This handbook is intended to give such an outline of the Architecture of the Ancient World, and of that of Christendom down to the period of the Crusades, as, without attempting to supply the minute required by the professional student, may give a general idea of the works of the great building nations of Antiquity and the Early Christian times. Its chief object has been to place on the subject within the reach of those persons of literaryartistic education who desire to become in some degree acquainted with Architecture.All technicalities which could be dispensed with have been accordingly excluded; and when it has been unavoidable that a technical wordphrase should occur, an explanation has been added either in the textin the glossary; but as this volume and the companion one on Gothic and Renaissance Architecture are, in effect, two divisions of the same work, it has not been thought necessary to repeat in the glossary given with this part the words explained in that prefixed to the other.