e pillar: as we have free space
round it, there is no need to fill up the first ranges of its
foundations; nor need we do so in order to equalise pressure, since the
pressure to be met is its own alone. Under such circumstances, it is
well to exhibit the lower tiers of the foundation as well as Yb and Xb.
The noble bases of the two granite pillars of the Piazzetta at Venice
are formed by the entire series of members given in Fig. X., the lower
courses expanding into steps, with a superb breadth of proportion to the
shaft. The member Xb is of course circular, having its proper decorative
mouldings, not here considered; Yb is octagonal, but filled up into a
square by certain curious groups of figures representing the trades of
Venice. The three courses below are octagonal, with their sides set
across the angles of the innermost octagon, Yb. The shafts are 15 feet
in circumference, and the lowest octagons of the base 56 (7 feet each
side).

Sec. XVIII. Detached buildings, like our own Monument, are not pillars,
but towers built in imitation of Pillars. As towers they are barbarous,
being dark, inconvenient, and unsafe, besides lying, and pretending to
be what they are not. As shafts they are barbarous, because they were
designed at a time when the Renaissance architects had introduced and
forced into acceptance, as _de rigueur_, a kind of columnar high-heeled
shoe,--a thing which they called a pedestal, and which is to a true base
exactly what a Greek actor's cothurnus was to a Greek gentleman's
sandal. But the Greek actor knew better, I believe, than to exhibit or
to decorate his cork sole; and, with shafts as with heroes, it is rather
better to put the sandal off than the cothurnus on. There are, indeed,
occasions on which a pedestal may be necessary; it may be better to
raise a shaft from a sudden depression of plinth to a level with others,
its companions, by means of a pedestal, than to introduce a higher
shaft; or it may be better to place a shaft of alabaster, if otherwise
too short for our purpose, on a pedestal, than to use a larger shaft of
coarser material; but the pedestal is in each case a make-shift, not an
additional perfection. It may, in the like manner, be sometimes
convenient for men to walk on stilts, but not to keep their stilts on as
ornamental parts of dress. The bases of the Nelson Column, the Monument,
and the column of the Place Vendome, are to the shafts, exactly what
highly ornamented wooden leg