lish capital. That capital has, indeed, one character of
considerable value; namely, the boldness with which it stops the
mouldings which fall upon it, and severs them from the shaft,
contrasting itself with the multiplicity of their vertical lines.
Sparingly used, or seldom seen, it is thus, in its place, not
unpleasing; and we English love it from association, it being always
found in connection with our purest and loveliest Gothic arches, and
never in multitudes large enough to satiate the eye with its form. The
reader who sits in the Temple church every Sunday, and sees no
architecture during the week but that of Chancery Lane, may most
justifiably quarrel with me for what I have said of it. But if every
house in Fleet Street or Chancery Lane were Gothic, and all had early
English capitals, I would answer for his making peace with me in a
fortnight.

19. TOMBS NEAR ST. ANASTASIA.

Whose they are, is of little consequence to the reader or to me, and I
have taken no pains to discover; their value being not in any evidence
they bear respecting dates, but in their intrinsic merit as examples of
composition. Two of them are within the gate, one on the top of it, and
this latter is on the whole the best, though all are beautiful; uniting
the intense northern energy in their figure sculpture with the most
serene classical restraint in their outlines, and unaffected, but
masculine simplicity of construction.

I have not put letters to the diagram of the lateral arch at page 154,
in order not to interfere with the clearness of the curves, but I shall
always express the same points by the same letters, whenever I have to
give measures of arches of this simple kind, so that the reader need
never have the diagrams lettered at all. The base or span of the centre
arch will always be _a b_; its vertex will always be V; the points of
the cusps will be _c c_; _p p_ will be the bases of perpendiculars let
fall from V and _c_ on _a b_; and _d_ the base of a perpendicular from
the point of the cusp to the arch line. Then _a b_ will always be a span
of the arch, V _p_ its perpendicular height, V _a_ the chord of its side
arcs, _d c_ the depth of its cusps, _c c_ the horizontal interval
between the cusps, _a c_ the length of the chord of the lower arc of the
cusp, V _c_ the length of the chord of the upper arc of the cusp,
(whether continuous or not,) and _c p_ the length of a perpendicular
from the point of the cusp on _a b_.