H ouse and Garden 
the vaults, the elimination of thrust from the ques¬ 
tion is not so clearly demonstrated. I he catalogue 
does not clear up this particular point. 
In fact, questions of thrust and settlement are 
always attended with difficulty in view of the many 
chances that produce them: there is more than one 
kind of movement to be reckoned with. Deforma¬ 
tions of walls and arches often occur in the course of 
building while the work is green, or as the weight 
of the upper portion gets its bearings. A stop of 
the work for a few months before the ties and bonds 
of a roof are in place will cause walls to shift from 
the upright. I remember in a church with which 
J had to deal how long frosts stopped work for some 
months. On starting to build again we found “hor¬ 
izontal and vertical deflections” appearing in many 
walls which had been built quite parallel and plumb. 
No cracks or ruptures were visible, for the work 
was too green; the movements had been gradual, and 
the masonry had taken the new positions as if built 
in them. The arcade wall, in fact, presented just 
the appearance that Mr. Goodyear thinks so signifi¬ 
cant at Notre-Dame, for until the ties of a roof 
are on, a triforium hoisted on spindles of arcade 
piers is as top-heavy and likely to lean as a notice- 
board stuck on a post. 
All architects are familiar, too, with the move¬ 
ments of arches and vaults in the course of construc¬ 
tion if the centerings are weak, or if they are struck 
too soon. Often such settlements show no signs in 
the finished work; but Mr. Goodyear seems sure 
that movements of any kind in the churches he 
shows must produce manifest dislocations. Now 
mediaeval mortar was probably very slow in setting, 
and after considerable deformations would cohere 
and set solidly. Also, during the extension of build¬ 
ing any serious breaks would be likely to be made 
good and show no sign if afterwards faced with 
marble or mosaic. In the faces of such churches 
as St. Mark’s, or the Duomo of Pisa, cased with 
marble upon a core of rubble, we would not be like¬ 
ly now to see the dislocations that took place in the 
original core of the walls. I cannot, however, find 
that Mr. Goodyear meets this point against him by 
telling us distinctly that the marble cases in these 
instances was part of the first construction. He 
certainly gives us the certificates of architects, but 
they are far from conclusive on this particular point. 
A distinct class of settlement is that which takes 
place after the building has got its bearings from 
some new shifting of the thrust and weight on the 
masonry. When this has been sudden, as from 
earthquake or tempest, dislocation of the masonry 
is no doubt conspicuous. But when, as in the grad¬ 
ual giving way of foundations—from the withdrawal 
of water from a subsoil, for example—the shift¬ 
ing of strains is slow, the compositions of walls 
is wonderfully tolerant of them. A solid piece of 
stone can sag or bend a good deal without cracking, 
as can be seen in the ordinary marble chimney-piece, 
where the lintel slab on end, originally cut true level, 
is often curved down an appreciable fraction of an 
inch in its bearing of 4 ft. or so: the molecules of 
the solid marble have rearranged themselves and no 
crack appears. A homogeneous block of masonry 
is certainly as elastic: a solid pillar of it like Eddy- 
stone Lighthouse leans considerably to a wind. 
Therefore when Mr. Goodyear says any movement 
in the vaults at Amiens or in walls at Notre-Dame 
has been impossible because no cracks show, we 
can accept his conclusion as final only if we accept 
his philosophy altogether. 
Ci .ass III.— Crooked Sites, etc. —Mr. Goodyear, 
of course, acknowledges that a crooked street front 
may be the cause of a crooked setting out; but he 
does not often admit this chance as a possible ex¬ 
planation of what he shows. Of the other chances 
of a site which might limit formal symmetry he 
takes no account. Yet the alignment of ancient 
buildings often compels “asymmetry” in a new 
building. When, for example, in St. Mark’s, the 
new cathedral made use not only of the wall of the 
old basilica but of the walls of two independent 
buildings outside, it would be a wonder were all 
these of the same alignment! But in this case per¬ 
haps Mr. Goodyear admits the point, for he says 
he lays no stress on the “deflections of plan in St. 
Mark’s as indicating design.” Still, St. Mark’s is 
one of his picked examples of refinement which we 
are told should show every class of it. He therefore 
should have given us this point clearly. 
There are a good number of other asymmetric 
plans on which Mr. Goodyear does lay stress as 
being designed. Unfortunately the exact history of 
the setting out of these churches does not come so 
immediately to the knowledge of everybody as is 
the case with St. Mark’s. I am bound to confess 
myself ignorant as to most of the sites of the 
churches whose asymmetric plans are given us. It 
is therefore with the conceit of an ignoramus I 
suggest that one or two may have been, like St. 
Mark’s, built crooked because thev had to be. 
Class IV.— Misfttmgs of work where alteration 
or stoppage of building has occurred. —What seem 
to be these, are in many of Mr. Goodyear’s exhibits; 
but he evidently rejects such appearances for this 
reason, that the Italian churches from which he 
draws his examples were built straight away from 
set designs, and were subject to no vicissitude of sub¬ 
sequent re-designing, but were completed and hand¬ 
ed over as we see churches handed over by contract¬ 
ors to-day. He mentions how they were built in 
the eleventh, twelfth, or thirteenth century, as the 
case may be, and no doubt follows the best authori¬ 
ties. V et the idea recurs that Italian churches may 
have had sometimes the same sort of history that is 
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