Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1835 edition. Excerpt: ... PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. There is reason to believe, that, among the first essays of human skill, the knowledge of design had a principal place, as it is natural for the hand to form some kind of imitation of what the eye beholds. If this supposition be just, the art of drawing may claim an origin of the remotest antiquity. It is certain, however, that the recent improvements in Furniture are the results of this acquirement, aided by the study of those chef-d"oeuvres of antiquity lately transmitted to us in the works of English and French travellers, which relics present the costume of ancient times, and shew the mode in which the forms of nature may be happily adapted to the various requisites of modern life, and advanced by a comparison with, and application to, Nature herself, which contains the first elements and the first models of all the perfections of art. The Egyptians, by the adoption of the pyramidal form, seem to have intended their works to outlast all record; but their productions are more to be admired for their sublimity than true elegance, and are more appropriate to monumental purposes than to furniture for apartments. The Greeks, who are well known to have studied from these models, have displayed a taste hitherto unequalled, and that fills the enlightened world with admiration. They appear to have had just reasons for every accompanying ornament, to have aimed at a flowing and graceful outline, and to have disposed the parts in masses, as a rest for the eye, that the whole of their compositions should appear distinct and without confusion. They have neither overloaded their designs, nor left them any where deficient; and every member relieves its adjacent one by a breadth and repose of b surface, distinctness, and...
