presents the honeysuckle ornament of the ancient Acroteria, which often exhibits the central gland at the base of the tuft of leafits so disposed. But if these plants were objects of religious respect among the Egyptians and Greeks, we shall assuredly find a nobler application of them than as models for vases and utensils. I shall, therefore, indulge in a digression, to show that they furnished an important meaning in the ornaments of their sacred architecture. In those Eastern countries which were liable to periodical inundations, so long as the floods prevailed, the water-lily would have presented a principal object for contemplation. It would have been viewed as a promise of the fertility to be expected on the subsiding of the waters, it would have reminded observers of the preservation of a select few during a more awful deluge, and of the ancient tradition that all things had been created from water. In these senses it was probably first contemplated in Shinar, and gladly recognised by the dispersed who settled apart on the Yellow River, the Ganges, and the Nile. The first temples erected after the flood would have required such ornaments as were allusive to the mercies experienced, and would have been expressive of the gratitude of the few preserved. It can scarcely be doubted, that the columns of the Egyptian temples were originally designed to imitate reeds, or lotus stems, swathed together at different intervals; thus conveying a notion of submersion, while the foliage appeared above, as if on the surface of the water. It is therefore, that in the Greek cornice we find the cymatium, xuμário, of which the profile is convex and concave, to represent a wave, as its name imports. I even venture to think, that the original structure of the Doric Greek, as of the Egyptian column, was reeded, and that the echinus, as it is termed, in the capital of the former, is really the fruit of the water-lily, which, reduced at the bottom by regular cuttings that appear as annulets, is supposed to have its point buried amid the extremities of the reeds of the column, from the surface of which, several of the reeds have been alternately removed to produce the flutings; and that the channel sunken in the shaft, and round it, below the capital, is a groove, designed to receive a cord, by which the pádos of the shaft might be bound at top, to prevent their starting under the pressure of the fruit and the weight of the entablature. T In the Ionic capital we find the egg and anchor moulding, as it is improperly termed, connecting the volutes. It is not improbable that these last were designed to represent the leaf of the water-lily, though inverted, unfolding itself on its arrival at the surface of the water. I consider the oval beads in this moulding to be no other than the seeds of the Nelumbium, each viewed within its cell in a section of the ciborium. Hence, as I have presumed to derive the campanulate vase from the fruit of the Nelumbium, these nuts form an appropriate ornament for the lip of such a vessel; and instances of this application of the ornament may be seen among the elegant engravings by Moses, from the vases of the late Sir H. C. Englefield. From the xágua of the Nelumbium has been derived the caryatid substitute for the column in architecture. These figures are frequently called Canephora; but except that the lip of the ciborium which they bear on their heads is reflected like a basket, they rarely, I believe, present any other resemblance. These females truly bear on their heads the capsule of the Nelumbium, as the busts of Jupiter Serapis are also surmounted by it. Mr. Gwilt, in his Essay on Caryatides, has properly concluded that the first statues so called were either applied to the temple of Diana, or were representations of virgins who were engaged in her worship. But the origin of Diana Caryatis is yet to be accounted for. It has been imagined, that the embellishments of the Dea Multimamma at Ephesus were suggested by the many nippled surface of the Egyptian ciborium. This admitted, the Ephesian and the Laconian Diana are the same mystic personage, and the figures of those priestesses with the caryatid headdress, who occasionally danced to her honour, might have furnished appropriate supporters to the portico of her temple at Caryæ near Sparta. By the story of the jealousy of Lyco and Orphe, and their expulsion by Bacchus, as cited by Mr. Gwilt from Servius, may be obscurely implied the first introduction of Egyptian mysteries into Laconia, and the setting aside for them some previously established Pelasgic, or other doctrines. Let me now venture to trace this interesting subject to a more important conclusion, and offer what it presents to me, respecting our Christian order of architecture. It may be believed, that if the Pagans illustrated their religious tenets by their architecture, the Christians would not fail to do the same; particularly during the rivalry that existed between the Platonists and Christians at Alexandria, and the taste for mysticism which prevailed in that city about the third and fourth centuries. It may also be imagined, that the Christians, while they imitated, might hope to instruct, their precursors in architectural science. If the Nelumbium had been chiefly resorted to by the Pagans to illustrate their great doctrine of renovation from water, the Nymphæa Lotus would probably be preferred by the Christians for the same purpose; particularly on account of its conformation, which exhibited a record of the Ogdoad in the eight petals which surrounded the central σκύφιον. It is interesting to observe, how widely these principles had formerly been spread, and how the nations of the East were once bound together by one religious tie. The Chinese still preserve a recollection of the Patriarchal eight*, who survived the general flood, by the eight petals of the Lotus circularly disposed in four correspondent pairs; or by a bamboo clustered, and surrounded by eight smaller stems of the same plant.† A similar commemoration can be shown in the ornaments of Christian architecture. Of the latter we find an instance in certain massive columns in the cathedral at Milan, which are surrounded, each, by eight smaller ones clustered and joined to it, and are surmounted by eight tabernacles, or niches, containing the figures of as many saints, as may be seen in the memoir of Mr. Kerrich, Archæologia, vol. xvi. p. 302. Were a Chinese Mandarin to view these columns, he would immediately recognise the symbol. An example of the former may be shown in our own country. In the church of St. Mary at Dover, may be seen two Norman pilaster columns bearing octangular mouldings by way of capitals, and near them a massive pilaster column, the capital of which is formed of four large * I have no hesitation in thus interpreting the eight Elementary Tchin, which are thus symbolised upon the ancient porcelain and earthenware of the Chinese. I should, however, add, that the water-lily usually employed by the Chinese as a religious symbol is the Nelumbium; but I believe that other kinds are natives of China. Even the Nymphæa pygmæa of China would exhibit the conformation by eight in its various parts, nearly similar to the Nymphæa Lotus. + Instances of both these illustrations by the Chinese are in my own possession. and three smaller erect and alternate petals of the Nymphæa Lotus; so that, had the column been complete, the number of petals would have been eight and eight, in strict conformity with the corolla of the Egyptian plant. A Gothic pointed window, subdivided by a munion into two lesser pointed arches, exhibits nearly the same form, and the same alternate disposition of petals of the Nymphæa Lotus; the windows and portals therefore of certain early Christian churches might have been derived from the petals and calyx of the Lotus, and the cupola from its capsule. A cupola had indeed been previously used to denote the vault of heaven in the Pantheon of Agrippa at Rome; it may, however, be seen imbricated with Lotus petals in the grand work of Daniell, particularly in a platet which represents the mausoleum of Mucdoom Shah Dowlut, at Mooneah on the river Soane: and, upon a smaller scale, the canopies for Gothic shrines and niches for saints were derived from, and even named after, the fruit of the Nelumbium, as may be seen in the memoir of Mr. Ledwich, Archæologia, vol. viii. p. 171., and as the reader may satisfy himself, by referring to Dufresne's glossary, at the word Ciborium, where very interesting authorities are cited. The purport of these ayio, or saints, placed beneath the cover of the ciborium, will appear from considering the connected meaning of that word. Now xiểάgio and x16άτ were indifferently the name of the capsule of the Egyptian Nelumbium, and it is singular, that the latter of these words should have been applied to the cone of this particular water-lily, which after the falling off of the petals bears the young family of sprouting seeds floating on the water, which seeds strike root, when enlarged from their cells after the subsiding of the periodical floods‡, when a word nearly similar, xwròs, was used by the Alexandrine translators of the Scriptures to denote both the ark of Noah, and the ark of the covenant. The chest which contained the Tables of the Law was indeed of oblong square * The original architectural term in Spanish for a cupola is cimborio. It is probable that the ciborium was referred to, without any precise knowledge of the plant to which it belonged. The actual form of the cupola is more truly expressed by the popular term, media naranja, the half orange. + Plate 22. of the set, published in 1795. See this subject well described by Sir James Edward Smith, M. D., in his Exotic Botany. shape, but the moulding which strengthened the edge of it, upon which the lid or mercy seat rested, was termed xuμáriov, a wavelet, as if it had been designed to represent a floating chest; and I doubt not, it was designed for a memorial, like other figurative objects among the Jewish ceremonials. Both of these were types of the ark of Christ's church, as it is termed in our baptismal service; within the enclosure of which, while God's laws are kept, which is the great and only test of regeneration, safety is insured to the believer, in passing through the waves of this world to the next, under the covering of the sprinkled mercy seat. Hence the propriety of that figurative expression of St. Paul addressed to the Hebrews, c. vi. ver. 12.19., will appear, where he encouraged them to go on to perfection, to be not slothful, but followers of them, who through faith and patience inherited the promises, and to lay hold upon that hope, the anchor of the soul, which is dropped within the enclosure of the veil. Where allusion is made to the ark, considered as a ship, moored within the Holy of Holies, that enclosure which was figurative of Heaven, and this, if they persevered, would not fail to be their final resting place. The safety that had been insured to the patriarchal family is referred to in the custom of placing saints beneath the cover of the ciborium. The most marked comparison between the deluge and the sacrament of baptism occurs in the first epistle of St. Peter (c. iii.), who speaks of "the long suffering of God, which waited in the days of Noah, while the "ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is eight souls, were saved by "water: the like figure whereunto, even baptism doth, also, now save us." Chap. iii. v. 20, 21. Hence Augustine speaks of the sacrament of the deluge, as prefigurative of the Christian church, and he elsewhere says, in a figurative sense," Arca enim Ecclesia est." Gregory of Nazianzum had before termed baptism a deluging of sin, not a drowning of the world as of old, but a purifying of the individual from sint, and the church into which the elect were received by baptism, was considered as a ship; at least, in the Constitutiones Apostolica, the whole appointment of the church is likened to that of a ship, wherein the bishop is the pilot, the * Καὶ ποιήσεις αὐτῇ κυμάτια χρυσᾶ ςρεπλὰ κύκλῳ.—Εxod. c. 25. v. 11. |