Chap. IV. PRINCIPLES OF PROPORTION.

1049
in their perpendicular station, that there should be no need of butment inwards
, but
experience hath shown the contrary, and there is scarce any Gothic cathedral, that
I have
KING S COLI-rCE CHAPEI. : PIERS. Fig 1312.
seen at home or abroad, wherein I have not observed the pillars to yield and bend inwards
from the weight of the vault of the aisle
;
but this defect is the most conspicuous upon the
angular pillars of the cross, for there not only the vault wants butment, but also the
21 9
12.3
\
KING S COLLEGE CHAPEL: BUTTRESSES, ETC.
angular arches that rest upon that pillar, and there.'bre both con.spire to thrust it niwards
towards the centre of the cross."
At King's College chapel, flying buttresses are dispensed with, and hajipily the
knowledge of construction had arrived at such perfection, when its astonishing vault was
projected, that we have no evidence whatever of its yielding in any part.
It may seem extraordinary that the Pointed style made so little progress in Italy, the
Byzantine being always preferred : the architects of that country were probably unwilling
to relinquish a mode of construction so economical, half only of the material em])loyed in
the lightest, and a (piarter in the earliest of the Gothic style, being required for the basilica ;
for example, where 100 rods of stonework would be used in the latter, 200 would be
necessary for the style practised at King's College, St. George's Chapel, and Bath Abbey
Church, and 4C0 for that of the Chapter-house at Wells
;
this result would lead to th<
oonclusion, that no style is so well adapted fv>r the wants of the present day as the Byzantine