OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 



319 



remains of the four original sides, and an octagonal pier results. By 

 repeating the process of replacement, sixteen-sided and thirty-two- 

 sided piers will he produced. Examples of the octagonal variety are 

 found in the portico of Tomh 1 at Benihassan,* and of the sixteen- 

 sided in the interior of the same tomb, or in the portico of Tomb 2.f 



The pier lias now reached a stage of evolution at which its faces 

 may be beautified by flutes. The flute may be applied either to 

 columns or to piers. It is a very incomplex but effective device to 

 diminish the cumbrousness of a shaft without diminishing its apparent 

 strength, to adorn a surface otherwise plain or simply rounded by the 

 changing grace of light and shade, and, by directing the eye irresist- 

 ibly to the vertical lines, to render the supporting office of the shaft 

 more obvious. Its origin is much disputed, and it may be more satis- 

 factory to regard it as a merely fanciful decoration employed for the 

 purposes just enumerated. However that may be, it is of cardinal 

 importance for us to observe the forms that result from its use on 

 columns and piers. Take, for example, a round wooden column, and 

 at regular intervals introduce sixteen narrow vertical grooves into its 

 sides ; take also a sixteen-sided stone pier, and make a similar groove 

 in each of its sides, — and 

 compare the results. In 

 the first case a smooth con- 

 vexity remains between 

 the flutes ; in the second, 

 two narrow planes meet- 

 ing in a sharp edge. But 

 if the width of the flutes 

 be sufficiently increased to 

 make the edges of adja- 

 cent ones coincident, the whole surface of the shaft in both cases will 

 be occupied by vertical concavities meeting in sharp edges, and it will 

 be almost impossible to tell which of the modified forms originated 

 in the cylinder and which in the prism ; for their sections, if their 

 diameters be the same, will be precisely alike. Now, if the modified 

 column be copied into stone and set beside the modified pier, no differ- 

 ence in their shafts will be discernible ; yet there is a difference, an 



* Lepsius, i. 60. 



t Ibid., i. 59, 60; Rosellini, ii. 1, 2. 



Fig. 1. a. Partial horizontal section of column with 16 flutes separated from 

 each other by listels. b. Do. of pier with 16 fluted faces which meet in 

 sharp edges between the flutes. 



