Outline history of the fine arts Author:Benson John Lossing Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: tributaries of the Ganges, is a column of brick, approaching in its colossal dimensions to the huge pyramids of Egypt. It is supposed to have been erected as a ... more »shrine for the god Maha Deo. At the present it is very much decayed, yet sufficient remains to show its original form to have been a cylinder placed upon the frustrum of a cone, and reared to such a height as to be seen at a great distance. An English traveller (Mr. Burrow) gives the dimensions of this structure, as follows: diameter of column at its base, three hundred and sixty-three feet; height of the conic frustrum on which the cylinder is placed, ninety-three feet; diameter of cylinder sixty- four feet; entire height one hundred and fifty eight feet. The cone and cylinder are made of burnt brick, but when they were erected cannot be determined. CHAPTER in. Chinese Architecture—Porcelain Tower—Seven Pagodas-- Shoe-madoo—Tomb at Thibet—Persian Architecture—Antiquity of the Empire—Persepolis Temple—Palace—Destruction of the city—Hebrew Architecture—Tabernacle and Temple of Solomon—Petra—Greece—Its early Cities—Building Materials used—The five Epochs of Grecian Architecture- The three Orders, Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian—Their Origin and Proportions—Beautiful Roman Specimen—Temples o( Greece, and her Colonies—The Etruscans—Caryatides—Their attributed and real Origin—Ancient Cenotaph. We have previously mentioned that the Chinese cultivated architecture at a very early period, not more than two hundred years afterthe flood. Their style is peculiar, and is but an imitation, in form, of the original tent. They have very few monuments, but pagodas or temples of worship are profusely scattered over the empire. Their temples and houses are both imitations of the tent, though the latter are often many stories high and ...« less