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THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



LMav, 



witli a new dress; and down to the priveit day we seem to have 

 remained true to the (dd spectarle-like cant window of our fore- 

 fathers, wliich, wliilst it is almost universal in Knirland, can 

 scarcely he met with in modern architecture on the continent.* 



Sir lialtliazar then jiroceeds to ffive us advice of not a very im- 

 portant nature on the suhject of balconies, balustrades, and Cor- 

 nishes. He says that the Grecian and Roman surveyors ever made 

 the Cornishes and ornaments about the windows of the upper 

 stories to be higgler than those on the lower ; and illustrates his 

 remark by a somewhat pedantic reference to Michaelangjelo, 

 Raphael d'Urbin, and AUiert Durer. He then teaches us as to 

 the proportions of doors and windows. The chambers of a palace, 

 he says, should have the doors wide enough for two to pass at once, 

 and the height to be double the width ; all other chamber doors 

 should be convenient for a man of complete stature to pass with 

 his hat on. 'Windows must be higher than they are wide, because 

 light comes from above, and the middle transome should be above 

 ti feet from the floor, otherwise the transome would be opposite a 

 man's eye ; " hindersome," as he says, "to the free discovery of 

 the country. The leaning-height of a window should be 3^ foot, 

 and not so low that wanton perscms may sit on them and break 

 the glass, or that they may show themselves in cuerjio to passen- 

 gers. '' A good surveyor," he says, " shuns the ordering of doors 

 with stumbling-block thresholds, though our forefathers affected 

 them, perchance to perpetuate the ancient custom of bridegrooms, 

 who, wlien formerly at their return from church, did use to lift up 

 their bride, and knock her head against that part of the door, for 

 a remembrance that she was not to passe the threshold of their 

 house without their leave." 



'■ Doors, he says, should be on a row, and close to the windows, 

 that when the doors are opened they may serve for screens, and 

 not to convey wind to the chimney." 



The hearth of a chimney ought to be level with the floor ; and 

 chimney mantles ought to be of stone or marble. It is necessary 

 to cover the top of chimneys to keep out rain and snow ; the 

 smoke holes can be very conveniently made on the sides of their 

 heads. Had the knight lived in these times he would doubtless 

 have been very severe, in his quaint way, upon the monstrous 

 fashion of modern chimney-pots. 



" Roomes on moist grounds do well to be paved with marble," and 

 '' a good surveyor shuns the making of timber ])artitions on the 

 undermost story." '" The good surveyor doth contrive the repar- 

 titions of his ground plot so as most of the necessary servants may 

 be lodged in the first ground-story, whereby there will be less dis- 

 turbance, less danger of fire, and all the family at hand on all oc- 

 casions." " Finally, he ought from time to time to visit the work 

 to see whether the building be performed according unto his di- 

 rections and moulds." The author then proceeds to a chapter on 

 clerks of works. " A darke of the werkes," he says, " must be 

 verst in the prices of materials and the i-ates of all things belong- 

 ing to a building; know where the best are to be had ; provide 

 them to the workmen's hands," and so on, adding that " though 

 nails to some seem not very considerable, yet ought the clarke of 

 the werke to be discrete in the distributing of them to some car- 

 ])enters whose pockets partake much of the austruche's stomach." 

 " His eyes must wander about every workman's hands, as on those 

 of the sawyers at their ])it, so that they waste no more than needs 

 in slabs; on the laborers' hands in the digging of the foundation 

 for the bricklayers, that all the loose earth may be removed and 

 springs observed." 



Some of the ordinary duties of a clerk of the works are then 

 enumerated ; as, that he should pi'event bricks being tumbled out 

 of the cart ; that he should suffer no sammell bricks to be made 

 use of, and that he should not suffer the bricklayers to lay any 

 foundation except the ground be first rammed, though it seem 

 never so firm. " No great and small stuff," he says, " should be 

 huddled together in the foundation, but all laid down as even as 

 possil)ly can be, to ram it the better and the more equal, and must 

 be of scdid hiird stuff with no concavities daubed over with store 

 of mortar," and he adds here in a marginal note that these pre- 

 cautions were observed in building the foundations of Solomon's 

 Temple, but he does not give us his authority fortius information. 

 The clerk of works is further to see that the line-and-plumb 

 rule be often used ; that the bricklayers make small scaffling holes, 

 and never suffer them to begin scafflings in the morning, but before 

 leaving of their work ; " for if in the morning," he says, " most of 

 them will make it a day for the gathering of nuts." 



* Lord Bacon, who wrote somewhut before the date of this book, had none of our 

 author's prejudice against these emiiowed windows. '* 1 hold them," aays he in his 

 well known e*siiy on building, " of i-ood use, lor they be pretty retiring pluces for con- 

 ference ; and besirles, they keep both the wind and sun otf, for that whkh \voulU Btrilie 

 almost tiiruu^Ji iiu i-oauj dotli scarce puss the window." 



Then follow some injunctions respecting mortar, that I scn-cely 

 need particularise — and the author proceeds to the subject of ma- 

 sonry. The workmen must observe exactly the surveyor's molds, 

 and work close and neat joints, using but little mortar between 

 them, not only because much mortar will be washed away, but that 

 Cornishes will also appear like a rank of open teeth ; and they 

 must not forget to shore up the middle part of the liead of the 

 windows, as well as the sides, to prevent an une([ual settling of the 

 work, and, consequently, cracks. There here ensue, for the next 

 thirteen pages, detailed directions for the proportioning of the 

 several orders. 



"It is the rule of the ancient masters, whose reliques, to be seen 

 throughout most places of Italy, make many strangers that come 

 their gape so wide as that they need no gags. ' 



The author now enters upon the subject of carpentry. He 

 teaches "That the carpenters should be good husbands in the 

 management of the builder his timber; on the cutting of the 

 scantlings; their sparing to make double mortices, which do but 

 vveaken the summers. To lay no gerders which are needless and 

 hindersome to the hording of a room; no summers to be laid 

 except the ends of them are either pitcht, or laid in loam to pre- 

 serve them from rotting," "and therefore in Italy, France, and 

 Germany, and among the most prudent and solid builders, the free 

 masons, put stone cartouches in the top of the inside walls which 

 are bearers to the summers, as such cartouches are seen in divers 

 churches, and some of them are carved in ornamental figures." 

 He alludes, no doubt, here to the stone corbels ujion which we 

 sometimes see the ends of principal timbers resting: an excellent 

 old practice which we in our own days follow, although in a much 

 less picturesque way, by inserting the ends of our timbers into 

 cast-iron shoes projecting from the face of the wall. The utili- 

 tarian tendencies of modern practice have been very subversive of 

 the old picturesque ways of our ancestors, whether on costume, 

 furniture, or architecture. An upholsterer now ascertains with 

 precision the size of the piece of oak that will just carry his table; 

 he seeks till he finds the safe minimum scantling, and this success- 

 ful discovery is the triumph of his art. ^V'hilst our forefathers 

 would take a log of oak, unregardless of this politico-economical 

 search after the greatest possible strength with the least possible 

 stuff', and would carve it into one of those ponderous and fantastic 

 legs which charm us by their quaintness, although they defy our 

 efforts to lift them. 



In further illustration compare the broad, deep, capacious fire- 

 places, whereby our forefathers would warm themselves, with the 

 scientifically-constructed, snug, rumfordized stove, with bevelled 

 cheeks, no hobs, contracted openings, all contrivances admirably 

 adapted to meet our modern requirements of convenience and 

 economy; but how destructive to the poetry of our grandsires' 

 ruder arrangementsl^men of a rough, bold stamp, who, provided 

 they secured to themselves a warm chimney corner, appeared to 

 regard with great indifference the minor evils of smoke and blacks. 



Then follow many other details of the manner the carpenter is 

 to lay his timber, and the author adds that the clerk of the works 

 must be very careful not to suffer the carpenters to lay any timbers 

 under the chimneys, "whereby many houses have been set on fire, 

 and burnt to the ground." We have then a variety of scantlings 

 for the timbers of floors and roofs, which scantlings he gives as tit 

 for substantial structures, but which are "not usual in lime-and- 

 hair bird-cage-like buildings"— a remark that leads us to the con- 

 clusion that the flimsy structure of modern speculators was not 

 wholly unknown to our ancestors. The care of the clerk of tlie 

 works must also be on "materials of weight, as sjiuder, wherewith 

 an unconscionable plummer can ingrosse his bill." In this respect 

 we see that 200 years' experience has not advanced us — we have 

 still "unconscionable plummers." "The clerk is to see sauder 

 weighed and well managed, and in the attesting of bills have a 

 care not to pass his eyes slight/i/ over them, lest when a plummer 

 sets pounds of candles used about his sauder, that trick prove as 

 insupportable as that of one who, having played away a round 

 sum of his master's stock in a journey to the East Indies, set down 

 in his bill to have paid a hundred pound for mustard." "He must 

 likewise have a clear insight on the glass paines of the glazier; 

 suffer no green paines of glass to be mixed with the white. He 

 must with his eyes follow the measurer of the work, his rod or 

 pole; so the line wherewith the joiner's work is measured, that it 

 be not let slide through the measurer's fingers, since the joiner's 

 work hath many goings in and out, and a leger-de-mayne may be 

 prejudicial to the paymaster's purse. It were likewise better to 

 agree with painters to have their work rated on running measure 

 and on the straiglit, as the carpenter's work, who, (being of an 

 honest Joseph's profession), are as deserving to be well payd as the 



