Eustace, John Cretwode: A classical tour through Italy An. MDCCCII (Vol. 3): 3. ed., rev. and enl (London: J. Mawman, 1815)

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CLASSICAL TOUR

Ch. V.

mans probably were indebted for that solid taste
which distinguished them ever after. They seem
indeed in all their works and edifices to have had
constantly in view the three great qualities,
which in architecture give excellence without the
aid of ornament, and by their own intrinsic merit
command admiration. This simple and manly
style shewed itself in the very infancy of the
city, expanded with the greatness and the re-
sources of the republic, and displayed itself, not
in the Capital only, but in the most distant pro-
vinces ; it survived the fall of the empire, it strug-
gled for ages of convulsion with the spirit of bar-
barism, and at length, as a monument of its tri-
umph, it raised over the fanes, the porticos, the
triumphal arches of the mistress of the world,
the palaces, the obelisks, the temples of the Mo-
dern City.
Whether this effect be attributed to the ex-
ample and lessons of the Etrurians, and to the
architectural school established by Numa, or to
that magnanimity which seems to have grown
out of the very soil, and to have been inhaled
with the air of ancient Rome, I know not; but
it can not be ascribed to the influence of the Greeks,
as it arose before they were known, and flourish-
ed long after they were forgotten, among the
Romans. At a later period they certainly bor-