THE MODERN PRECEPTOR. CHAPTER XI. OF ARCHITECTURE. THE term Architecture is formed from the Greek language, signifying originally the chief trade or handicraft: but it has long been confined to the art of constructing edifices of every kind, for the use and comfort of man, Shelter from the inclemencies of the weather, even in the genial climates where the human race were first planted, and protection from the wild beasts of the field, must have been amongst the first wants of men; architecture, however rude and simple, must therefore have been one of the earliest arts to which necessity gave birth. Vitruvius, whose celebrated treatise on Architecture was composed in the reign of Augustus, has left us the following fanciful conjectures on the origin and progress of the art of building. "Antiently," says he, "men lived in woods and inhabited caves, but at last, taking the hint perhaps from the birds of the air, which build their nests with equal ingenuity and industry, they formed for themselves huts. These were probably at first of a conical figure, because |