446 APPENDIX, 6

basilicas and Gothic cathedrals, before the ninth century; and that there can be no doubt that the bishop always preached or exhorted, in the primitive times, from his throne in the centre of the apse, the altar being always set at the centre of the church, in the crossing of the transepts. His Excellency found by experiment in Santa Maria Maggiore, the largest of the Roman basilicas, that the voice could be heard more plainly from the centre of the apse than from any other spot in the whole church; and, if this be so, it will be another very important reason for the adoption of the Romanesque (or Norman) architecture in our churches, rather than of the Gothic. The reader will find some farther notice of this question in the concluding chapter of the third volume [§ 36].

Before leaving this subject, however, I must be permitted to say one word to those members of the Scotch Church who are severe in their requirement of the nominal or apparent extemporisation of all addresses delivered from the pulpit. Whether they do right in giving those among their ministers who cannot preach extempore the additional and useless labour of committing their sermons to memory, may be a disputed question; but it can hardly be so that the now not unfrequent habit of making a desk of the Bible, and reading the sermon stealthily by slipping the sheets of it between the sacred leaves, so that the preacher consults his own notes on pretence of consulting the Scriptures, is a very unseemly consequence of their over-strictness.

6. [P. 49] APSE OF MURANO

The following passage succeeded in the original text to § 15 of Chap. III. Finding it not likely to interest the general reader, I have placed it here, as it contains matter of some interest to architects.

“On this plinth, thus carefully studied in relations of magnitude, the shafts are set at the angles, as close to each other as possible as seen in the ground plan. These shafts are founded on pure Roman tradition; their bases have no spurs, and the shaft itself is tapered in a bold curve, according to the classical model. But, in the adjustment of the bases to each other, we have a most curious instance of the first beginning of the Gothic principle of aggregation of shafts. They have a singularly archaic and simple profile. Now when of a single cavetto and roll, which are circular, on a square plinth. Now when these bases are brought close to each other at the angles of the apse, their natural position would be as in fig. 3, Plate 1, leaving an awkward fissure between the two square plinths. This offended the architect’s eye; so he cut part of each of the bases away, and fitted them close to each other, as in fig. 5, Plate 1, which is their actual position. As before this piece of rough harmonisation the circular mouldings reached the sides of the squares, they were necessarily cut partly away in the course of the adjustment, and run into each other as in the figure, so as to give us one of the first Venetian instances of the continuous Gothic base.

“The shafts measure on the average 2 ft. 8˝ in. in circumference, at the base, tapering so much that under the lowest fillet of their necks they measure only 2 feet round, though their height is only 5 ft. 6 in., losing thus eight inches of girth in five feet and a half of height. They are delicately curved all the way up; and are 2˝ in. apart from each other where they are nearest, and about 5 in. at the necks of their capitals.”

[Version 0.04: March 2008]