On approaching this Court, the visitor will at once notice a new architectural element--as useful as it is beautiful--namely, the ARCH, a feature that has been found susceptible of the greatest variety of treatment. Until within the last few years the credit of the first use of the arch as an _architectural principle_ has been given to the Greek architect under Roman rule, but discoveries in Egypt, and more recently in Assyria by Mr. Layard and M. Botta, have shown that constructed and ornamented arches were frequently employed in architecture many hundred years before the Christian era. It is to be observed that architecture and sculpture had no original growth at Rome, and were not indigenous to the soil. Roman structures were modifications from the Greek, adapted to suit the requirements and tastes of the people; and thus it happened that the simple severity, purity, and ideality of early Greek art degenerated, under the Roman empire, into the wanton luxuriousness that characterised its latest period. In comparing the Greek and Roman statues, we remark a grandeur of conception, a delicacy of sentiment, a poetical refinement of thought in the former, indicative of the highest artistic development with which we are acquainted. When Greece became merely a Roman province, that high excellence was already on the decline, and the dispersion of her artists, on the final subjugation of the country by Mummius, the Roman general, B.C. 146, hastened the descent. A large number of Grecian artists settled at Rome, where the sentiment of servitude, and the love of their masters for display, produced works which by degrees fell further and further from their glorious models, until richness of material, manual cunning, and a more than feminine weakness characterised their principal productions; and the sculptor’s art became degraded into a trade, in which all feeling for the ancient Greek excellence was for ever lost. Thus, in the transplanted art of Greece, serving its Roman masters, a material and sensual feeling more or less prevails, appealing to the passions rather than to the intellects and high imaginations of men. The cumbrous dresses and armour which mark the properly Roman style, hide the graceful and powerful forms of nature under the symbols of station and office, creating a species of political sculpture. It is very curious and instructive to notice at a glance the high intellectual expression of the great men of Greece whose busts adorn the Greek Court, and to contrast their noble countenances with the material and sensual aspect of their conquerors, the Romans, who range peacefully close by: much of the past can be gleaned from such a comparison. [8] See “Handbook to the Roman Court,” by George Scharf, jun. [Illustration: Plan of the Roman Court.]