I have carefully revised the book without altering its substance. I have also added an Appendix containing a few remarks on the Orders of Architecture, with illustrations of some of the best classical examples; believing that this would be useful, not only to carvers and modellers who have to execute enrichments on Architecture, but to all students.

The ornamented parts of the Greek and Roman Orders, figure sculpture apart, show how two cognate nations, each with transcendent abilities but of an entirely different range, abstracted the beauties of plants, and conferred them on stone and marble to emphasize and adorn the rigid forms of Architecture; how the Greeks seized on the exquisite beauties of flowers, and adapted them, so as to retain the greatest purity of form, and used them in the most sparing way; while the Romans, or Greeks working under Roman dictation, used them lavishly to procure magnificence; and eventually were so prodigal with their ornament as to defeat the end in view, as little of the architecture was left plain; to act as a foil to the enrichment; while from the quantity employed no time could be spared to perfect the ornament.

The power of abstracting and applying the beauties of floral form seems now to be entirely lost. The great art of the present day seems to consist in copying nature as exactly as it can be copied in hard materials to make a colourable imitation; but in such a way that its highest beauties are lost.

Mr. Ward has added several illustrations which his experience shows him will be useful to students, and he has added an Appendix on the construction of some geometrical figures, and the methods of drawing conic sections and spirals.

George Aitchison.