along the sides of the stone wall which obviously gave the
idea of the common architectural scroll to abut a tower.

By surrounding ourselves with the original circumstances
we invent anew the orders and the ornaments of architecture,
as we see how each people merely decorated its primitive
abodes. The Doric temple preserves the semblance of the
wooden cabin in which the Dorian dwelt. The Chinese pagoda
is plainly a Tartar tent. The Indian and Egyptian temples
still betray the mounds and subterranean houses of their
forefathers. "The custom of making houses and tombs in
the living rock," says Heeren in his Researches on the
Ethiopians, "determined very naturally the principal
character of the Nubian Egyptian architecture to the
colossal form which it assumed. In these caverns, already
prepared by nature, the eye was accustomed to dwell on
huge shapes and masses, so that when art came to the
assistance of nature it could not move on a small scale
without degrading itself. What would statues of the usual
size, or neat porches and wings have been, associated with
those gigantic halls before which only Colossi could sit
as watchmen or lean on the pillars of the interior?"

The Gothic church plainly originated in a rude adaptation
of the forest trees, with all their boughs, to a festal
or solemn arcade; as the bands about the cleft pillars
still indicate the green withes that tied them. No one
can walk in a road cut through pine woods, without being
struck with the architectural appearance of the grove,
especially in winter, when the barrenness of all other