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This, as already stated, is not entitled to rank as a distinct Order,
being, in fact, nothing more than a simplified, if not a spurious
and debased variety of the Doric. No authentic examples of it exist:
it is known only from what Vitruvius says of it, following whose
imperfect account, modern writers and architects have endeavoured to
make out something answering to it. Yet what has been so produced is
to all intents and purposes Doric,—though not Grecian Doric,—excepting
that the shafts are unfluted and the frieze quite plain; which last
circumstance, and much more, as has just above been intimated, is
a mere trifling discrepancy, since not the triglyphs merely, but
the frieze may, it seems, be omitted without thereby forfeiting the
character of Doric for the Order. Though the Tuscan is spoken of, it
is not practised. Almost the only example of what is called by that
name in this country is Inigo Jones’s portico of St. Paul’s, Covent
Garden, which, though not devoid of character and effect, is remarkable
chiefly for the great width of the intercolumns, and the great
projection of its very shallow, and therefore too shelf-like cornice,
which, if no other part, must be admitted to differ widely from the
comparatively slightly projecting and massive Doric cornice. The Tuscan
has, however, been treated differently by different Architects, and
some of them have given it what is merely a modification of the Doric
cornice without its mutules. Their Tuscan becomes, in fact, very little
more than a plainer sort of their own Doric, distinguished from it
chiefly, and that only negatively, by the omission of triglyphs on the
frieze. One thing which the Moderns have done, both in their Doric
and their Tuscan, is to assimilate pilasters to columns, giving to
the former precisely the same bases and capitals as the others have,
and also generally diminishing their shafts in the same manner. Still
all the differences here pointed out, together with many minor ones
besides, do not constitute different Orders, unless they are to be
multiplied by being subdivided into almost as many distinct Orders as
there are varieties of one and the same class. All the Dorics and the
Tuscan agree in having the _echino-abacus capital_. Therefore, if we
want a quite different and distinct Order, we must turn, as we now do,
to the _voluted-capital_ class of columns, or that which bears the name
of the