ACRE. IQ 
superstructure covering the Sepulchre itself, chap. 
it is surely probable that Idna, whose nhbot. 
drew up so accurate an account of all the 
holy places, would preserve something- in imita- 
tion of its most sacred edifices. The author 
of these Travels once visited Idna; and in the 
numerous vestiges of ecclesiatical splendour 
which he there observed, in the rude bas-rehefs 
of its sepulchral monuments, in granite coffins, 
but, above all, in the remains of the pointed 
Gothic style exhibited in the ruins upon that 
island \ a traveller there mis^ht rather imasfine 
himself viewing the antiquities of the Holy Land^ 
(6) See PococA:e'* Travels, and the Engravings already given in this 
work. The curious work of Bernardino, " Trattato dellt Piante et 
Imtnag-ini de sncri Edi/izi de Terra Santa," published at Florence, in 
1()20, gives the rules and exact dimensions for the construction of 
sanctuaries after the model of the Holy Sepulchre, which, at the time 
of Bernardino'^, visit to Jerusalem, was entirely surrounded with 
pointed arches. The pointed arches of the ISllhlas, in the Isle of 
Rhonda, near Ca'iro, are of the ninth century, as will be proved in a 
subsequent Note. Many other instances might be adduced to prove 
that the pointed stifle iu architecture existed in ail the oldest Saracenic 
structures ; but the Eastern origin of the pointed arch has been so 
satisfactorily demonstrated by Whittingtox, {Hist. Surv. of Eccles. 
Antiq.&ic.) by Haggitt, {Lett, on Gothic Architect.) by Kerrich, 
[Olserv, on the Churches of Italy, Archceol. Vol. XVI.) and by 
Hawkins, {Hist, of the Orig-. &c. of Gothic /Architecture,) that an 
obstinate denial of the fact is merely the struggle of ignorance against 
the acknowledgment of error. 
(7) Sec Pennant's Hebrides, Plates xxii and xxiii. p. 253. Chcslei; 
1774. 
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