in the Borough Road, close to
St. George's, Southwark, in the road between my own house and London. I
had passed it the day before, a goodly shop front, and sufficient house
above, with a few repairs undertaken in the shop before opening a new
business. The master and mistress had found it dusty that afternoon, and
went out to tea. When they came back in the evening, they found their
whole house in the form of a heap of bricks blocking the roadway, with a
party of men digging out their cook. But I do not insist on casualties
like these, disgraceful to us as they are, for it is, of course,
perfectly possible to build a perfectly secure house or a secure window
in the Greek manner; but the simple fact is, that in order to obtain in
the cross lintel the same amount of strength which you can obtain in a
pointed arch, you must go to an immensely greater cost in stone or in
labor. Stonehenge is strong enough, but it takes some trouble to build
in the manner of Stonehenge: and Stonehenge itself is not so strong as
an arch of the Colosseum. You could not raise a circle of four
Stonehenges, one over the other, with safety; and as it is, more of the
cross-stones are fallen upon the plain of Sarum than arches rent away,
except by the hand of man, from the mighty circle of Rome. But I waste
words;--your own common sense must show you in a moment that this is a
weak form; and there is not at this instant a single street in London
where some house could not be pointed out with a flaw running through
its brickwork, and repairs rendered necessary in consequence, merely
owing to the adoption of this bad form; and that our builders know so
well, that in myriads of instances you find them actually throwing
concealed arches above the horizontal lintels to take the weight off
them; and the gabled decoration, at the top of some Palladian windows,
is merely the ornamental form resulting from a bold device of the old
Roman builders to effect the same purpose.

8. But there is a farther reason for our adopting the pointed arch than
its being the strongest form; it is also the most beautiful form in
which a window or door-head can be built. Not the most beautiful because
it is the strongest; but most beautiful, because its form is one of
those which, as we know by its frequent occurrence in the work of Nature
around us, has been appointed by the Deity to be an everlasting source
of pleasure to the human mind.

[Illustration: PLATE III. (Fig. 4.