450 Prof. Forbes on the Mathematical 
fine ourselves to the Pointed style, we have a beautiful ac- 
cordance amongst the perpetually rising lines of a symmetri- 
calstructure. ‘These carry the eye from the base to the sum- 
mit of a building with a consciousness that such a general 
disposition of parts is conformable to the particular disposi- 
tion of details; we have a superposition of less solid upon 
more condensed parts, retreating buttresses and tapered pin- 
nacles. Then the peculiar form of the pointed arch, which, 
whilst it leads the eye upwards, has that in it which convinces 
us of its fitness to be loaded at the summit, and to bear in 
stately equipoise those spires or towers, which had their 
especial adaptation to the objects of the sacred edifices with 
which they were connected. The mutual support afforded by 
the parts was not only always adequate, but (in the best models) 
amply enough developed to prove to the eye that it was so. 
Pillars are placed where they might have been dispensed 
with, but they are never placed where the eye sees at once 
their inutility. Spandrels of arches are lightened, though 
the voussoirs might have sustained the load; open canopies 
with loaded vertices, though their lightness strikes the eye 
with a pleasing astonishment, are never suffered to inspire us 
with a dread of instability. 
Yet it often happens that the real sources of security in 
Gothic architecture have been as carefully kept out of sight, 
as that amount of protection required by the eye was se- 
cured*. We are perfectly capable of admiring the interior 
of a groined stone roof, without concerning ourselves much 
with the mode in which the lateral thrust is opposed. The 
vertical weight is that which chiefly affects our senses, and 
that the walls should appear, as well as be, strong enough to 
sustain it. Yet every carpenter knows that the lateral thrust 
of his roof must somehow or other be resisted. Much more 
so when stone is used, and arches which render the employ- 
ment of tie-beams impracticable. The Gothic architects from 
a very early period transferred the pressure to individual 
points of the vertical walls, (for instance, by the beautiful co- 
noical groining of King’s College Chapel, Cambridge,) and 
sustained the pressures by flying buttresses of the most ele- 
gant forms, which conveyed the thrust to the lateral solid but- 
tresses, surmounted by those elegant but ponderous pinnacles, 
which whilst they appear to be placed but for ornament, are 
in reality preventing the displacement of these stays, and thus 
* I find that Mr. Willis, in his interesting and elegant work on Italian 
Gothie Architecture, has expressed himself in almost the same terms that 
I have here used. 
