e height to be more nearly 28 feet), "the
breadth of 6.870 feet, of which 3.435 feet are to be allowed for the way
in the midst, which is set and bounded on both sides with two banks
(like benches) of sleek and polished stone; each of these hath 1.717 of
a foot in breadth, and as much in depth." These measurements are not
strictly exact. Smyth made the breadth of the gallery above the banks or
ramps as he calls them, 6 feet 10-1/5 inches; the space between the
ramps, 3 feet 6 inches; the ramps nearly about 1 foot 8-1/14 inches
broad, and nearly 1 foot 9 inches high, measured transversely, that is
at right angles to the ascending floor.

As to arrangements for the convenience of observers in the slippery and
difficult floor of this gallery, we find that upon the top of these
benches or ramps, near the angle where they meet the wall, "there are
little spaces cut in right-angled parallel figures, set on each side
opposite one another, _intended no question for some other end than
ornament_."

The diversity of width which I have indicated as a desirable feature in
a meridional gallery, is a marked feature of the actual gallery. "In the
casting and ranging of the marbles" (limestone), "in both the side
walls, there is one piece of architecture," says Greaves, "in my
judgment very graceful, and that is that all the courses or stones,
which are but seven (so great are these stones), do set and flag over
one another about three inches; the bottom of the uppermost course
overlapping the top of the next, and so in order, the rest as they
descend." The faces of these stones are exactly vertical, and as the
width of the gallery diminishes upwards by about six inches for each
successive course, it follows that the width at the top is about 3-1/2
feet less than the width, 6 feet 10-1/5 inches, at the bottom, or agrees
in fact with the width of the space between the benches or ramps. Thus
the shadow of the vertical edges of the gallery at solar noon just
reached to the edges of the ramps, the shadow of the next lower
vertical edges falling three inches from the edges higher up the ramps,
those of the next vertical edges six inches from these edges, still
higher up, and so forth. The true hour of the sun's southing could thus
be most accurately determined by seven sets of observers placed in
different parts of the gallery, and near mid-summer, when the range of
the shadows would be so far shortened, that a smaller number of
observers