Page:Ware - The American Vignola, 1920.djvu/8

iv external and internal, Staircases, Towers, and Spires, Arches and Arcades, Vaults and Domes, and other architectural features, will, I hope, at a later day be made the subject of a separate treatise which will be the natural sequel to this one.

After the chief part of this volume was in press my attention was directed to a somewhat similar work by the celebrated James Gibbs, the architect of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields and of St. Mary-le-Strand. He published in London, in 1732, a series of plates showing the Orders and their applications with a brief descriptive text. The title page reads: "Rules for Drawing the Several Parts of Architecture in a more Exact and Easy Manner than has been heretofore Practiced, by which all Fractions, in dividing the Principal Members and their Parts, are Avoided." The book begins with an Address to the Reader which opens as follows:

"Upon examination of the common ways of drawing the Five Orders of Architecture, I thought there might be a method found out so to divide the principal Members and their Parts, both as to their Heights and Projections, as to avoid Fractions. And having tried one Order with success, I proceeded to another, till at length I was satisfied it would answer my intention in all; and I doubt not but that the Method here proposed will be acknowledged by proper Judges to be the most exact, as well as the easiest, that hath as yet been published."

I find on examining the plates that, though they follow an entirely different system, they have anticipated some of the methods of the present work. WILLIAM R. WARE.

October 1, 1902.