pleasure in the contemplation of what is clear, the craving for a thorough insight into the reasons of things, which marks the European mind, is the temper which leads to science.

6. Treatises on Architecture.-No one who has attended to the architecture which prevailed in England, France, and Germany, from the twelfth to the fifteenth century, so far as to comprehend its beauty, harmony, consistency, and uniformity, even in the minutest parts and most obscure relations, can look upon it otherwise than as a remarkably connected and definite artificial system. Nor can we doubt that it was exercised by a class of artists who formed themselves by laborious study and practice, and by communication with each other. There must have been bodies of masters and of scholars, discipline, traditions, precepts of art. How these associated artists diffused themselves over Europe, and whether history enables us to trace them in a distinct form, I shall not here discuss. But the existence of a course of instruction, and of a body of rules of practice, is proved beyond dispute by the great series of European cathedrals and churches, so nearly identical in their general arrangements, and in their particular details. The question then occurs, have these rules and this system of instruction anywhere been committed to writing? Can we, by such evidence, trace the progress of the scientific idea, of which we see the working in these buildings?

We are not to be surprised, if, during the most flourishing and vigorous period of the art of the middle ages, we find none of its precepts in books. Art has, in all ages and countries, been taught and transmitted by practice and verbal tradition, not by writing. It is only in our own times, that the thought occurs as familiar, of committing to books what we wish to preserve and convey. And, even in our own times, most of the arts are learned far more by practice, and by intercourse with practitioners, than by reading. Such is the case, not only with manufactures and handicrafts, but with the fine arts, with engineering, and even yet, with that art, building, of which we are now speaking.

We are not, therefore, to wonder, if we have no treatises on architecture belonging to the great period of the Gothic masters;-or if it appears to have required some other incitement and some other help, besides their own possession of their practical skill, to lead them to shape into a literary form the precepts of the art which they knew so well how to exercise:-ór if, when they did write on such subjects, they seem, instead of delivering their own sound practical principles, to satisfy themselves with pursuing some of the frivolous notions and speculations which were then current in the world of letters.

Such appears to be the case. The earliest treatises on architecture come before us under the form which the commentatorial spirit of the middle ages inspired. They are translations of Vitruvius, with annotations.

In some of these, particularly that of Cesare Cesariano, published at Como, in 1521, we see, in a very curious manner, how the habit of assuming that, in every department of literature, the ancients must needs be their masters, led these writers to subordinate the members of their own architecture to the precepts of the Roman author. We have Gothic shafts, mouldings, and arrangements, given as parallelisms to others, which profess to represent the Roman style, but which are, in fact, examples of that mixed manner which is called the style of the cinque cento by the Italians, of the renaissance by the French, and which is commonly included in our Elizabethan. But in the early architectural works, besides the superstitions and mistaken erudition which thus choked the growth of real architectural doctrines, another of the peculiar elements of the middle ages comes into view;-its mysticism. The dimensions and positions of the various parts of edifices and of their members, are determined by drawing triangles, squares, circles, and other figures, in such a manner as to bound them: and to these geometrical figures were assigned many abstruse significations. The plan and the front of the Cathedral at Milan are thus represented in Cesariano's work, bounded and subdivided by various equilateral triangles; and it is easy to see, in the earnestness with which he points out these relations, the evidence of a fanciful and mystical turn of thought".

The plan which he has given, fol. 14, he has entitled "Ichnographia Fundamenti sacræ Edis baricephalæ, Germanico

We thus find erudition and mysticism take the place of much of that developement of the architectural principles of the middle ages which would be so interesting to us. Still, however, these works are by no means without their value. Indeed many of the arts appear to flourish not at all the worse, for being treated in a manner somewhat mystical; and it may easily be, that the relations of geometrical figures, for which fantastical reasons are given, may really involve principles of beauty or stability, But independently of this, we find, in the best works of the architects of all ages (including engineers), evidence that the true idea of mechanical pressure exists among them more distinctly than among men in general, although it may not be developed in a scientific form. This is true up to our own time, and these arts could not be successfully exercised if it were not so. Hence the writings of architects and engineers during the middle ages do really form a prelude to the writers on scientific mechanics. Vitruvius, in his Architecture, and Julius Frontinus, who, under Vespasian, wrote On Aqueducts, of which he was superintendent, have transmitted to

more, à Trigono ac Pariquadrato perstructa, uti etiam ea quæ nunc Milani videtur."

The work of Cesariano was translated into German by Gualter Rivius, and published at Nuremberg, in 1548, under the title of Vitruvius Teutsch, with copies of the Italian diagrams. A few years ago, in an article in the Wiener Jahrbücher (Oct.-Dec., 1821), the reviewer maintained, on the authority of the diagrams in Rivius's book, that Gothic archi-tecture had its origin in Germany, and not in England.

mans.

us the principal part of what we know respecting the practical mechanics and hydraulics of the RoIn modern times the series is resumed. The early writers on architecture are also writers on engineering, and often on hydrostatics: for example, Leonardo da Vinci wrote on the equilibrium of water. And thus we are led up to Stevinus of Bruges, who was engineer to Prince Maurice of Nassau, and inspector of the dykes in Holland; and in whose work, on the processes of his art, is contained the first clear modern statement of the scientific principles of hydrostatics.

Having thus explained both the obstacles and the prospects which the middle ages offered to the progress of science, I now proceed to the history of the progress, when it was once again resumed.

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