architect arise he calls loudly to "lay the vile clutch of restoration on the Parthenon," and occupy this classical rock-this Caledonian Acropolis, before native and original genius can come modestly forward with her proposal of a rival edifice. But Marcus Aurelius and Trajan repaired to Athens, to the foot of the Acropolis, to do what millions did, and what millions do, admire the grandeur of the Parthenon, and to borrow-not the whole edifice, like our Caledonian admirer-but conceptions worthy of the imperial dignity. This was rational and wise-just to the majesty of Rome and the dignity of Greece; these illustrious men did not distrust national taste like your correspondent, and though ages had passed away, and universal admiration was warm and unabated, though the worshippers of Minerva still thronged her porch, this admiration was not seized on as a pretext for transferring the building to one of the seven hills. But Dante, it seems, and Petrarch, admired the ancients so much, that they rather sought to restore their works to their original splendour and purity, than publish their own productions. Had they limited their genius to this generous la bour, their names would have been silent to-day-they would not have figured in your correspondent's list of eminent men. And pray, what works did they restore? That they studied the ancient poets, there is evidence in their works, but they reared permanent structures of their own; and the Inferno, as far as I can judge from an imperfect translation, is one of the most original works that ever issued from the mind of man. All that can be quoted from tale or history-which poetry can give, or tradition supply and all the illustrious names that can be ranked together, and the example of eminent nations added to the whole, go only to prove, that one man of genius admired another, and sought to rival not to plunder him. The want of variety in the forms and combinations of architecture is complained of, and the reproach of copyism endeavoured to be mitigated by the assurance, that originality is a most difficult thing a beauty of rare emergence among architects. All that is very true, and nothing to the purpose-originality of any kind is a great rarity, and thousands of men have acquired

great names without being wholly ori ginal. I think there is a French critic, who proves the Eneid to be a mere cento from Homer and others, and yet who denies the charm which the great Roman has diffused over that tender and beautiful poem? His poem is not an Iliad in a less lofty language, as your Caledonian Parthenon would only be a Greek Parthenon, degraded in a baser material. Eminence in ar→ chitecture, according to your corres pondent, can easily be obtained; there is no need of study to create-no waste of thought wanted; "he thinks best who never thinks at all." You have only to put forth your hand and steal

only steal what is valuable, and steal extensively. Why then, if to be original is a hopeless matter, seek you to establish a school for architecture, and purchase a model for forty thousand pounds? Acts of depredation may be committed without the extravagance of such an establishment. But then, the power of choosing well among the remains of ancient art seems, to your correspondent, almost as rare a gift as the faculty of original conception. But a structure decidedly original in its conception and detail is not desired, perhaps ought not to be expected; yet I should suspect that the Doric order is capable of assuming many beautiful arrangements equally sublime and simple as the Parthenon. No one is called on to invent new orders-much merit lies in making use of created things in a new and beautiful manner. As an order of architecture may be degraded by applying it to a mean purpose or injudiciously, so may it be elevated and honoured in being dedicated to a noble purpose, and applied in a masterly and unborrowed manner. This principle of tasteful selection and judicious admiration of other people's productions I never heard questioned or contradicted till I saw it in your Miscellany. That an architect wishes for edifices that cost no study, may be natural enough to those who are more alive to money than fame-who have no noble ambition within them-and who think that the glories of a nation are transferable things, mere matters to let-and the plunderer can inherit, with honour and renown, the spoils he has snatched. I should as soon think of monopolizing the glory of Marathon or Salamislaying claim at once to the retreat of

the ten thousand, as I would to the fame of the Parthenon; and I am sure the world would concede me the first as soon as the last. That many buildings in Edinburgh are copies from the Greeks shall not serve your correspondent's turn, though he is willing enough to forget that, when he is calling out for an example-one grand example, to instruct and elevate the grovelling intellects of the Caledonian architects. That the county-hall of Edinburgh is copied from the Eryctheum of Athens-that something else has been stolen from the Temple of Neptune, and another building, on which admiration has been lavished, is a fac simile of the Temple of Ceres, proves nothing but the unblushing servility of the whole race of architects, and which nothing can equal but the imprudent fortitude with which the restoration of the Parthenon has been proposed and pressed. What copy has ever equalled the original? or what copy is and has any pretension to share in the fame of the first maker. Take one example among ten thousand-a Christ in the Garden, supposed by many, and asserted by some, to be the divine work of that name by Corregio, was sold in London for a prodigious sum; ; but when Lord Wellington captured the real Corregio among the baggage of the French at Vittoria, the false Corregio lost all his lustre, and all his value. This glorious achievement of an uninstructed man, who studied in no school save that of nature, and who was indebted to his own hand and head alone for his fame, is now in Apsley-house, and is worth going an hundred miles to see. I am sorry, for the sake of your correspondent, that I cannot name the lucky holder of the copy. In walking through Edinburgh, a person, acquainted with other architecture, has his recollection continually exercised, and there is little time for admiration, in apportioning to each nation the bits of borrowed lustre which arise before him in all shapes-from a simple portico to an entire edifice. Like Constantine, your correspondent, in the haste to make his city great, consents to plunder what he has not leisure to create; the same ness of the buildings of Constantinople has been often censured, and the monotony of Prince's-street and George'sstreet, where

"Each alley has its brother, "And half the platform just reflects the other,"

has been felt by every admirer of Edinburgh. I certainly think that the want of originality in some of the buildings which your correspondent mentions, is a great drawback on their fame. But he forgets the fame of Scotland whenever he thinks of the Greeks-he loves a Doric portico better than he loves his country, and the dust of Athens, or the cinders of Herculaneum have more of his reverence than the dust of all the Douglasses. He considers that the keystone in the arch of Scottish renown is not in its place till a successful inroad has been made on the Doric-he contemplates former thefts with a rapture he seeks not to suppress-still his joy is not perfect-nobody has stolen an entire Doric temple-how blind we have been to our own greatness! To select with taste, to single out an object worthy of being stolen, is the greatest proof, in his eyes, of good taste and genius, and as no person has ventured so fearlessly and far as himself, he hopes to outstrip all former achievements, and eclipse all other renown.

I come now to an important matter, a view of the Parthenon, which your correspondent has not taken, or rather carefully avoided. Perhaps he prefers it plundered of its brightest jewels, and robbed by time and the hand of man of its chief attractions, to what it was in its proudest hour, when its pediments and friezes spoke audibly in sculpture as with a tongue, and the divine statue of Minerva seemed by its awful majesty to justify the superstition of the Athenians. He has been silent about the sculpture, without which his Parthenon would be a crown deprived of its gems, or a nocturnal firmament without stars. He exultingly tells us of the crowds which its fame collected, but it never entered his head that the half of their delight arose from contemplating the matchless sculptures which filled the pediments and the tops, and the exterior and interior friezes. All their admiration is set down to the stately Doric-but had the friezes been emp tied of their historical processions, and the pediments of their majestic figures, which represented great and momentous events-the crowds of gazers

would have been lessened, and it would have looked as blank as a huge frame out of which one of Raphael's divinest productions had been cut. Your correspondent may however turn round on me with the assurance that he intended not to present this empty Doric cup to the thirsty lips of his countrymen-that he wished to fill it brimful, not with a heathen but a Christian spring, or to drop metaphor, that he felt his Doric temple was imperfect without the powerful and necessary aid of sculpture; but even should he feel and express all this, the unblushing adoption of the Athenian temple will avail him little. Certainly he does not mean to press Theseus, and Illisus, and Minerva, and the Centaurs, and the naked youths of Attica, into the service of the Kirk of Scotland.Still should he push them from their stools, he must select some other beings to succeed them-some designs must be sought for in which British glory and Christianity has a share and here he embarks in an ocean of expense, and what will alarm him as much, a call will be made for original designs, unless with the same love of imitation as in the building, he advises us to transfer the cartoons of Raphael to our walls, cut out in good gray stone, and as these will by no means go round them, call in Reubens and Michael Angelo as auxiliaries. Should he, however, have the weakness to wish for sculptural designs-illustrating Scottish glory-expressing the original character of the nation-and commemorating us in every point of our fame as warriors, patriots, poets, divines, philosophers, and so on, he must not hope to conjure them up by an article in your Magazine, or extract them like a new made Parthenon from the portfolio of good master what's-his-name. They must be the fruit of much meditation, the unwearied labour of years, and what is more, they will devour all your correspondent's original sum of £40,000. The simple stateliness of the Doric was enriched by the sculpture-the massive plainness of the pediments and extensive friezes was adorned, while concealed by the splendour of historical enrichment-without sculpture it will be inferior to its prototype, and will no more have the effect of the Parthenon than a prentices cap will look like a bonnet of gold spark ling with precious stones,

A reluctance is expressed at removing that tall round-I cannot find a a name for it-called Nelson's Monument. Who, in the name of taste, considers that inelegant and unmeaning mass an ornament? yet it expresses the national admiration of our naval hero as visibly and sensibly as the column of Antonine without sculpture, can ever be compelled to do. I cannot help wondering at the sweeping wholesale manner of your correspondent; he casts down Admiral Nelson's windmill, but he atones for disturbing this laboured quarry above ground, by proposing to impress a soldier into the sea service to seize the column of the divine Antonine, and compel it to acknowledge, in the streets of Edinburgh, the glory of Alexandria and Trafalgar. How will he accomplish thisa column, though it reaches the clouds, means nothing of itself-the columns of Trajan and Antonine were the mere vehicles of sculpture; the pegs on which history hung her achievements. Deprive them of their sculpture, and they are columns to any one's fame. Here, again, your correspondent forgets the principle and exalts the auxiliary-tells the value of the picture frame, and forgets that of the picture. Now he has filled the Calton Hill and St Andrew's Square with the cumbrous splendour of two unadorned edifices-two Samsons shorn of their locks of strength-this he calls rivalling Athens and Rome. Having accomplished this, what does he propose to do-to consecrate the temple of Minerva, and turn her niche into a pulpit? And here he seems sensible that the genius of the age must have something conceded to appease it; and the compliment he pays Messrs Elliot and Playfair is a dexterous one-a stab under the fifth rib. "Here (says he) here is a square, two hundred feet long and sixty feet high, for your genius to revel in-there is nothing to prevent your fancy and taste from running east, and west, and north, and south, but stone walls, and nothing to curb you over head but a stone arch. (At what period did the Greeks arch their temples?) And there is an ample field for exerting yourselves; I have given the smoky and dirty exterior to Phidias; but the interior, the glorious interior, I have reserved for you-let your genius be measured with the genius of antiquity, and let the victor