DECORATION XXVII. CORNICE AND CAPITAL 377

length and slope as is proper for capitals, the farther condition comes into effect described in Chapter IX. § 24, and any one of the cornices in Plate 15 may become the abacus of a capital formed out of any other, or out of itself. The infinity of forms thus resultant cannot, as may well be supposed, be exhibited or catalogued in the space at present permitted to us; but the reader, once master of the principle, will easily be able to investigate for himself the syntax of all examples that may occur to him; and I shall only here, as a kind of exercise, put before him a few of those which he will meet with most frequently in his Venetian inquiries, or which illustrate points, not hitherto touched upon, in the disposition of the abacus.

§ 31. In Plate 17 the capital at the top, on the left hand, is the rudest possible gathering of the plain Christian Doric cornice, d of Plate 15. The shaft is octagonal, and the capital is not cut to fit it, but is square at the base: and the curve of its profile projects on two of its sides more than on the other two, so as to make the abacus oblong, in order to carry an oblong mass of brickwork, dividing one of the upper lights of a Lombard campanile at Milan. The awkward stretching of the brickwork, to do what the capital ought to have done, is very remarkable. There is here no second superimposed abacus.

§ 32. The figure on the right hand, at the top, shows the simple but perfect fulfilment of all the requirements in which the first example fails. The mass of brickwork to be carried is exactly the same in size and shape; but instead of being trusted to a single shaft, it has two of smaller area (compare Chap. VIII. § 13), and all the expansion necessary is now gracefully attained by their united capitals, hewn out of one stone. Take the section of these capitals through their angle, and nothing can be simpler or purer; it is composed of 2, in Plate 15, used for the capital itself, with c of Fig. 63 used for the abacus; the reader could hardly have a neater little bit of syntax for a first lesson. If the section be taken through the side of the bell, the capital profile is the root of

[Version 0.04: March 2008]