ARCHITECTURE. 
ficient to fcreen him from the malign criticifm of cotem- 
poniry artids, who maintained that the piers, upon which 
the cupola reded, were inadequate to fufiain the incum¬ 
bent weight. Time and experience, however, proved the 
reverie ; and, when he was on the point of completing his 
project, the detraction of his enemies alfeCted him fo fen- 
fibly, that it is generally luppofed he died of a broken 
heart. M. Soufflot appears to have been very intelligent 
in the Gothic as well as in the Grecian (lyle of architec¬ 
ture : to obtain a knowledge of the former, he vifited many 
of the belt Gothic buildings in France, of which he made 
drawings, itudied their conftruCtion, general proportions, 
vaults,°&c. Hence he acquired much ul'eful information, 
that materially allided him in the delign and execution of 
the church of St. Genevieve. Sir William Chambers in¬ 
forms me, fays Mr. Murphy, that when he was lad in 
France, M. Soufflot (hewed him a large collection of draw¬ 
ings he had made from thole edifices; at the fame time 
he°expretfed his admiration at the excellence of the gene¬ 
ral proportions he difcovered in them, and the fuperior 
intelligence their architects podelfed in the laws of con- 
druCtion. In fine, the nobled monuments of Florence, 
Rome, Paris, and London, bear ample tedimony of the 
great abilities of the above artids, and in no part of thele 
monuments are their talents more confpicuous than in the 
condruCtion of the domes. It is much to be regretted 
then, that this fuperior branch of our art diould become 
ne<’le£led or unknown, and that more attention is not be¬ 
llowed on the found rules, and demondrative principles, 
upon which the art of conftmction is founded. The dudy 
of our Gothic edifices will be found, perhaps, to contri¬ 
bute very much to its redoration ; but nothing can coin- 
penfate for the want of a thorough knowledge of datics, 
and of conic feftions. “ It Teems very unaccountable,” 
fays the author of the Parentalia, “ that the generality of 
our late archite£ls dwell fo much on the ornamental, and 
fo fliglnly pafs over the geometrical, which is the mod 
eilential part of architecture. For indance, can an arch 
dand w ithout hutment futficient ? If the butment be more 
than enough, ’tis an idle expence of materials; if too little, 
it will fall; and fo for any vaulting: and yet, no author 
hath given a true and univerlal rule for this ; nor hath 
coididered all the various forms for arches.” 
Of SPIRE S. 
The fpire of old St. Paul’s, fays Mr. Bentham, is one 
»f the earlieft we have any account of; it was finilhed in 
the year of our Lord 1222, and was in height 520 feet, 
according to Stowe’s account. The fpire of Salifbury 
church is 400 feet high ; and that of Strafburgh, built by 
the famous Irwin de Stcinbach, is 450 feet. No fettled 
proportion feems to have been obferved in the dimenfions 
of fpires in general; fometimes the height did not exceed 
four times the diameter of the bafe, whild, at other times, 
the ratio of the height, to the breadth taken at the bafe, 
was as eight to one. We have an example of the lad- 
mentioned proportion, in the fpires built by Hugh Leber- 
gin upon the towers of St. Nicale, the two larged of which 
were fifty feet high, upon a bafe of fix feet. Notwithlland- 
ing the amazing height to which many fpires were carried, 
they were condru&ed fo exceedingly (light, that we (hould 
be apt to conclude, on. reafoning from theory, that they 
would be inadequate to fudain their own weight. The 
fpire of Salifbury, for infiance, is but (even inches thick; 
and that of Batalha is about the fame thicknefs, independ¬ 
ent of the emboded work, though almod a fourth part of 
its (nperficies is perforated. Great care mud confequently 
have been taken, in (eleiSting the materials employed in 
condruCling fuch light fpires, efpecially as they appear in 
general to be connected without the aid of iron cramps ; 
for this metal, when expofed to air or moidure, is (object 
to contrafl rud, which in time will fhiver in pieces as 
much of the block as it comes in contact with. I am in¬ 
formed, fays Mr. Murphy, that the (tones of the fpire of 
Batalha are keyed together by means of dove-tail wedges 
V01.. II. No. 59. 
»9 
of pine-wood : however that may be, it is pretty certain, 
that the ancients, upon (intilar occalions, have adopted this 
expedient. Alberti mentions his having found wedges or 
cramps of wood in the ancient Roman buildings; and M. 
le Roy has obferved them in the ruins of an ancient tem¬ 
ple in the didrift of Athens. In the ancient temple of 
Girgenti in Sicily, there were found wedges of wood, in 
good prefervation, after a fpace of more than two thoudind 
years. Cramps of copper were alfo ufed by the ancients in 
their buildings, which, according to the account of father 
Monilaucon, were tempered to an extraordinary hardnefs. 
With refpect to the origin of fpires, it appears very un¬ 
accountable,’ that neither hidory nor tradition have pre- 
ferved the lead remembrance of it. There mud, never- 
thelefs, have been (ome fpecious motive for building them ; 
for we can hardly conceive, that appendages fo expenfive, 
and difficult of execution, were merely the refult of caprice. 
If we examine the ufes to which the facred edifices where¬ 
in they are employed were appropriated in the twelfth cen¬ 
tury, we (hall difeover a rational caufe for crowning them 
with fpires: namely, the cudom of burying in churches, 
which about this time appears to have become general all 
over Europe. Now, in conlequcnce of this cudom, there 
were united, in the fame fabric, a cemetery and a church ; 
it was highly proper, therefore, to build every druchire 
intended for this double purpofe, in a dyleof architecture 
charaCteriltic of its two-fold dedination. Imprelfed with 
thefe fentiments, the architects of thole times would natu¬ 
rally look back for precedents of a fimilar nature among 
the nations of antiquity; the hifiorians of thefe nations, 
as well as the remains of their edifices, would have diewn 
them, that it was invariably the practice of all civilized 
people, who believed in the immortality of ihe foul, and 
did not hold a republican form of government, to raile 
lofty pyramids over their cemeteries or places of fepulture. 
The Gothic architects, in like manner, have adopted that 
figure to charadterife their cemeteries, and, at the fame 
time, preferved the figure of the crols in their ground plan, 
the better to denote a Chridian temple. 
Hence the origin of fpires, and the confequent introduc¬ 
tion of pinnacles, pyramidal or pointed arches, angular or¬ 
naments, ccc. in diort, every vertical part of the whqle 
fuperdruchtre was henceforth terminated in a point. In¬ 
deed it could not be otherwife, confident with the true 
principles of delign, which invariably prefcribe an har¬ 
mony between the feveral parts ; and alfo between thefe 
parts and the general configuration ; from the whole of 
.which refults an unity of appearance, the mod certain cri¬ 
terion of its excellence. The reafon alligned for the ori¬ 
gin of fpires will alfo apply to the pyramids, or round tow¬ 
ers, to be found at this day near many of the old churches 
in Ireland; for it is obfervable, that, at the time thefe 
towers were built, the architects of that country were un¬ 
acquainted with the art of railing a fpire over the pillars, 
at the interfeCtion of the nave and tranfept. '1 hey had 
recourfe, therefore, to an ealier but lets lcientific expedi¬ 
ent, by confiruCting, upon (olid bafes, thole round pyra¬ 
mids which always terminated like the Egyptian obelilks. 
And, notw ithdanding all the learned conjectures that have 
been made rel’pecting the life of thele pyramids, we may 
reafonably conclude, that they were intended to denote 
cemeteries. We may conceive how far the Chridians of 
the 13th century were impreffed with the propriety of 
building pyramids over their cemeteries, from the immenfe 
elevation they gave to Tome of them. That of old St. 
Paul’s, for indance, was loftier than any of the pyramids 
of Egypt. And it is worthy of remark, that they were 
introduced about the time fcience began to revive, and 
recover its long-lod energy ; hence they may not be im¬ 
properly conddered as fo many aufpicious monuments of 
the riling greatnefs and returning wii’dom of Europe. 
When we confider, fays Mr. Murphy, the dupendous 
monuments of Egyptian power which dill exilt, we can¬ 
not avoid reflefting on the vanity of their founders, and 
pitying the miltaken fydem of theology that gave rile to 
A a them 
