there is but a chance
between the building and destruction; that there is no miraculous life
in it, which animates it into security, but an obstinate, perhaps vain,
resistance to immediate danger. The appearance of this is often as
strong in small things as in large; in the sounding-boards of pulpits,
for instance, when sustained by a single pillar behind them, so that one
is in dread, during the whole sermon, of the preacher being crushed if a
single nail should give way; and again, the modern geometrical
unsupported staircase. There is great disadvantage, also, in the
arrangement of this latter, when room is of value; and excessive
ungracefulness in its awkward divisions of the passage walls, or
windows. In mediaeval architecture, where there was need of room, the
staircase was spiral, and enclosed generally in an exterior tower, which
added infinitely to the picturesque effect of the building; nor was the
stair itself steeper nor less commodious than the ordinary compressed
straight staircase of a modern dwelling-house. Many of the richest
towers of domestic architecture owe their origin to this arrangement. In
Italy the staircase is often in the open air, surrounding the interior
court of the house, and giving access to its various galleries or
loggias: in this case it is almost always supported by bold shafts and
arches, and forms a most interesting additional feature of the cortile,
but presents no peculiarity of construction requiring our present
examination.

We may here, therefore, close our inquiries into the subject of
construction; nor must the reader be dissatisfied with the simplicity or
apparent barrenness of their present results. He will find, when he
begins to apply them, that they are of more value than they now seem;
but I have studiously avoided letting myself be drawn into any intricate
question, because I wished to ask from the reader only so much attention
as it seemed that even the most indifferent would not be unwilling to
pay to a subject which is hourly becoming of greater practical interest.
Evidently it would have been altogether beside the purpose of this essay
to have entered deeply into the abstract science, or closely into the
mechanical detail, of construction: both have been illustrated by
writers far more capable of doing so than I, and may be studied at the
reader's discretion; all that has been here endeavored was the leading
him to appeal to something like definite principle, and