought, Which they to Rome, and Romans hither brought.” The uses to which the Greek and Roman architectural forms, principles and ornaments have been put since the birth of the Renaissance have broadened largely, and would seem to preclude any possibility of their ever again falling into even partial desuetude. It is not only in the more pretentious buildings, monuments and ornamental structures that abound so plentifully in the populous and wealthy cities that classic models and features are so liberally employed, but even the unpretentious and simple rural homes cannot escape their use. What is more common than the Doric mutule or Corinthian modillion, so frequently seen in the cornices of modern houses, or the Ionic dentils that show their teeth below a piazza roof or over the door casing of a colonial dwelling? The various combinations of the fret, the egg and dart, the bead and fillet, the honeysuckle, the acanthus and many other Grecian _motifs_ of ornamentation, are met with constantly, not only in buildings of a public or private nature, but in furniture and fresco, in interior decoration, and in enhancing the attractiveness of almost any article of use or ornament. Even the simple ogee moulding, which is employed, if nowhere else, about the door panels of the humblest abode, is classic in its origin, and had its archetype in the entablatures of those stately and beautiful temples dedicated to the pagan gods of ancient Greece. It must not be inferred, however, that all the individual features employed in the Greek orders found their birth in the brains of Hellenic architects. Sir Jeremy Bentham says: “From Egypt arts their progress made to Greece, Wrapt in the fable of the Golden Fleece.”