OF PENDENT 111BBED VAULTS.

67

OF PENDENT RIBBED VAULTS.

The Free Masons were not unmindful of the ad-vantages arising from hemispherical vaulting ; and itis perhaps a happy circumstance that the form oftheir arch compelled them, in all cases, to obtain thoproperty of the Welch arch. Fig. 23. resembles thevaulting to the great kitchen of the Monastery ofDurham Cathedral: Fig. 24. that of the Chapter?House of York . The ingenious positing of the ribs,,especially in the first example, is particularly deserv-ing of attention, as being out of the road of commonpractice, and exhibitory of a correct knowledgeof the sphere. The people of Yorkshire fondlyadmire, and justly boast of their Cathedral and.Chapter-House. The principle of vaulting at theChapter-House may be admired, and imagined instone ; not so the vault of the nave ; it is manifestlyone of those sham productions, * which cheat wherethere is no merit in deceiving.

In this hasty retrospect of Architecture, the morethe mind has been exerted in an examination of the

* The beautiful church at Boston in Lincolnshire , may, in likemanner, sometimes escape detection in a similar untruth.

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