THE GRECIAN STYLE. UNDER this character are included all buildings in England, for which models have been furnished from Greece, from Italy, from Syria, and from other countries, unmixed with the Gothic style; for in all these countries some intermixture of style and dates, in what is called the Grecian character, may be discovered: and we are apt to consider, as good specimens, those buildings in which the greatest simplicity prevails, or, in other words, those that are most free from mixture. Simplicity is not less necessary in the Gothic than in the Grecian style; yet it creates great difficulty in its application to both, if no mixture of dates is to be allowed in the respective styles of each. Thus, the English antiquary will discover, and, perhaps, be offended at, the mixture of Saxon, Norman, and the several dates of subsequent buildings called Gothic: but the man of taste will discover beauty in the combination of different forms in one great pile, or he must turn with disgust from every cathedral and abbey in the kingdom. In like manner, the traveller and connoisseur in Grecian antiquities, will not only object to more than one of the five orders in the same buildings, but will detect the intermixture of even the minutest parts in detail; while the man of taste will discover beauty and grace in combination of forms, for which there is not authority in the early, and, therefore, most simple edifices of those countries. It is by such combinations only, that the Grecian style can be made applicable to the purposes of modern habitation.
