BENGAZI.

385 diminish either the simplicity, the grandeur, or the elegance of the whole. When the attention is turned from the general mass to the subdivisions, every portion, however small, is observed to have a meaning, in both styles of architecture here alluded to ; and there is seldom any part of the ornament, either in Egyptian or in Gothic examples, which we wish to have removed from its place. In the capitals and shafts of Egyptian columns, (which are usually composed of different parts of the lotus, the leaves, the stalks, the open flower, or the bud, so combined and arranged as not to interfere with the simple and, generally, graceful outhne of the whole,) the detail gives a lightness to the general mass which tends to improve its effect ; and the simplicity of the general form exhibits the decoration to advantage: but in the later productions of Greece and Kome, a profusion of unmeaning ornament is employed, which rather gives an air of heaviness to the detail, than any appearance of lightness to the mass. The general forms are not, in fact, sufficiently important of themselves to create a favourable impression ; and it w ill usually be found difficult, if not impossible, to make amends for this fault by decoration. We do not mean to assert that there are no examples of good taste at Ptolemeta ; but it appears to us that by far the greater part of the buildings now remaining have been constructed since the place became a Roman colony ; and that there are none to which a higher antiquity may be safely assigned (with the exception of some of the tombs) than the period at which the country was occupied by the Ptolemies.

3D