Gabb, Thomas: Finis pyramidis or Disquisitions concerning the antiquity and scientific end of the great pyramid of Giza, or ancient Memphis, in Egypt, and of the first standard of linear measure (Retford, 1806)

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Whoever will read Pliny on this subject, will he
convinced of the truth of the description here given of
the unfavorable commencement; the inauspicious pro-
gress, áiid consequent imperfect state of architectural
magnificence at Rome, just before and immediately after
the first emperors.

Now the rerhairis of such structures became the
object of the most earnest avidity of the academicians
of Paris, who sent Desgodetz to Rome in search even of
every fragment of their ruins, which, in about ten years
he collected ; and highly finished plates were engraved
from his accurate drawings, and published by royal
munificence : and these are thè Roman antique, by
which, exclusively; Perrault seems to have been guided,
in his comments on VitruViuS. Aiid this, in part ac-
counts for the many misconceptions into which he was
betrayed, upon reading the text of Vitruvius ; and for
the frequent corrections he made, and distortions of
the text, to conform it to the ideas he had preconceived
from these examples of the Roman antique; from
which Vitruvius himself, we may venture to affirm,
never framed a single document, throughout his whole
canon of symmetries; Yet because he was à Roman and
and wrote in latin, (for nö better reason exists,) many
have concluded, as Perrault seems to have done, that he
assisted himself in composing his work, by the then
existing examples at Rome.

This error most of the moderns have given into ;
and amongst them the writer, to whom the architectural
department was consigned, in Mr. Wilks' Encycl. Lond.
Vol. 11. p. 74; who asserts, that Grecian architects so
disposed the columns of temples, as to have in the side
row, one column more than double the number of co-

j} lumns