doubtless intended by their number and their decorations to designate the seven planets, rose gradually one above the other on the ascent of the hill, so that the battlements of each appeared distinctly over those of the next in order; those battlements were entirely painted over with various colours: the first was white from the basis of the battlement, the second was black, the third was stained of a purple colour, the fourth was of sky-blue, and the fifth of a deep orange; but the two innermost walls were most gloriously decorated, for the battlements of that nearest the palace were covered with burnished gold, and the next to it with plates of silver. That the sun was symbolized by the circular wall of gold, and the moon by that adorned with silver, cannot possibly be doubted, when we consider, that in the cave of Mithra, first instituted in the Median mountains, the orbs of the sun and moon were formed of these metals, and that the chemist at this day designates these planets by the same colours: nor can we hesitate to pronounce that the planets, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, were in like manner intended to be typified by the remaining walls, respectively adorned with white, black, purple, blue, and orange, although the reason of their using those particular tints

may not be so immediately apparent.* But if this account of Herodotus be true, it seems to evince, that the ancients had the knowledge of the true or Pythagorean system of the universe, which places the sun in the centre, 700 years before the birth of Christ, the period when Dejoces flourished, and demonstrates in what region, viz. the higher Asia; and of what venerable race of sages, I mean the philosophers of the old Chaldean, Persian, and Brahmanian, schools Pythagoras obtained those profound stores of knowledge which rendered him so illustrious in Greece, and have crowned his name with such deserved immortality. Although the colours, above enumerated, are not exactly the colours of the different planets, as marked down by modern astronomers, yet the circumstance of their being thus denoted, proves that they had so nicely observed their aspects as to have distinguished a variety in the colour of the light of all of them; a variety scarcely discernable, but by the nicest inspection, except in the instance of the ruddy Mars. The real colours of the remaining planets are stated by Huygens and other astronomers, to be as follows: the orb of Saturn has a bluish cast, and it is remarkable that Sani is thus depicted by the

* Herodoti lib. i. p. 47. Edit. Stephani.

Indians; Jupiter appears of pure white; Venus, however brilliant, is not without a tinge of yellow; and Mercury is marked by dazzling radiance tinged with light blue.

We come now to consider the style of the columns of the ancient temples.

Trunks of trees, I have observed, rudely, if at all sculptured, placed perpendicularly, and ranged in regular rows to imitate groves, with other trunks of trees placed upon them transversely, formed the first temples. Such were the earliest columns architecture could boast; such was the most ancient unadorned roof. By degrees that roof received the impression of the graver's instrument, was adorned with stars and other sculptures, symbolical of the host of heaven; and was painted of a sapphire blue, to imitate the colour of the cloudless sky. The ponderous mis-shapen columns, also, which supported that roof, began gradually to receive the polish which art bestows, and the beauty which just proportion imparts. The wonderful fabric of man himself, according to Vitruvius,* impressed upon the first Greek architects the charms of that proportion, and the several orders originated in the contemplation and imitation of the mode adopted by the Almighty

*See Vitruvius de Architectura, lib. iv. cap. I.

Architect himself. Taking the measure of the human foot, and finding it to be in length the sixth part of the height of the whole body of man, they fixed on that proportion for their columns, and made those of the DORIC order, the first invented, six times as high as the diameter, including the capital. The conception was in every respect accurately just; for, indeed, man may be truly denominated a noble column, of which the square base of his feet forms the pedestal; his body the shaft; his head the capital; and thence it arose that an order, having the proportion, strength, and beauty, of the human body, was universally introduced into the more substantial edifices of the ancients.

pro

Such is the account which Vitruvius gives us of the origin of the first of the Grecian orders, denominated Doric, from Dorus, the son of Hellen, who erected at Argos a temple to Juno, having columns regulated by this line of portion. The genius of Greece was distinguished by elegance; that of Egypt by magnificence. Different, however, as was the style of their architecture, there are evident outlines of all the Grecian orders in the different temples of Egypt, whither the Greeks are known successively to have travelled to improve themselves in every branch of those sciences for which the

Egyptians were so renowned. What they saw they accurately copied, they highly improved, and their writers have too succcessfully laboured to make their borrowed excellencies pass upon posterity for genuine inventions of their own. Dorus flourished about the year, before Christ, 1000; but there is scarcely a temple in Upper Egypt fabricated in so late a period. Thebes and her hundred portals, the vast labyrinth with its twelve palaces and its three thousand chambers, incrusted with sculptured marble, the great statue of Memnon, together with innumerable pyramids and obelisks of exquisite beauty scattered over the face of a country, for its prodigies of every kind the envy and wonder of the world, were at that moment standing, proud testimonies of the architectural skill of the old Egyptians. There is every reason, therefore, to think that the hypothesis, upon which the Grecian architecture was formed, was already known in Egypt, and that they were fully acquainted with, though they could not always adopt, the most exact rules of elegant proportion. But farther, when, on inspecting the superb ruins of the temples of Essnay and Komombu, (engraved in this volume,) we find them adorned with columns and capitals very nearly resembling those of their most