Page:Architectural Review and American Builders' Journal, Volume 1, 1869.djvu/273

 1868.] The Origin of the Pointed or Gothic Style. 229 the Grecian * * * than is generally imagined. The only observation neces- sary, on the above fact, is sufficiently obvious. If there were no settled rules of proportion, there could have been no breach of them ; and the architects could not have been censured on so absurd a charge, as that of committing a crime of which, in its nature, it was absolutely .impossible they could ever have been guilty If the censure had not been just, it is very improbable that five impartial persons, as these ap- pear to have been, should have unani- mously concurred in a resolution to for- feit their integrity, and ruin their own reputations for skill, by asserting a fact, which the whole body of the professors would have known was untrue." — Haw- kins, pp. 183 and 184. A careful scrutiny of the remains of Gothic Architecture, as well in thorough preservation as in ruins, will decidedly change several very prevalent impres- sions. For instance, it is a very general and a very poetical idea, that the Pointed Arch sprang from the effect, upon the minds of the original architects employ- ing it, of the interlacing boughs of trees in the great forests of Germany Re- garded abstractly, the Pointed Arch was sure to arise early in the course of civilization from the mere inspection of the first problem of Euclid — who lived about B. C 332 — proposing and explain- ing the process of raising an equilateral triangle, from a given base line, by two intersecting circles, whose centres differ in position by the length of their mutual radius, thus forming the outline of two pointed arches, one erect and the other inverted, divided by the straight line, or radius, connecting the two centres. It has been appositely remarked, that this double pointed curve is identi- cal with the form, called by Albert Durer, in his Geometry, " vesica pis- cium," the fish's bladder, but apparently meant literally for a bladder in the form of a fish ; and symbolically for a fish itself; and thence, in mystic symbolism for the Church. Regarded concretely, the exact shape of the equilateral pointed arch is found in the ceiling of at least one spacious chamber, amongst the many noble apartments of the excavated or "rock- cut" temples of ancient India, at Elora.* This, it will be objected, is not an in- stance in masonry ; very true. We will next adduce the use of two enormous blocks of granite, adjusted to abutments below, and each other above, by being dressed up at the proper angles, and placed as many pairs as were necessary, in the manner of an inverted letter V — thus, a — over spaces, made to distribute the vast superincumbent weight of stone, above the chambers of the great Pj^ramid of Egypt, f It is claimed, in rejoinder, that, while these answer — and, in Titanic work, answer extremely well the purposes of an arch — an arch proper requires three pieces ; and here are only two : besides, that, while this vaulting is pointed, it is not curved. Exactly : we will " mend the instance." First, in pictorial art; and then in stone. We have from Hawkins, in a com- partment of a mosaic picture, in the Oratories of St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist, in the Lateran Church at Rome, a representation of a moulded straight arch, identical in shape with that cited, as found in the pyramids of Egypt. Another compart- ment in the same subject exhibits a curved, pointed arch-head, ornamented with rude scrolls, interiorly and exte- riorly, which would readily suggest the use of crockets. This arch and an en- closing obelisk are based upon a pedi- Svo., pp. 566. London: G. & W B. Whitaker, 1824. The plate of the long, pointed vault, — which springs without intervening capitals from square piers having no pedestals, and which has on each side open aisles with fiat ceilings, — occurs at p. 185. t The Pyramids of Gizeh. By J. E. Perring, C. E. Ex- plorations for Col. Howard Vyse. 3 vols. Oblong ele- phant folio. 57 lithographic plates. London: James Fraser. 1S40.
 * See Capt. John B. Seely's "Wonders of Elora," 1 vol.