14

OF GROINED VAULTS,

whether vertical or lateral, to certain principal sup-ports j their vaults were composed, “ ex lapide ettopho,” of ribs and pannels ; the one of good free-stone, the other of light sand-stone, or chalk ; theirsupports were piers and columns, and a wall withthem was held to be merely an enclosure. The ob-jection to this principle, “ that stone would crush,when subjected to the pressure of great weights re-duced to a small surface,” may be answered bya reference to the columns in Gothic Cathedrals.

M. Gauthey, in the fourth volume of “ Rosier’sJournal de Physique,” speaks of a column in AllSaints, Angers, twenty-four feet high, eleven inchessquare, which sustains 60,000 pounds. He says thisis only one-seventh of what would crush it. Thereis a column in the morning prayer chapel at Lincoln Cathedral equally thin in comparison to its height.This column stands insulated in the centre of thechapel, so that it sustains eight-twentieths of thewhole vaulting which covers the chapel. The columnswhich support the roof of the galleries of the Patio delos Leones, of the Alhambra in Granada , are nearlyas thin in proportion to their height. A pillar, twentysix times its diameter in height, would have beento the Ephesians as Pascal styles the Jews , a continuatemiracle. It would be pleasant to listen to a dialoguebetween the shades of the architect of the HexastyleIpetral Temple at Passtum, and the architects of AllSaints of Angers, or Lincoln Cathedral . We must sayof the former “ professus grandia turget.”

At the revival of Roman architecture the adage“ Pondus addit robur, ” became proverbial. The dif-ferent interpretations exemplified in the buildings of