Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/325

 The Hypostyle Hall of Xerxes. 309 of a continuous peristyle, as would a perypteral temple, which may be walked round under cover ; in the second place, it yields receding angles between the antae of the porches in the fa9ade, the appearance of which is most disagreeable. To fill up these recesses Fergusson has imagined here chambers for which there is not the slightest authority on the site ; and, more than all, the configuration of the ground tells dead against the hypothesis of a r D O 0 O O CP fii 188 IfB^ □ B 9 I 111 tZJ o • o o • o o o o • 11 o o • o o o Ill :'!:■"; r— TIT-7 li.vl Fig. 151. — Restored plan of hypostyle hall. After Fergussom, //u/. of Ankiieelure, 2nd edition, vol. >. Fig. so. place enclosed by walls. These details, however, arc completely ignored and passed over by him. Look well at the plan of the ruins as they now are (Fig. 148), and you will perceive marks of drains, whose existence has been referred to a few pages back. Now, in the reconstruction proposed by Fergusson, these drains run right under the line of his side walls, between the central pavilion and the lateral porches ; a strange oversight on the part of the architect thus to undermine his own work. As the channels must have carried off the surplus water from the roof of the building, a heavy fall of rain would have caused them to overflow with disastrous effect on the foundation wall. Besides, how were the pipes, stretching for a distance of some seventy yards, to be
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