There is still a third class of illustrations, finished architectural drawings done to scale; plans, sections, and elevations, with elaborate details of sculpture, columnation, &c. These could manifestly have been done better at home than abroad, and they are executed so beautifully, and with such a profound knowledge of architectural design that it is difficult to believe that they are the unaided work of Bruce himself. They were done during the retirement of the traveller at Kinnaird with a view to his intended publication, and it is just possible that he may have been aided by a professional draughtsman. It may be in allusion to this that he wrote to his friend the Hon. Daines Barrington, ‘You and Dr. Douglas will both testify how willingly I seek, and thankfully and openly I embrace, every assistance. This I think doing justice to the public and to posterity.’
These drawings were exhibited to the Institute of British Architects by Major Cumming Bruce, M.P., in 1837, and the following letter was addressed to him by Mr. Donaldson, their honorary secretary, under date May 17, 1837:—
‘By a special resolution passed at the ordinary meeting, held on Monday last, I am directed to convey to you the grateful acknowledgments of the members for the rich treat with which you favoured them on that occasion, by laying before them the highly interesting series of drawings prepared by Bruce, the traveller, in illustration of the antiquities existing in Northern Africa. The members were struck with that profusion of important edifices which embellished the provinces of the Romans; and they admired the perseverance and skill which enabled Bruce to procure such minute and highly wrought details of these monuments.
‘The members hope that these documents may ere long be published, and thus add another to the long list of obligations which not only this country, but all Europe, owes to his spirit of enterprise and research. These drawings prove that he added the acquirements of the naturalist, the geographer, and the philosopher, to those of the antiquarian, the scholar, and the artist.’
They were also shown at the Graphic Society about the same period, and the following is an extract from their proceedings, dated May 10.
‘Distinguished as Bruce is for his researches in Abyssinia, these drawings furnish ground for an honourable and lasting reputation from a very distinct source. It has been said among some to whom their existence was known that they were not Bruce’s, but the work of a young Italian artist named Balugani, who was sent to him by Lumsden, the author of “Roman Antiquities.”
‘But among the drawings shown at the Graphic Society were some of Pæstum made by Bruce when he was alone, prior to his visit to Africa, where Balugani first joined him. The execution of these prove the same hand as appears in the greater part, and best, of those of the African cities,’—that is, according to my theory, of all those which were not ‘agreeably ornamented’ by Balugani.
They were submitted to several other eminent archæologists and architects of the day; amongst others to Mr. C. M. Cockerell, who, writing under date June 9, 1837, thus alludes to them:—
‘In an antiquarian point of view I consider them of the utmost importance . . . in a practical point of view they offer to the professor of architecture many motives of composition and ornament entirely new; and if not equal to the choicest remains of Greece are, perhaps, of more frequent use, and on both these grounds it is exceedingly to be regretted that they have been so long withheld from the public.’
Mr. W. Hamilton, the celebrated archæologist and diplomatist, who was one of the founders and first presidents of the Royal Geographical Society, and to whom we are indebted for the discovery of the Rosetta stone on board a French transport, writing on the same date, thus expresses himself: ‘They are indeed most interesting documents of his ability, fidelity, and perseverance. . . . I was particularly struck by his correct selection, amongst the many monuments he saw, of those only which were of a good time, and certainly they give a most favourable notion of the state of the arts under the first two centuries of the Roman Empire. We must not, of course, look to that quarter of the world for genuine specimens of Greek art, but these drawings afford the most convincing proofs that taste and judgment prevailed in these distant and flourishing colonies to at least as late a period as they did in Rome itself.’