to lose the arts which had survived the flood, and all of them to conform their habits and modes of living to the circumstances of the locality in which they happened to be placed. Hence originated various styles of architecture, adapted to the peculiar exigencies of the climate, to the inconveniences to be avoided, to the comforts within their reach, and to the materials with which they had to operate.

We have, even in the present day, specimens of the lowest and rudest species of architecture which human beings, in any period of their history, ever formed. The New Zealander digs his wretched habitation in the sand; the native of Australia raises a temporary habitation for himself of wicker-work, in the form of a bee-hive, and of dimensions just sufficient to shield him from the blast; the Caraib, wandering among the trackless forests of the Western World, scoops, within the hollow of a decaying tree, a dwelling, whose foundations are deep rooted in the earth, and whose top waves high in the air; the Tartar, on the central plains of Asia, suits his place of shelter to his wandering life, and as he drives his herds from pasture to pasture, constructs his portable habitation of the hides of those very animals which he uses for his food; while, on the road, he spreads them as an awning over the waggon which conveys his family.

The simple wants of the savage state, however, do not suffice man as he advances in civilization. Even the wandering Tartar, when his wealth and power increase, extends his views, and converts his simple tent into a habitation abounding with conveniences, and splendid with embellishments; and if, leaving his deserts, he emerge into regions of greater fertility, he is glad to adhere to the soil, and, employing more substantial materials, to collect around him the comforts and luxuries of a permanent mansion. It is a Tartar race which inhabit the extensive plains and mountains of China, and there raise for themselves houses of wood, of stone, of clay, or of brick.

Other Asiatic tribes inhabit the burning plains and extensive mountain ranges of India. There the first emigrants seem to have found shelter for themselves by digging into the bowels of the earth, and excavating cool habitations in the barren rocks which skirted their prolific soil. Thus arose the stupendous excavations of the Bahar; and thus were formed, along the banks of the Ganges and the Barampooter, those cities of caves, of which some served as retreats for the living, while others were left as receptacles for the dead. Extending into the fertile plains, where this resource no longer availed them, the same people accommodated themselves to circumstances, sometimes building substantial piles of those very stones, perhaps, which had been quarried in excavating their habitations in the solid rock; and sometimes making use of the mud, reeds, and rushes, found in the bed, or on the banks of their rivers.

Similar circumstances gave rise to similar modes of constructing habitations in the north of Africa, as in the south of Asia. Travellers have thus been surprised to find a wonderful coincidence in the early dwellings of the inhabitants of Egypt and of India; and, as along the banks of the great rivers of the latter, so along the course of the Nile in the former, were dug those subterranean cities, which, having served as places of residence for the living, were converted into sepulchres for the dead; while in their plains, the slime and rushes which their waters abundantly yielded, furnished them here, as in the distant regions of Hindostan, with materials, slight and perishable indeed, but of easy application for their ordinary structures. In both localities, too, the inhabitants, as they advanced in civilization, sought for more permanent edifices for their gods, and for the palaces and tombs of their great men, by making use of the durable rock which was brought from afar, and wrought and raised at great expense. These, and other similarities, have led many to conclude, that those distant tribes betrayed a common origin, when it is possible that corres

ponding circumstances merely led men possessing a common nature, to exercise their ingenuity in a similar way.

The use of bricks in masonry was very early introduced. As soon as men began to construct high buildings at a distance from mountains and forests, they would find themselves at a loss for materials. It is probable that stone was not first used for this purpose, as tools would be wanting. The cutting and hewing of stone would require the knowledge of more arts than men were acquainted with in those early ages. They began with using bricks; that is, clay, formed in square moulds, and dried in the sun, or baked in stoves. Of such materials, the tower of Babel was built. The Egyptians also made very early use of this substitute for reeds and crude clay.

In the first efforts of European architecture, we find several traces of local peculiarities. There, immense forests, while they encumbered the soil, offered their aid in furnishing the means of shelter. As soon as the aboriginal inhabitants desired a more secure and convenient habitation than was to be found beneath the shelter of the overhanging rock of the mountain, or the thick foliage of the wood, they found it in the gigantic vegetation with which they were surrounded; and the wooden hut arose to form ever after the model for their most refined architecture.*

NINTH WEEK-WEDNESDAY.

ARCHITECTURE.-ITS ORIGINAL STATE-TOOLS EMPLOYED.

ARCHITECTURE could make but little progress till mankind had discovered certain arts, which are absolutely necessary to its advancement, such as the making of

* Hope on Architecture. Introduction and Chap. ii. and iii.

machines for the raising and transporting of weighty bodies, the art of taming animals, and training them to carry materials, and, last of all, the art of working iron, that most useful of all the metals. It is true, however, that wonderful efforts have been made without the knowledge of these arts. The people of Mexico and Peru, when first visited by the Spaniards, had neither carts, sledges, nor beasts of burden, but transported their materials by mere strength of arm. They knew nothing of scaffolds, cranes, or other machines, employed in other divisions of the globe in the construction of buildings. They were even ignorant of the use of iron. Notwithstanding all this, they had the address to raise buildings of stone, which are beheld with admiration even at the present day. Patient labour supplied the place of tools. Their way of dressing stones, was to break them with certain flints, very hard and black, and then polish them by rubbing one against another. It is possible, that the first masons, in the primitive ages, might make use of the same methods. There are still nations who build magnificent edifices, with few tools and machines, and who have no other way of polishing their stones, than that originally employed by the natives of the New World.

But these modes of operation are so tedious and fatiguing, that, as long as mankind were unacquainted with more advantageous methods, buildings of stone must necessarily have been very rare. Such edifices could not be common till tools for hewing, and machines for transporting materials, had been invented.

The art of hewing stones, and building houses of them, must, however, have been known in very remote ages. The Egyptians gave the honour of this invention to Tosorthus, the successor of Menes. They even attributed the building of a pyramid to Venephes, one of their earliest kings. In Egypt, indeed, this art would naturally be resorted to, at a very early stage in the progress of improvement. The nature of the locality required it.

Egypt wants wood for building;-they were, therefore, compelled, as it were, to exercise their ingenuity in inventing modes of constructing their public edifices of stone and marble. Accordingly, we find that they had very early discovered methods of transporting their heavy materials with ease. Almost from the commencement of their monarchy, they had drawn canals from the Nile, which communicated with each other, and stretched to the foot of their rocky mountains. Wheel-carriages, also, were used in that country in very early times. We hear of waggons, as not uncommon in the days of Joseph.* Our information of the real state of the instruments employed in these early times, is exceedingly defective; and we can only conjecture the nature of their tools and machines, by the effects which were actually produced by them, in the immense piles of building which were raised.

The discovery of the art of working iron, however, we know, preceded the deluge; and this art was doubtless preserved by the survivors of that great catastrophe. It is impossible, indeed, to account for the rapid advancement in the art of building, as well as in other arts, but on the supposition that the knowledge of the antediluvians was transmitted, as might be expected, by Noah and his sons to their posterity. They carried with them, to a renovated world, the inventions which had been accumulating through a series of ages; and thus the second fathers of mankind placed their descendants in a favourable position for improving the means which Nature put within their reach.

The geological structure of the earth, as I have elsewhere observed, favoured the discovery of metals, on which the improvement of the architectural art so much depends. When the earth was heaved up into mountains, the metals which lay deep in its bowels were frequently brought near its surface, and might be discovered, on the ploughing up of the soil, by floods and moun

* Genesis xlv. 19.