150 THE STONES OF VENICE CONSTRUCTION

pressure from above collectively, and with a single strength. And thus, considered merely as a large stone set on the top of the shaft, it is a feature of the highest architectural importance, irrespective of its expansion, which indeed is, in some very noble capitals, exceedingly small. And thus every large stone set at any important point to reassemble the force of smaller masonry and prepare it for the sustaining of weight, is a capital or “head” stone (the true meaning of the word), whether it project or not. Thus at 6, in Plate 4, the stones which support the thrust of the brick-work are capitals which have no projection at all; and the large stones in the window above are capitals projecting in one direction only.

§ 28. The reader is now master of all he need know respecting construction of capitals; and from what has been laid before him, must assuredly feel that there can never be any new system of architectural forms invented;¹ but that all vertical support must be, to the end of time, best obtained by shafts and capitals. It has been so obtained by nearly every nation of builders, with more or less refinement in the management of the details; and the later Gothic builders of the North stand almost alone in their effort to dispense with the natural development of the shaft, and banish the capital from their compositions.

They were gradually led into this error through a series of steps which it is not here our business to trace. But they may be generalised in a few words.

§ 29. All classical architecture, and the Romanesque which is legitimately descended from it, is composed of bold independent shafts, plain or fluted, with bold detached capitals, forming arcades or colonnades where they are needed; and of walls whose apertures are surrounded by courses of parallel lines called mouldings, which are continuous round the apertures, and have neither shafts nor capitals. The shafts system and moulding system are entirely separate.

¹ [On the mistaken cry for “a new style” of architecture, see Seven Lamps, ch. vii. § 4, Vol. VIII. p. 252.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]