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with pilasters, and successive bands of frieze and entablature, wings, recesses, figures of animals, and columns. Yet numerous as these are, they form but a part of the vast necropolis of Petra. Tombs present themselves, not only in every avenue of the city, and upon every precipice that surrounds it, but even intermixed almost promiscuously with its public and domestic edifices. "The natural features of the defile," say Captains Irby and Mangles, grew more and more imposing at every step, and the excavations and sculpture more frequent on both sides, till it presented at last a complete street of tombs."

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These travellers, in speaking of the pass which leads to the theatre of Petra, further remark :-" The ruins of the city here burst on the view in full grandeur, shut in on the opposite side by barren craggy precipices, from which numerous ravines and valleys branch out in all directions. The sides of the mountains, covered with an endless variety of excavated tombs and private dwellings, presented altogether the most singular scene we ever beheld." Burkhardt, in describing this scene, after mentioning the excavations, the sepulchres, the mausoleums (one of which he particularizes of immense dimensions), the theatre, &c. adds, "The ground is covered with heaps of hewn stones, foundations of buildings, fragments of columns, and vestiges of paved streets, all clearly indicating that a large city once existed here. On the left bank of the river is a rising ground, extending westwards for nearly three quarters of a mile, entirely covered with similar remains. On the right bank where the ground is more elevated, ruins of the same description are to be seen. There are also the remains of a palace and of several temples. In the eastern cliff there are upwards of fifty separate sepulchres close to each other.

Dr Keith sums up the wonders of this singular city of rocks in these emphatic words :-" The base of the cliff, wrought out in all the symmetry and regularity of art,

with colonnades, and pedestals, and ranges of corridors adhering to the perpendicular surface; flights of steps chiselled out of the rock; grottos in great numbers which are certainly not sepulchral; some excavated residences of large dimensions, in one of which is a single chamber sixty feet in length, and of breadth proportioned; many other dwellings of inferior note, particularly abundant in one defile leading to the city, the steep sides of which contain a kind of suburb, accessible by flights of steps; niches, sometimes thirty feet in excavated height, with altars for votive offerings, or with pyramids, columns, or obelisks; a bridge across a chasm now apparently inaccessible; some small pyramids hewn out of the rock, on the summit of the heights; horizontal grooves for the conveyance of water, cut in the face of the rock, and even across the architectural fronts of some of the excavations; and, in short, the rocks hollowed out into innumerable chambers of different dimensions, whose entrances are variously, richly, and often fantastically decorated with every imaginable order of architecture,—all united, form one of the most singular scenes that the eye of man ever looked upon, or the imagination painted,— a group of wonders perhaps unparalleled in their kind; but also give irrefragable proof, both that in the land of Edom there was a city where human ingenuity and energy and power must have been exerted for many ages, and to so great a degree as to have well entitled it to be noted for its strength or terribleness, and that the description given of it by the prophets of Israel, was as strictly literal, as the prediction respecting it is true."*

It would be foreign to my purpose to follow Dr Keith through all the details by which he so strikingly proves the fulfilment of the scriptural prophecies, respecting this extraordinary city, and the territories with which it was connected; but I should not do justice either to my own feelings or to the cause of revealed truth, if I did not record the wonder and delight with which I first *Keith on Fulfilled Prophecy, pp. 201, 202.

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perused this successful demonstration. I think no candid man can resist the force of the evidence arising from the application of the single series of predictions of which that fated country is the object. Among these, how strikingly characteristic is that which intimates the doom of Petra :-" Thy terribleness hath deceived thee, and the pride of thine heart, O thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, that holdest the height of the hill! Though thou shouldst make thy nest as high as the eagle, I will bring thee down from thence, saith the Lord." "As in the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the neighbour cities thereof, saith the Lord, no man shall abide there, neither shall a son of man dwell in it."* Let it not, however, be supposed, that while I make this remark concerning the fate of the Edomites, I mean to select that people as a more than ordinary example of the minute correspondence between the prophecy and the prediction. In every instance where evidence has been collected, that correspondence is most distinct and satisfactory; and the whole of Dr Keith's work, which, by applying the discoveries of modern travellers, so ably follows out the invaluable labours of Newton, may be considered as one continued and irrefragable proof of the inspiration of Scripture.

TENTH WEEK-SATURDAY.

ARCHITECTURE.-ITS ANCIENT HISTORY AND PRACTICE

GREECE.

EUROPE, which was destined in later times to be the asylum of the arts and sciences, when in the countries where they originated they became neglected and forgotten, and to excel all other quarters of the world in the progress of the human mind, and the triumphs of genius, was, at the time we have been considering, sunk

* Jeremiah xlix. 16-18.

in the lowest state of ignorance and barbarism. In one quarter, however, it soon began to exhibit symptoms of those inventive powers, and that energy and taste for which it afterwards became so distinguished. The states of Greece, situated at the South-eastern corner of this continent, and enjoying many advantages from the clearness of their atmosphere, the temperature of their climate, and the abundance of their produce, started suddenly and rapidly in the race of improvement. In arts and arms they soon took the lead of all their contemporaries, and even carried back to Asia and Egypt the arts, advanced, refined and beautified, which they had originally derived from these early nurseries.

In architecture, especially, and in the kindred art of sculpture, they soon exhibited a peculiar aptitude which ended in an excellence that may be equalled, but in the peculiar department which they cultivated, can scarcely be excelled. To imitate these models of taste and elegance has ever since been the highest ambition of succeeding ages.

There was one defect, however, under which the Grecian architects laboured, that gave a peculiarity to their labours, and restrained them within limits which their successors were enabled to pass. They were ignorant of the properties of the arch, one of the most important of all the principles which have been introduced into architecture. Their model, as I have already observed, was the wooden hut, and this admitted of three simple applications, that of the solid wall of logs, of the transverse beam, and of the upright prop. On modifications of these, the principles of Grecian architecture depended. As the art advanced, they exchanged wood for stone; and walls of masonry skilfully chiselled and polished, pillars gracefully formed, and massy lintels, all wrought from the quarry, supplied the place of less durable materials. On their pillars, especially, and that part of the building which rested on them, they employed all the resources of their genius. Three orders of ar

chitecture hence arose, the Doric, which is simple and majestic; the Ionic, which is light and graceful; and the Corinthian, which happily combines the excellences of both the others.

Writers on architecture have employed their ingenuity in tracing the origin of these varieties, and of the peculiar figures with which the capitals of their respective pillars are ornamented. It has been fancifully said, that the Doric pillar represents an adult male; the Ionic a matronly female; and the Corinthian a youthful virgin; and in the robustness of the first, the graceful dignity of the second, and the delicate beauty of the third, the imagination may please itself in tracing an analogy which the founders of these distinctions had never conceived. In alluding to the distinctive ornaments of the capitals, an elegant writer thus expresses the ideas generally entertained of their origin.

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drops of rain, distilled from the ends of the rafters that projected over one architrave, so pleased one architect, that he added them as permament ornaments to his Doric triglyph; a few rams' horns, suspended from the top of a pillar, so struck the imagination of another, that he formed out of them the new combination, since called the Ionic capital, but which, in ancient buildings, is often united to the Doric entablature; and a wild acanthus, accidentally lodged on the top of an ancient sepulchral cippus, and with its foliage embracing a basket placed on the pillar, and compelled to curl down by the tile that covered the basket, so charmed a third (Callimachus of Corinth), that, without altering essentially the other parts of the Ionic combination, he substitituted it as a new capital.”*

The following remarks by the same author, characterize, and successfully account for, some other peculiarities of the Grecian architecture. "We must remember, in the states of Greece, every citizen shared, by right, alike, both in the public debate, and in the

* Hope on Architecture, p. 34.

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