1 Of this class one of the best known is the steeple of St. George’s Church, Bloomsbury, which its architect supposed was a correct restoration of the Mausoleum.
2 xxxvi. v. “Scopas habuit Æmulos eadem Ætate Bryaxim et Timotheum et Leocharen, de quibus simul dicendum est, quoniam pariter coelavere Mausoleum; sepulchrum hoc est ab uxore Artemisia factum Mausolo CariÆ regulo, qui obiit Olympiadis cvii anno secundo: opus id ut esset inter septem miracula, hi maxime fecere artifices. Patet ab austro et septemtrione sexagenos ternos pedes, brevius a frontibus, toto circuitu pedes quadringentos undecim; attollitur in altitudinem viginti quinque cubitis; cingitur columnis triginta sex; pteron vocavere circuitum. Ab oriente coelavit Scopas, a septentrione Bryaxis, a meridie Timotheus, ab occasu Leochares, priusque quam peragerent regina obiit; non tamen recesserunt nisi absoluto jam, id gloriÆ ipsorum artisque monimentum judicantes; hodieque certant manus. Accessit et quintus artifex; namque supra pteron pyramis altitudine inferiorem Æquavit, viginti quatuor gradibus in metÆ cacumen se contrahens. In summo est quadriga marmorea, quam fecit Pythis; hÆc adjecta centum quadraginta pedum altitudine totum opus includit.”
8 These seven axioms or canons were furnished to me by Mr. Lloyd as leading results of his researches, after I had explained to him my theory of the mode in which the Mausoleum ought to be restored.
9 If we can depend on Mr. Perring’s determination, the Egyptian cubit used in fixing the dimensions of the Great Pyramid was more than half an inch shorter than the Babylonian or Halicarnassean cubit used for that purpose in the Mausoleum. As far as can be ascertained, the Egyptian equalled 1·713 foot English, while the other was 1·771; the difference being fifty-eight thousandths of a foot, or nearly two-thirds of an inch.
10 They are so much broken and so carelessly put together in the Museum, that, if we had no other evidence, it might be contended they were either 20-1/2 inches or 21-1/2; but on a fair average measurement there can be no doubt that 21 Greek inches is the correct modulus.
11 It is hardly worth while to allude to Mr. Pullan’s dimension of 10 English feet from centre to centre. It agrees with no fact and no theory.
12 As I first restored the building I placed a square anta in the angles, with pilasters on each face, as are found in the angles of the Erectheium at Athens. I had overlooked the fact that a capital was found with an angular volute, which settles the question; but I still think that architecturally the square pier arrangement would have been the best.
13 Nothing can be more unsatisfactory than the system of scales used in Mr. Newton’s work. They are in feet and decimals of a foot; a mode of notation very rarely used for any purpose, and never, so far as I know, adopted by any architect in his professional practice. The consequence is that such scales are not to be purchased; and if ordered there is the greatest possible difficulty in getting them made. The inconvenience is aggravated in this case by the slovenly practice of not putting scales to the plates: all the information the engraver condescends to is “Scale 1 ÷ 30,” or “1 ÷ 10,” &c., as the case may be. The consequence is that not one person in a hundred understands to what scale the drawings are made, and not one in a thousand will take the trouble to construct the scales which are indispensably necessary to enable him to study the plates.
14 As a proper punishment for the introduction of so troublesome a novelty as these decimal scales, either the draftsman or lithographer has separated by a dot all the first figures of the decimals in the plate of the restored order (Plate xxii.). A dimension, therefore, which reads 2·96 or two feet eleven inches and a fraction in plate xxi., reads 2 ft. 9·6, or two feet nine inches and a fraction, in plate xxii. The lower diameter, which scales three feet six inches and one-third, reads three feet five inches and one-third, and so on. In fact, nine-tenths of the dimensions are absolutely wrong. The remaining tenth are right by accident; but most of these are so, simply because the lithographer has been too lazy or too inaccurate to put any sign by which they can be read. All this not only increases tenfold the labour of consulting the plates, but renders it doubtful whether frequently it is not a mere fighting with shadows to contest any theory on such documents.
15 In a note in p. 162 it is stated that “the wheel is made somewhat smaller than its true scale, as if drawn in strict elevation it would convey a false impression of the effect of the original group.” On what theory, it is difficult to understand; but there is nothing to intimate that the figures or horses are not to the scale 1 ÷ 10, which is marked on the plate. Either, however, the text or the drawing is wrong; unless both are so, which seems probable.
16 In Plate II. of this work the chariot group is represented as facing transversely, in the Frontispiece and Plate III. as facing longitudinally to the building. It may be as well to mention here that I have introduced several such discrepancies into the plates, which are neither oversights nor errors. This is one; another is that, in Plate II., the lions at the angles of the pyramid are omitted, but inserted in the other three plates: a cymatium has been introduced as crowning the order of the base in one plate, and another moulding substituted in the others. The Monte Cavallo groups have been introduced in Plates I. and III. and omitted elsewhere. The object of these alterations is that, as these are mere suggestions, they are offered as such in order that the reader may exercise his own judgment regarding them. The dimensions, and all those parts which are certain, are repeated throughout; but, unless some further discoveries are made, there must always be some details which must be left to the taste or the knowledge of the restorer.
17 There is a discrepancy of three inches in this dimension, which must be apportioned somewhere. I fancy it is to be found in the cymatium gutter, but this could only be ascertained from a thorough re-examination of the fragments themselves.
19 The mode of lighting Greek temples and Greek buildings generally has never fully been investigated by architects. I read a short paper on the subject at the Royal Institute of British Architects on the 18th of November last; and though that is an amplification of my remarks in the True Principles of Beauty in Art some fourteen years ago, it is far from exhausting the subject. But it is enough to prove that the mode of introducing light was as perfect and as beautiful as every other part and every other contrivance of Greek architecture.
21 These stairs, indicated by dotted lines in the plan (Plate I.) being on one side, clearly indicate that the sepulchre was not symmetrically placed to occupy the centre of the building. Curiously enough, the Tomb at Mylassa (Woodcut No. 3) has a doorway placed unsymmetrically, for no reason that can be guessed, unless it were in imitation of its celebrated prototype. What also is curious is that at Mylassa a pillar stands directly over the centre of the doorway leading into the principal chamber of the tomb, exactly as occurs at Halicarnassus, and that chamber has a flat stone-roof, as here suggested, for the Mausoleum.
22 The ease with which the Knights got access to this tomb would entirely contradict the supposition of its being walled up, if it was the Tomb of Mausolus they reached. It may have been that of the Queen.
23 The building that most resembles the Mausoleum in design and dimensions among the products of modern art is probably the Arc de l’Etoile at Paris. Its length (rejecting fractions) is 150 feet English, its width 75. Its “totus circuitus” is therefore 450 as compared with the 416 of the Mausoleum. But, on the other hand, the area covered by the latter building is more than 2000 feet in excess of that covered by the former. The height of the Arc de l’Etoile is 150 feet to the cornice of the attic, and therefore considerably in excess, and it was intended to have been crowned with a quadriga, which, with its low pedestal, would have added 45 feet to this dimension, thus making up 195 feet as compared with 141·7, which was the total height of the Mausoleum. It is, however, one of the peculiarities and one of the principal beauties of the design of the Mausoleum, that it would have looked very much larger and probably even higher than the “Arc,” had it occupied its situation; and it is quite certain that a chariot group 14 feet high would look larger and more dignified on a pedestal raised on a pyramid, as at Halicarnassus, than would one twice that height on the great flat roof of the “Arc.” In the one case the group compares with a base of 20 feet by 16, in the other with a great flat measuring 150 feet by 75. At Halicarnassus one-tenth of the whole height was quite sufficient for the crowning group; at Paris one-fifth would hardly have sufficed to produce the same effect.
24 It may be accident, but it is a curious coincidence, that the number of feet read backwards gives the number of cubits,—the number of cubits read backwards, the number of feet.
25 The upper frieze of St. Paul’s Cathedral is 95 feet from the ground.
26 In St. George’s Hall, Liverpool, the architect provided situations for statues in nearly a similar manner. As compared with these, the defects of his arrangement are that the spaces are too large and the shadows behind not deep enough.
27 In the perspective drawing forming the title-page, these pedestals seem to break up the base of the building too much. If seen more in front either way this effect would have been avoided. As explained above, the dimensions necessitate a projection between the top step and the face of the peristele of 5·3. This must either have been a shelf or broken up as here suggested. I cannot conceive that it was the former for many obvious reasons, while the latter seems to me not only appropriate architecturally, but to be indispensable to the display of the sculpture. They exactly fulfil the part that is performed by the buttresses in Gothic architecture.
