OF RIBBED VAULTS.

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School, Oxford, and at the Hall Staircase, ChristChurch, and in the nave of Henry the Seventh’sChapel , Westminister, which appear as an after-thought and mistake, and are little better than ex-crescences, demanding supporting columns, neednot detain us. But those which are seen at King’s College Chapel , Cambridge , and in the centre of theVaults both of the nave and ailes of Henry theSeventh’s Chapel , Westminster, require a particularregard. One of this description is stated to projectbelow the summit of the vault fifteen feet at theChurch of St. Etienne du Mont, Paris . These pen-dents serve to illustrate the mechanical property inDome Vaulting, namely, that the eye may be ofextraordinary gravity or wholly omitted, and lead toa conclusion, confirmed by the double domes ofItaly , that a Dome Vault may progressively increasein thickness towards the vertex.

As it must be admitted, that vaults formed ofthese quadrants have the property of domes, theinquiry into the mode of suspending pendents willbe referable thereto. A cone, if its base be pre-vented spreading, will bear any weight; a domegenerated by the revolution of a small arc of a greatcircle a less weight, and the weight must be reducedin proportion to the increased convexity. The lan-terns at the vertices of the domes of St. Peter andSt. Paul might as well, in respect of the mechanicalaction, have been pendent as insistent. *

* After the completion of King’s College Chapel , Cambridge ,Roman Architecture came in fashion, under the auspices ofHolbein , and afterwards Inigo Jones , in England; and abouta century previously in Italy , under Ghiberto and Bruneleschi.In the latter, vaulting obtained able friends, but from the piers