96 Remarks on Wilton Church. 
secuting causes. Opposite the central avenue, this transept swelled 
out into one of those semicircular recesses.or terminations with a 
ceiling rounded off like the head or conch of a niche, so frequent in 
the later Roman buildings, called in the Greek Apsis;—and in the 
Latin Tribuna—In this sat the magistrate— (‘the Pretor’ in the hall 
‘Pretorium,’) with his assessors, and from this, courts of justice have 
since been called Tribunals. Other recesses semicircular or square 
opposite to the lateral avenues served for different purposes of con- 
venience.” Such was the building presented by the Emperor 
Constantine to the Christians of his day for the purposes of their 
worship, and imitated by all church architects till the time of 
Justinian. During the fourth and fifth centuries I believe there 
were seven such churches erected in Rome, of which the most famous 
were those of S. Pietro, S. Paolo, and S. Maria Maggiore : there 
were also several, and among them that of S. Sophia, built at the 
other seat of empire—Constantinople. 
Of the Roman Basilicas—S. Peter’s—supplanted by the 8. Peter’s 
now standing, in the year 1503—tho’ not as large as its successor, 
filled an area as large as that covered by any medieval cathedral, 
excepting those of Milan and Seville. It was built by Constantine 
himself about the year 330—and had five aisles. 
In outward form, though of course on an extremely magnified 
scale, it must have resembled Wilton Church without its campanile, 
without its west front, and without the windows in its apse. It had 
indeed probably, so far as can be judged by the representation of it 
which appears in Raphael’s fresco of the coronation of Charlemagne, 
only one apse, and its lower tiers of windows, being a subsequent 
addition, were pointed. In the interior there were four rows of 
columns, all I believe of marble, taken from some heathen disused 
temple, and these columns in the centre aisle were connected by an 
architrave, instead of, as at Wilton, by arches. In the side aisles 
however the columns enjoyed the more common and elegant super- 
structure of the arch. A round arch separated the nave from the 
sacrarium, and a second lower, and also round arch, the sacrarium 
from the apse; in which (as I have said) there were no lights owing 
probably to their not, in the bright climate of Italy, being required. 
