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gested the idea of the gothic aisle; but such a supposition seems both unnecessary in itself, and incorrect as to the probable order of occurrences; for whoever has read the travels of Pallas through different parts of the Russian empire, or of other Oriental travellers, will find ample proof of the existence of the gothic style of architecture long before our earliest European churches were built and it is just as probable, if not more so, that the gothic aisle suggested the idea of the elm avenue, as that this suggested the idea of the gothic aisle.

The mineral substances employed in the structure of human habitations necessarily differ in different parts of the world, in consequence of the difference of the materials afforded by the subjacent strata; and, accordingly, an experienced eye will conjecture, almost with certainty, the character of the subjacent strata, from the nature of the materials employed, in the buildings erected on the surface: or, conversely, if the nature of the subjacent strata be antecedently known, the character of the stone employed in the buildings of the vicinity will, almost to a certainty, be known also; and, on this principal, as much surprise would be excited in the mind of a well-informed geologist by the prevalence of granite in the buildings of Kent or Sussex, as of limestone near the Land's End in Cornwall.

The nature, however, of the material employed in building is in some measure determined by the particular stage of civilization of the inhabitants. Thus in the early periods of civilization, and before the aboriginal forests of a country have been cleared, wood has usually been the principal and almost the only substance employed. In proportion as the population of a country increases, wood becomes more and more scarce; and then brick and stone begin to be employed: but when the population has increased to a very considerable extent, those materials almost entirely supersede the use of wood, unless in the interior of the building: and hence, in this densely

peopled island, the half-timbered dwellings of our ancestors are daily becoming more picturesque.*

The value of building stone depending greatly on its hardness, but the difficulty of working it being increased proportionally to its degree of hardness, it ought not to escape our notice, in a treatise, of which it is the professed object to illustrate the adaptation of external nature to the physical condition of man, that many of the common forms of building stone, though soft while yet undetached from the quarry, become hardened very considerably by exposure to the air; which change in their state enhances their value in a twofold sense, for in consequence of their previous softness, they are more easily worked: while their subsequent hardness insures the greater durability of the building in which they are employed. And, again, though many varieties of stone are so easily worked, even after a long exposure to the air, as to have acquired in consequence the name of freestone; yet even with respect to such as are of the hardest and toughest quality, an equal degree of ease in working them is easily attainable by practice. To an unpractised workman, for instance, nothing is. more difficult than to give a neterminate form, by the hammer or chisel, to granite, slate, or flint; and yet a little experience enables the mason to work all these to the greatest nicety: and that person would indeed be very incurious, who, although he might not naturally be disposed to notice mechanical processes, did not feel an interest in observing the form which the roofing-slate takes under the bill of the slater: or the ease with which the gun-flint is formed into its peculiar shape by a few strokes of a light hammer.

But, after the stones have been detached from the quarry, and have been worked into a convenient form for building, it is in the greater number of instances necessary to the stability of the intended

*Throughout the interior of Russia and of Siberia the greater part of the buildings in every town were, within a few years, entirely of wood.

structure that they should be consolidated together by some intermediate substance: for it would very rarely happen that the separate stones could be obtained of such a size as to be capable of remaining fixed by their own weight. Sometimes this effect is produced by means merely mechanical, as in the case of the construction of the larger circle of Stonehedge; where the upper extremity of two contiguous perpendicular stones, being pared away so as to form what is called a tenon, is let into a corresponding cavity called a mortise cut into each extremity of the horizontal stone that unites them.

As such Cyclopean masonry would be far too expensive for common purposes; and as the labour and expense of uniting together, by cramps of iron or other mechanical means, the very great number of stones requisite for the construction of even a small building, would be endless; we at once see the importance of any medium that will fully and readily effect that union, without much expense of time or money: and how completely the substance called mortar answers the intended purpose, the slightest observation will make manifest. As the employment of this useful substance appears to have existed antecedently to history, it is not worth while to spend any time in conjecturing how it was first discovered: but it is quite in unison with the intention of the present treatise to observe, that, of the three materials of which it is principally made, namely lime, sand, and water, the first is readily obtained by the simple application of heat to any common form of limestone, a process which is occasionally going on in every limekiln; and the means of obtaining the two others are almost every where at hand.

Hitherto the materials, applicable to the arts of architecture and sculpture, have been considered as adapted to the common or necessary wants of mankind: but in what may not improperly be called the poetry of those arts, they are capable, in their application, of eliciting the highest powers of the imagi

nation: for surely this may with propriety be affirmed of such sublime productions as the Parthenon in architecture, or the Belvedere Appollo in sculpture. Nor are we obliged to seek for such productions solely in the classic ages of antiquity: for, to say nothing of Palladio, Michael Angelo, Canova, Thorvaldson, and other ornaments of modern Europe, our own country has given birth to works of the highest excellence in either department of the art. Nor need this assertion be made with any hesitation, while in architecture that imperishable monument of genius, the Eddystone lighthouse, attests the fame of Smeaton; and in sculpture, the pure and simple taste of Chantrey has, in that most exquisite work contained within the walls of Litchfield cathedral thrown a truth and beauty over the image of death, which none of his predecessors had ever attained.*

Who can peruse the journal of Smeaton, and not admire the penetration, the resources, and the activity of his genius? Consider the nature of the task which he had engaged to perform; his limited and uncertain opportunities of action, the failures of others who had preceded him in a similar undertaking; the consequent necessity of new principles, and new combinations, in his plan of operations; the formidable dangers he was continually under the necessity of encountering; and, lastly, the awfui responsibility of the undertaking itself: consider all these points, and it may be safely affirmed that, as an instance of the conjoined effects of personal enterprise, fortitude, and perseverence, the Eddystone lighthouse stands unrivalled.

On a small, precipitous, and completely insulated rock, deriving its very name from the irregular and impetuous eddies which prevail around it; elevated but a few feet above the level of the surrounding

* One exception to this assertion perhaps exists, in a work on a similar subject by Banks; in the church of Ashbourne, Derbyshire.

ocean even in its calmest state; and exposed at all times to the uninterrupted swell of the Atlantic; by the joint violence of the wind and waves of which, a preceding structure had been in a moment swept away, leaving not a wreck behind; on such a spot was this new wonder of the world to be erected. Former experience is here of little avail, and common principles and means have been already tried in vain; the architect is thrown almost entirely on his own resources; and they do not fail him. In order to combat the force of those overpowering elements to which the future structure is to be constantly exposed, he looks about for that natural form which is found most permanently to resist a similar conflict; and viewing with a philosophic eye the expanded base of the oak, and the varying proportions of its rising stem, he made the happy selection of this object as the type of the proportions of his intended work.

"On this occasion," he himself says,* "the natural figure of the waist or bole of a large spreading oak presented itself to my imagination. Let us for a moment consider this tree: suppose at twelve or fifteen feet above its base, it branches out in every direction, and forms a large bushy top, as we often observe. This top, when full of leaves, is subject to a very great impulse from the agitation of violent winds; yet partly by its elasticity, and partly by the natural strength arising from its figure, it resists them all, even for ages, till the gradual decay of the material diminishes the coherence of the parts, and they suffer piecemeal by the violence of the storm: but it is very rare that we hear of such a tree being torn up by the roots. Let us now consider its particular figure-connected with its roots, which lie hid below ground, it rises from the surface thereof with a large swelling base, which at the height of

* A Narration of the Building, &c. of the Eddystone Lighthouse, London, 1791, p. 42.

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