Chap. XXXI. PRINCIPLES OF PROPORTION. ]629

in their perpendicular station, that there should be no need of hutment inwards ■ butexperience hath shown the contrary, and there is scarce any Gothic cathedral, that 1 have

Fig. 3044.

king’s college chapel: piers.

seen at home or abroad, wherein I have not observed the pillars to yield and bend inwardsfrom the weight of the vault of the aisle ; but this defect is the most conspicuous upon theangular pillars of the cross, for there not only the vault wants butment, but also the

5 n

king’s college chapel: buttresses, etc.

angular arches that rest upon that pillar, and therefore both conspire to thrust it inwardstowards the centre of the cross.”

At King’s College chapel, flying buttresses are dispensed with, and happily theknowledge of construction had arrived at such perfection, when its astonishing vault wasprojected, that we have no evidence whatever of its yielding in any part

It may seem extraordinary that the Pointed style made so little progress in Italy theByzantine being always preferred: the architects of that country were probably unwillineto relinquish a mode of construction so economical, half only of the material employed inthe lightest, and a quarter in the earliest of the Gothic style, being required for the basilica •for example, where 100 rods of stonework would be used in the latter, 200 would benecessary for the style practised at King’s College, St. George’s Chapel, and Bath AbbevChurch, and 400 for that of the Chapter-house at Wells ; this result would lead to theconclusion, that no style is so well adapted for the wants of the present day as the Byzantine