240											14
                                                                      
                                                                          (1)	inexpedient, except as they enable the architect more
                                                                      conveniently to place the superincumbent weight;  Thus a
                                                                      double or treble group of slender shafts may sometimes
                                                                      more conveniently hear a longitudinal pressure than a
                                                                      single massy one.
                                                                          (2)	With all this license of proportion, there is however a
                                                                      limit to the employment of the detached shaft above a
                                                                      certain scale:  The roof of a building is of course of the
                                                                      same weight, placed high or low; but the shafts which
                                                                      are strong enough to support it when it is at no very
                                                                      great height from the ground, are not strong enough to
	Yet consider the entire height of the piers of Milan:                bear their own added weight as well when they are inde-
Very noble  but they are clustered shafts:  and the niche             finitely prolonged upwards;  Here very tall detached shafts
capitals are a mere banding;  the mouldings merge the same            must be of a thickness altogether di[a]sproportionate to the
above;  There is an ungraceful variety in these capitals              weight they have to carry:  and are therefore always un-
some being surrounded by six flat foliated and gabled                 graceful:  Great elev[e]ation must therefore be attained
canopies, and very ugly;  and others composed of true                 either by slender shafts, supported by walls;  or by walls
projecting niches.                                                    of a thickness suff[r]icient alone to sustain the weight of
                                                                      the roof - or else by superimpositive of successive ranks
                                                                      of detached shafts.
                                                                           (3)	This property of superimposition has only been much dis-
                                                                      puted because it has not been fitly considered that it is
                                                                      the only means of constructing elevated buildings of de-
                                                                      tached shafts whose

[Version 0.05: May 2008]