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the violence of corroding time. Sublime in native majesty, they tower above the boldest efforts of every succeeding race of mortals to rival them; and, while they fill us with awe and reverence, excite in us the utmost astonishment, that it was possible for mankind in the dawn of the arts to raise fabrics at once so lofty and so durable. Oriental ARCHITECTURE is deeply connected with Oriental HISTORY, since it was an immemorial custom throughout all the East for the captives, taken in battle, to be employed by the victor in erecting fabrics, the sculptured walls of which recorded his triumphs, while its costly decorations announced to posterity his riches and magnificence. The hieroglyphic sculptures on the sepulchral temple of Sesostris are direct proofs of this assertion. Some of the finest edifices of Persia were raised after the demolition of the Egyptian temples by Cambyses. Alexander, on his return from Persia, seems to have aimed at acquiring immortality by his stupendous efforts in architecture; and the barbarian Timur, in later periods, enriched the imperial city of Samarcand not less by the labour of Indian architects than the glittering spoils of the Indian metropolis. A retrospective history of architecture will also be useful to mark the progress of superstition, since

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the earliest created edifices bore impressed the marks of the reigning devotion. The subject, generally considered, opens a wide field for investigation, and I shall easily obtain the pardon of my readers for taking rather an extended review of it, for it is curious and interesting, perhaps, beyond most others in the whole range of antiquities. Let us, according to our usual method, commence our researches at the fountain-head of information; let us revert to periods, when as yet the cedar and the palm securely reared their lofty heads on the mountain, and the rude granite reposed undisturbed in the dark bosom of its native quarry.

Born in the deep shades of the forest, or nursed in the dreary solitude of caverns, which formed the first human habitations, mankind originally borrowed from them the mode of constructing houses for themselves, and erecting temples to the Deity. When chance, or necessity, led them from those lonely retreats into the open plains, they contrived huts, rudely formed of the branches of trees, of which the larger ends, set in a circular manner into the ground, and the superior extremities terminating at the top in the manner of a cone, or sugarloaf, gave the first idea of that pyramidal form of building, which, in regard to temples, the

solar superstition afterwards consecrated and rendered permanent and universal during many ages of barbarity and ignorance. Till then the human race, however exalted by the distinguishing and godlike attribute of reason, had not disdained to associate with the beasts of the desert; nor did they now refuse, in the infancy of science, to receive instruction from the provident martin, the swallow, and other feathered tenants of the woods, from which they issued, filling up the interstices of their brittle habitations with leaves and clay mingled together. Pliny, indeed, expressly affirms this of them; exemplo sumpto ab hirundinum nidis;* they copied the example of the swallows in building their nests.

When mankind increased in numbers and associated in larger bodies; when they found, their slender clay-fenced tenements totally un-, able to resist the violence of the contending elements, beaten to pieces by the driving storm, or deluged by torrents of descending rain; they formed the plan of erecting more substantial fabrics, and the solid trunks of trees were, by their increasing knowledge in mechanics, torn with violence from the earth, for the purpose of constructing, for themselves, a more secure

*Plinii Nat. Hist. lib. vii. cap. 56.