Excerpt from A Dictionary of Architecture and Building, Vol. 2 of 3: Biographical Historical, and Descriptive

A good dictionary will be good reading even if a column or a page be read consecutively; but it will be Still better reading if the reader is in the mood to take a little pains and turns to one article after another, following not the alphabetical sequence of the terms, but the sequence of his own thought. This matter of the student's use Of the book, briefly touched upon in the Preface to Vol. I., becomes of more Obvious importance now that two thirds of the whole work is in print. There are some large general subjects which can be fairly well studied if this plan is followed and with the appearance of the third and final volume, four months hence, these studies can be carried yet farther.

An Obvious instance is that subject, the most important to us modems of all matters of architectural history, the system of building and design of the great Empire, from 50 b.c. To 250 a.d. The building and the art of the European world since that time, and of much beyond the European world, take their origin in what was done during that epoch and yet there is so little generally known about it, and it is so misunderstood, that all architectural thought and writing is seriously marred by this lack of accuracy. This very subject will be found treated at great length in the Dictionary. If, for instance, the reader begins with Italy, Part IX., Latium, and especially the second division of Part IX. Where the city of Rome itself is treated if then he seeks in the other parts of the article, Italy, for Roman remains, and farther in the article France, especially Part X., and in Asia Minor, the Balkan Peninsula, and North Africa if he then studies Memorial Arch, Memorial Column, Amphitheatre, Basilica, and the technical terms referred to under Colu'mnar Architecture, the subject will have been presented to him from several points of view. The appearance in Vol. III. Of the general article on Roman Imperial Architecture and that on Syria, with Portico, Thermae, and Tomb, may seem to complete fairly well (especially if Masonry, Vaulting, and the like be looked up) the presentation of what is known on the general subject.

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