Part I. five Kinds of Columns.

Attic Base, which is half the Module, is divided, either into three,to have the Height of the Plinth, or into sour, for that of the great-er Torus, or into six for that of the lesser.

Both these Manners have been practis’d, as well by the Ancientas Modem Architects: but the second, which the Ancients generallyused, is, in my Opinion, preferable to the other, not so muchfor that it always supposes the Relation, which the whole has to itsParts; for I do not think that any thing arises from thence, thatcan affect the Eye with Delight, there being nothing properly, butthe Agreement of Order, or Equality, that can be pleasing to theSight, because, other Proportions are not alike obvious to it. Butthat which I think the Method of the Ancients the better for, is the.Help it affords the Memory to retain the Measures, because it isfounded upon a Reason, capable of producing what we call Re-membrance, whose Effect is much more certain than that of the bareApprehension of the Memory. For, when we once know that thethird Part of the Attic Base is the Height of its Plinth, the fourthPart that of its under Torus, and the sixth Part that of the otherTorus, his almost impossible to forget the Proportions of this Base 5But it is not so of the ten, seven and a hair, and five Minutes;which are the Measures of the Parts of this Base ; by reason, theProportions, that these Numbers have one to the other, are nootherwise known, and easie to be retaissd in Memory, than be-cause ten is the third Part, seven and a half the fourth, and fivethe sixth Part of thirty Minutes, which is the Height of the wholeBase.

What has oblig’d the Moderns always to make use of the sameMinutes, is the Necessity, they often had, to denote Measures thathold no Proportion, either with the Measure of the entire Module,or that of the other Parts; as when the Plinth of the Attic Base,instead of ten Minutes, has but nine and a half, or when it has tenand a half : and thus they were oblig’d to do, because they onlypropos’d to give the Measures of the Works that remain of the An-cients, which, probably, not being the trUe Originals, had not thatjust Preciseness of Proportions, which the first Inventers gave them:there not being any Appearance of Reason, why they should comeso near a just Division, without making it exact.

As I intend not, in this Work, to lay down the Proportions,otherwise than by Measures, which have all relation each to other,and to come, as near as possible, to the true ones establish’d by theAncients 5 I shall use no other than their Manner of Measuring.As VitruYms , then in the Doric Order, has lessen d the Module,which, in the other Orders, is the Diameter of the lower Part ofthe Column, and has reduc’d this great Module to a mean one,

B which