Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/83

 CoNSTKUCTlOiN. 69 inlierited from their ancestors their taste for picturesque irregularity ; hence it is that around their capitals, palaces and kiosks are sprinkled about in charming disorder, amidst shady gardens and courts more or less spacious. Construction. The hardness of the stone which the rocky soil of Persia yielded in great abundance not only permitted, but counselled, the employ- ment of materials of great size. The highest columns at Per- sepolis, those the total height of which is almost twenty metres, are Fm. i7.~Maionfy frooi the Takht-i-Madere-i-Soleiman. DiBVLArov, VAwtmtimiet lorn. i. Plate IV. not made, like Grecian supports, of cylindrical drums of mediocre height, but are composed of two or three segments at most Thus, in the substructures of the Takht-i-Jamshid platform are blocks 4 m. 50 c. long,* whilst the window and niche frames of the Palace of Darius were cut from one single block (Fig. 14). The sub- structures of the platforms and the palaces themselves are the bes examples from which to study stone-construction in Persia. A very fine specimen will be seen in Fig. 17, from the Takht-i-Madere- i-Soleiman. What characterizes the masonry of this structure is I find nothing to justify his assertion in the plates of Cosie and other travellers. Digitized by Copgle
 * Flahdin (JUtgihtit torn. ii. p. 150) speaks of blocks 15 and 17 metres long.