V. BYZANTINE PALACES 153

not be satisfied with so simple a group, and he therefore introduced two minor arches at the extremities, as at b, by adding two small porticos which are of no use whatever except to consummate the proportions of the façade, and themselves to exhibit the most exquisite proportions in arrangements of shaft and archivolt with which I am acquainted in the entire range of European architecture.

Into these minor particulars I cannot here enter; but observe the dimensions of the range of arches in the façade, as thus completed by the flanking porticos:

Ft.In.

The space of its central archivolt is318

,, the two on each side, about*198

,, the two succeeding, about204

,, small arches at flanks, about60

I need not make any comment upon the subtle difference of eight inches on twenty feet between the second and third dimensions. If the reader will be at the pains to compare the whole evidence now laid before him, with that deduced above from the apse of Murano,¹ he cannot but confess that it amounts to an irrefragable proof of an intense perception of harmony in the relation of quantities, on the part of the Byzantine architects; a perception which we have at present lost so utterly as hardly to be able even to conceive it. And let it not be said, as it was of the late discoveries of subtle curvature in the Parthenon, † that what is not to be

* I am obliged to give these measures approximately, because, this front having been studied by the builder with unusual care, not one of its measures is the same as another; and the symmetries between the correspondent arches are obtained by changes in the depth of their mouldings and variations in their heights, far too complicated for me to enter into here; so that of the two arches stated as 19 ft. 8 in. in span, one is in reality 19 ft. 6½ in., the other 19 ft. 10 in., and of the two stated as 20 ft. 4 in., one is 20 ft. and the other 20 ft. 8 in.

† By Mr. Penrose.²

¹ [See above, p. 48.]

² [Francis Cranmer Penrose (1817-1903), F.R.S., distinguished as architect, astronomer, and mathematician. In his Principles of Athenian Architecture, published by the Society of Dilettanti in 1851, he showed for the first time that the main lines of the Parthenon were not straight, but drawn on an elaborate system of slight curves which wonderfully enhanced the architectural effect. For another reference to Penrose’s work, see Fors Clavigera, letter 75 (Notes and Correspondence, vi.).]

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