Page:The Building News and Engineering Journal, Volume 22, 1872.djvu/184

 168 THE BUILDING NEWS. Marcn 1, 1872 commend them to the closest attention of all who feel an interest in the history and progess of artistic manufacture. There is certainly no finer display in England, not even in the India Museum. We commence with the metal-work, and there lie before us crosses ‘‘which Jews might kiss, and infidels adore,” of modern date, however, and of Parsee design, we fancy ; with scent-stands, hookahs, rose-water sprinklers, water-bottles decorated with beaten work beyond all praise ; ‘‘paun boxes,” elbow armlets, bringing to the mind the portrait of Nourmahal in her state ; girdle clasps, fit for the Graces, and flaming with emeralds and diamonds, and a thousand various rarities. It isimpossible to describe the minuteness and richness characterising some of this work, the golden bosses on the shield of transparent rhinoceros hide; the swords with gold-plated handles ; the battle- axes, damascened with silyer; the daggers with green-glass handles, jewelled to the hilt ; the chasings, mountings, and _ gildings, especially of steel ; the inscriptions in gold; the settings of pearl ; the waterings; or that “scimitar, with ivory handle, mounted with massive gold tigers’ heads, jewelled, the blade very richly watered and channeled through- out to receive seed-pearls which flow from hilt to point.” These weapons, it is evident, were never intended for war. They are all gemand rejoicing. But so much cannot be said of the battle-mace presented by the chief of Sanglee, which has a very serious ap- pearance indeed. But all Asiatics appear, like the Spaniards, to have taken pride in the decoration and brilliance of their armoury. Here are knives, smelling, in a figurative sense, of assassination, with the most innocent of mother-of-pearl handles, and blades of lady-like delicacy, one enclosed within another, with deadly Belooch guns and fear- ful Mahratta Excalibur. But the Indian ex- hibition is not all warlike. On the con- trary, much of it 1s filled with suggestions of luxury and peace; Hookah rugs, in gold thread and coloured silks, carpets like beds of blossoms, sweeps of rose-coloured velvet, jackets of rich red silk, embroidered shawls, scarfs of ibex-wool, bamboo whisks, and, pace the good old Brahminical times, photo- graphic albums. Still, the array is principally martial, and very remarkable it is. ‘There are the “war quoits,” called ‘‘ of Akali,” an apparatus of fighting nowhere else employed ; double-pronged spear-heads, resembling some of the savage implements stored up in the Tower of London ; a magnificent helmet of finely-watered steel, chased and gilt with Arabic inscriptions in relief, and a brass and steel mail neck-piece, with Arabic characters interwoven. With this last are three others, of similar though of less elaborate design, and, probably, of a different date. A curious collection is formed by Indian shirts of mail, of alternate brass. and steel links woven inrectangular patterns, head-pieces and leggings of steel, barred and rivetted ; armour, armlets of metal, in vandyke patterns, and a set of back, breast, and side plates as bright as mirrors—termed ‘‘ mirrors,” indeed, in the Indian Dictionary. It is amusing to discover, amid this outpouring, so to speak, of antique Asiatic life, its w its chivalry, its tourna- ments—in close kinship with our own and those of France in former days—such ‘‘ modern instances” as a ‘copy of the ‘ Leaves from our Journal in the Highlands,’ translated into the Mahratthi language, bound in morocco, in case of sandal-wood, with ivory inlay ;” a ‘silver pentagraph,” ‘Indian guns with English stocks,” and the names and titles of “Sir Salar Jung, K.C.S.1.,” ‘* Sir Jung Baha- door, K.C.S.I.,” and ‘‘W. Whampoa, Esq.” But we must not, in reviewing the Duke of Edinburgh’s Indian collection, understand it as pretending to represent, in any manner, the full industry of our Indian Empire. It is essentially a cabinet of luxuries and curiosi- ties, and not such a display as might be ex- pected at an International Exhibition. Every object init is choice and intended to be unique, or, at all events, a specimen of Eastern pride. Thus, the silver pot and plateau, presented by Sir Jung Bahadoor, are so sparkling, that we can never imagine them as being anywhere, except under a glass case; the four bangles of enamelled gold could not possibly be worn even by the most courtly of court beauties in Europe, but must, as if by nature, twinkle on the limbs of dark-browed Eastern syrens ; and who could dream of sitting down with any composure with the resplendent cups and saucers of Jeypore spread before him, on one of those almost translucent tables of enamel, wearing a pair of those glittering cashmere slippers, and armed witha Vizianaghur dagger, having an ivory handle, aglow with diamonds, water-bladed, damascened with gold, and marked either with the inscrutable Ghooka cross, or the equally inscrutable wavy emblem of the Malay? All this so vividly suggests a difference between European and Eastern life and manners, that even on thisaccount alone, valuable lessons are to be learned from the latest contributions to the treasures of South Kensington. But, above all, they are im- portant as demonstrating the perfection to which the ancient races of the Kast progressed in many charming arts long before we had arrived at even the initials of them. In Europe, no doubt, in distant days, there were master- artificers in metal-work, in weaving, and in the elaboration of jewellery; but those days, ancient to us, were as a childhood to the im- memorial nations of Asia, who haye lost, howeyer, perhaps more than we have gained ; whereas, we learned from them formerly, they are compelled to learn from us now, which accounts, perhaps, for the difference between a Caleutta trowel, wrought in the year 1871, and those water-bottles of beaten gold, to which time gives no date, and which confers upon the artist no fame. ———__~>_——- ON THE ECONOMY SHOWN IN ROMAN CONSTRUCTION.* V E are too ready to look upon the Ro- mans as a people who, possessed of immense wealth, were not obliged to pay par- ticular attention to the means by which they accomplished their ends, and who could afford without seruple to dispense with those expe- dients upon which we, from the insufficiency of our resources, have to rely. The passion for grand effects was not indeed entirely ab- sent from any of their undertakings, but the genius of the Romans knew how to reconcile vast conceptions with facile means by which they might be carried out; and the more we study almost any of their remaining monu- ments, the more do we find artifices abound- ing which tend, if not to reduce hand labour, at least to simplify it. While architects in their conceptions aimed at once at a majestic effect and a durability worthy of the power of the Roman people, an evident regard to rigorous economy guided them in the exect-| tion of every part ; they always aspired to} realise, by the use of methods at once easy and simple, the double merit of perfect so-j lidity and incomparable grandeur. ‘The do- minant idea which explains the practical con- struction of their architecture was to minimise the use of temporary staging (or scaffolding), to keep down as much as pos- sible the cost of the centreing of their vaults, and it is by the study of their concrete vaults that this idea can be put in the clearest light. The name “vault” seems to indicate a construction, the joints of which range toa common centre. ‘This, however, was not the method adopted in the Roman vaults formed of rubble masonry. The courses composing the body of such a vault keep, from the springing to the crown, the most exact hori- zontality: the sight of these courses, with clearly-defined edges in the rents and fissures of a pile of ruins, recalls to the mind, almost gonieur des Ponts et Chaussées. involuntarily, the level lines which are some- times drawn with such perfect exactness in sections of stratified geological formations. A vault was raised like an embankment, with alternate courses of stones and mortar, and the entire difficulty lay in supporting this mass of materials in space during the setting of the mortar. This difficulty was increased from another cause: since the vault owed its stability only to its monolithic structure, the least settlement of the centreing, leaving these badly-consolidated masses of masonry without due bearing, exposed them to disastrous rup- tures. The following was the way in which the Romans arrived at a solution of the delicate question : instead of making the whole mass of their vaults bear directly on the temporary centreing, they interposed between it and the vault an intermediate course or layer of brick (or rather tile). Sometimes a net- work of tile of large mesh, a sort of masonic open work of extreme lightness, is laid over the wooden centres, and takes off from them the weight of the vault proper; sometimes the temporary centreing is covered over its entire surface with a layer of bricks laid flat. In either case it was sufficient, instead of making the wooden centreing strong enough to carry the bulky solid of the vault, to give it the necessary stiffness to support a skeleton, by its nature light, and upon which was built the solid covering. Doubled, in fact, as the centreing was by this layer of bricks, which both covered and protected it, itwas sheltered from all destructive action, and while it gave its form to the mass above, did not support its weight. When once laid this tile shell became the true centre of the vault, a centre essentially durable, which was embodied in the constructive mass, and conduced, in the same way as the masonry itself, to the solidity and preservation of the work. This second centreing of tile cost, indeed, more than the equivalent bulk of the rubble or concrete — the place of which it takes, but this increase of expense will appear quite insignificant if we compare it with the saving which thereby accrued in the timber—and besides this, the actual increase was but of very small amount. The materials of which the shells were com- posed, consisted simply of brick or tile, of large dimensions, it is true, but the manufac- ture of which was carried on at but a small outlay in the neighbourhood of Rome. And yet these bricks, in spite of their small cost, were used with a remarkably sparing hand. We have said that the shells of Roman vaults were of two kinds: some- times they were formed of bricks, laid as ribs radiating from the crown, sometimes they resolyed themselves into a sort of curved pavement laid on the centreing. Let us point out the principal varia- tions of the -first type. These were gener- ally built with bricks of two sizes — square bricks of about 23in. on the side, and rectangular bricks about 23in. by Gin. With the rectangular bricks were formed ribs, or rings, about 23in. apart from centre to centre, and by means of the large square bricks these ribs were at intervals connected together two and two. Thus was formed round the wood centreing a sort of open-work cage, which may be considered the most perfect model of a shell with ribs radiating from the crown which obtained amongst the Romans. Sometimes this en- velope of the centreing was replaced by a system of arches, independent of each other, and at greater or smaller distances apart. These arches were built of rectangular bricks as above, and in them were laid at intervals bricks about 23in. square. These, projecting on each side from the rib of which they formed a part, bonded the tile mesh-work and the mass of the rubble-work closely together. Often, again, ribs formed of bricks 23in. by Gin. were grouped in pairs and bonded solidly together by the large square bricks forming tie-pieces. f It is difficult to give by a written description '
 * From the Gazette des Architectes; by M.Cuotsy, In-