MERGE TO GYRENE. 44.5 the forms, of buildings, were adopted in imitation of early custom ; and this circumstance will alone sufficiently account for the uniformity, in point of colour, of one building with another ; and may be considered as a reason why fancy or caprice were not allowed, in these instances, to have their usual weight among a people who were strenuously attached to the practices and customs of their ancestors. “In imitation of these early inventions, and of works executed in timber,” (says Vitruvius, in the words of Mr.

Wilkins, his English translator,) “ the ancients, in constructing their edifices of stone or marble, adopted the forms which were there observed to exist. It was a general practice among the artificers of former times to lay beams transversely upon the walls; the intervals between them were then closed, and the whole surmounted with coronm and fastigia of pleasing forms, executed in wood. The projecting parts were afterwards cut away, so that the ends of the beams and the walls were in the same plane ; but the sections presenting a rude appearance, tablets, formed like the triglyphs of more modern buildings, and covered with blue wax, were affixed to them, by which expedient the ends, which before offended the eye, now produced a pleasing effect.

Thus the ancient disposition of the beams supporting the roof is the original to which we may attribute the introduction of triglyphs into Doric buildings.” (Wilkins’s Vitruvius, vol. i. p.

63, 4.)

Whatever may be the truth of these remarks of Vitruvius respecting the origin of the triglyph, it is singular that there should be so