It is important that an elementary treatise,—more particularly if it
profess to be a popular one, intended for the use of beginners as
well as for professional students,—should not only give rules, but
explain principles also; and unless the latter be clearly defined,
the memory alone is exercised, perhaps fatigued, owing to the former
being unsupported by adequate reasoning. To confine instruction to
bare matter-of-fact is not to simplify, much less to popularize it;
since such mode entirely withholds all that explanation which is so
necessary for a beginner, who will else probably feel more disheartened
than interested. Any study which is presented in its very driest form
by being divested of all that imparts interest to the subject, will
soon become dry and uninteresting in itself, and prejudice may thus be
excited against it at the very outset.
Those who pursue the profession of Architecture must of course apply
themselves to the study of it technically, and acquire their knowledge
of it, both theoretical and practical, by methods which partake more or
less of routine instruction. Others neither will nor even can do so.
If the public are ever to become acquainted with Architecture,—not,
indeed, with its scientific and mechanical processes of construction,
but in its character of Fine Art and Design,—other methods of study
than those hitherto provided must be furnished, as it appears to
have been assumed that those alone who have been educated to it
professionally can properly understand any thing of even the _Art_ of
Architecture,—a fatal mistake, which, had it clearly perceived its own
interest, the Profession itself would long since have attempted to
remove; it being clearly to the interest of Architects that the public
should acquire a taste and relish for Architecture.
The study of Architecture, it may be said, has of late years acquired
an increased share of public attention; but it has been too exclusively
confined to the Mediæval and Ecclesiastical styles, which have
consequently been brought into repute and general favour,—a result
which strongly confirms what has just been recommended, namely, the
policy of diffusing architectural taste as widely as possible. As
yet, the taste for Architecture and the study of it, so promoted, has
not been duly extended; for next to that of being acquainted with the
Mediæval, the greatest merit, it would seem, is that of being ignorant
of Classical Architecture and its Orders; which last, however ill they
may have been understood, however greatly corrupted and perverted,
influence and pervade, in some degree, the Modern Architecture of all
Europe, and of all those countries also to which European civilization
has extended. Nevertheless, no popular Manual on the subject of the
Orders has yet been provided,—a desideratum which it is the object of
the following pages to supply.