The skill and delicacy as well as the subtle appreciation of refinements of form and finish exhibited in the treatment of details such as those shown in our plates are almost beyond comprehension. The workmanship is so perfect that it is difficult to see how it could be improved upon. Stuart, in his account of the Parthenon, states that he found two stones, one merely laid upon the other in the stylobate of this building, which had been ground to so fine a joint that they had actually united and become one. The refinements in measurements are such that it has been asserted that a variation of one twentieth of an inch from the dimensions intended is all that need be allowed--the width of the two ends of the building agreeing to within this amount. The entasis of columns and curvature of what would ordinarily be straight lines is familiar to all students of architecture. Photographs of Greek architecture are by no means common or easy to obtain, and the subjects given as illustrations of the present issue of THE BROCHURE SERIES are presented, not as in the preceding numbers, either all from a single building, or of similar features from several buildings, but merely as fragments of detail, representing the period of Greek art when architecture and sculpture had reached their highest development. [Illustration: LVII. Capital from the Parthenon, Athens.] LVII. CAPITAL FROM THE PARTHENON, ATHENS. The Parthenon of Pericles was built on the site of an older temple as a treasury, and repository of the colossal statue of Athena, made by Phidias from gold and ivory. The Doric order, the capital of which is shown in our plate, needs no description here as probably no other single order is so generally known. After various transformations the building was blown up by the Venetians in 1687 and has since remained in ruins. [Illustration: LVIII. Capital from the Erechtheion, Athens.] [Illustration: LIX. Base from the Erechtheion, Athens.] [Illustration: LX. Capital of Anta, from the Erechtheion, Athens.] LVIII. CAPITAL FROM THE ERECHTHEION, ATHENS. LIX. BASE FROM THE ERECHTHEION, ATHENS. LX. CAP OF ANTA FROM THE ERECHTHEION, ATHENS. The Ionic order of the Erechtheion is the one which is best known and has been most frequently copied and adapted in modern work. It is at the same time the richest and most delicately refined of the Greek Ionic orders, and this is equivalent to saying of all orders whatsoever. This order of which the cap and base are given in our plates belongs to the north porch. There were two other fronts to the building which was, to all intents and purposes, three temples united in one. The famous caryatid porch faces the south, looking toward the Parthenon. [Illustration: LXI. Fragment from South Side of the Acropolis, Athens.] LXI. FRAGMENT FROM SOUTH SIDE OF ACROPOLIS, ATHENS. Although this fragment was found at some distance from the Erechtheion it is without much doubt a portion of that building.