is believed, refided at Hackney. The fances into which all poor children Mr. Eyre who fuccceled Mr. Cadogan at Reading never was his curate, and is a very different perfon. He gave up fome preferment in Oxfordshire, where ke had been long fettled, when he removed to Reading; and only removed at the prefling request of a very particular friend. By inferuing the above more correct statement, you will oblige A CONSTANT READER.

Mr. URBAN,

March 31.

I AM pleated with the definition of

an antient chimney in your last, p. 128: "a fort of column adapted to fuch ufes." Would it not be more ad

vifable in the Anti-chimney-fweeper Society to offer premiums for conftructing alf chimney's in future on the fame plan, inftead of deliberating for three years on the mode for bettering the condition of the climbing boys, as their advertisement fets forth. They admit that "all new inventions are attended with uncertainty;" and that "they have already been able to difcover, that a certain proportion of the chimneyfweepers' apprentices, who have been bound to the more reputable mafters, are treated with humanity, and confiderable attention paid both to their religious and moral inftruction." Still there is much reafon to apprehend that by far the largest proportion are much neglected, and of thofe that not a few are doomed to fuffer many unneceffary hardfhips and much nifery, which the Committee propofe to relieve by binding them out to other trades, in cafe they are no longer ufeful as chimneyfweepers; and by fecuring to them good ufage, with proper religious and moral inftruction, in the event of their being ultimately found indifpenfably neceffury in their prefent employment. At the age of 15 or 16 the apprenticeships of thefe poor youths expire, and about 70 of them are every year caft upon the world, without friends, and deftitute of the means of earning a fubfiftence. They are then of a growth which renders them unfit to fweep chimneys, and very few can be employed as journeymen. It is therefore the object of the Society to procure proper mafters, to whom thefe youths may be bound ap. prentices, in other ufeful mechanical employments, till the age of 21, with a fmall fee to induce afters to take them. When the fimilarity of circun

apprenticed out by parishes or others to individuals, or to manufactories, is confidered, it will be a very finall portion of the community indeed that will be benefited by the relief here propofed. Without deprefling the laudable views of the Society, it must be perceived, by their own confeflion, that they have found matters more favourable than has been reprefented, and that they find the difficulty of creating a fubftitute not less than represented by

Mr. URBAN,

ANTIPHLOGISTON.

28. Cumberland-fireet, New Road, April 8.

MY curiofity has lately been fo much excited by the various accounts in the public prints, and particularly your interefting Magazine, refpecting the improvements at the Houfe of Commons, and the defpoiling of St. Stephen's chapel, that I was induced to learn the truth, and accordingly went to Weftminster, where I obterved circumstances which exceeded all report. It was on the 21ft of last October

entered Cotton-garden, which was then covered with the mutilated ornaments, paintings, &c. brought from the chapel. In particular, I noticed a picture on flone; the fubject a naked martyr, in a fupplicating posture, placed in the body of a golden calf, whofe horns were held by a man in armour; underneath, in the left-hand corner oa the ground, was the figure of a female in blue drapery with her armis bound, and above her were two figures flanding in a balcony to witnefs the punishment or execution. What hocked me moft was the malice of fome individuals, who had defignedly ftruck a chifel into the faces of all the figures, and fractured the fione at equal diftances, to render it (as it fhould feem) as much unintelligible as poflible. Near this fiagment flood another block, 20 inches long, on which was painted an infcription. This ftone, a labourer told me, he had the preceding day brought from the fireet in Old Palaceyard, and that then it was perfect, and had been noticed by an artist. I was furprized to obferve" it had fhared the fame fate as the valuable picture I have jut deferibed, fo that not two lines were left perfect. This infeription is fimilar to the fragments in the poffef fion of the Antiquarian Society, which

were

were mofily taken down from the South fide of St. Stephen's chapel long before Mr. Smirke began his drawings. About the fame time, a fide-entrauce at the Weft end of the chapel was reopened. It confified of brackets of lily and other leaves, at the bottom of which were two heads, the one a king, the other a queen, which were probably intended to reprefent Richard II. and his queen, as they much refembled the effigies of thofe royal perfonages on their monument in Weftininfler-abbey. Being fo much pleafed with this arch, and the elegance of the brackets, I went the next day to draw them; but, to my aftonishment, I found the heads knocked off, and the arch cut away. I was happy to hear they were previoufly drawn by an able artift, who alfo pick ed up one of the heads with other of its fragments in the public street.

It is with pleafure I obferved, on the W Vrapper of your-laft Number, an advertisement from another Artist, announcing his intention to publifh fome of thefe reliques as fpecimens of the Edwardian fiyle; as the abilities of Mr. Carter are equal to a beautiful felection, and from his pencil much may be expected. Perhaps it may be interefting to the gentlemen engaged in the illuftration of St. Stephen's chapel, to know that, in the wall of the flaircafe abovementioned, and formerly leading to the Houfe of Commons from the Speaker's cloifters, but now an entrance to a fall room made for the accommodation of the gentlemen of the Court of King's Bench, at about fix feet in height on the left-hand fide from the landing-place, is an hiftorical picture of five figures, with labels from their mouths, painted on a fione which was brought from St. Stephen's chapel, and recently worked up in the wall, with the figures inverted. And a few weeks ago, a carved flone of exquifite workmanfhip, painted and gilt, being part of the canopy of the old cloifters (mary pieces of which were dug up from under the fite of the prefent cloifters, built by Dr. Chalmers, when Mr. Johnton, bricklayer to the works, conducted a fewer through the old tower by Westminster-hall), was in the pof feffion of an old man of the name of Richards, living in one of the five houfes, Tothill-fields, who carted it with rubbish to patch up his pig-ye; and poffibly he may fill have it. Yours, &c.

R. WYNNE.

GRECIAN ARCHITECTURE. No. XV.
Mr. URBAN, Purifea, March 7.

ALTHOUGH the couroverly the
mong authors concerning the
fwell to be given to the middle of the
fhaft of a column preferibed by Vitru-
vius is inore curious than interefting, it
feems to call for fome notice to be ta-
ken of it; fince fome infist much on
the propriety of it. It is faid that Vil-
lalpadus was fo enamoured of it, that
he fpeaks impatiently of thofe who op-
pofe it, and would have us believe that
Vitruvius took the hint from the fa
cred writings, and not from the docu
ments of Grecian architects. But if he
means by facred writings the Holy Bi-
ble, it appears not where fwelled co-
Jumns are mentioned in both places
where the temple of Solomon is de
feribed, columns are repeatedly noti-
ced without a word of any fwell in the
middle of them. And Vitruvius fays
the Greeks called the fwell ivraσ: we

muft then conclude that he had feen
it in fome of their writings, or have
been taught it by his Athenian masters,
of whom he tells us he received his
leflons on the art of architecture. And
had there been frequent infances of
fwelled columns amongst the Romans,
there muft have been an unaccountable
partiality in favour of the other form
in the minds of thofe barbarian de-
fpoilers of the antient works, fince they
have not, amongst thofe they fpared,
left us one of fuch inflated columns.
And though fome in enious artifis have
approved of the entasis, and left devices
to fupply the lofs of our mafter's, after
all, the fwell is both unnatural and
perplexing; nor is there any certainty
what the degree of fwell fhould be, nor
where to begin and finifh it.
We ne-
ver fee regularly-grown trees in fuch a
form, and if Villalpadus had feen fuch,
as he pretends, we may fafely call their
fwelling a diforfion in nature acciden-
tally impeded. Palladio, Alberti, and
fome few others of the u oderns, favour
the entafis: Sir Henry Wotton ridi-
cules it; and moft of the moderns are
against it. Now as columns without
this fwell are allowed by all to be beau-
tiful, and but few think them fo with
it; this argument alone is fulficient to
reject the entafis. The true and moft
perfect form for the thafts of columns,
is that preferibed by nature in the bo-
dies of trees, wherein we always fee a
gradual contraction as they rife, as Vi-
truvius himfelf oblerves Book V. ch. 1.

and

and orders columns to be formed in this imitation of nature, which, being fo oppofite to his prefeription of the entafis, leaves room to conclude our matter had changed Iris opinion, and dropt the delign he promifed. And as trees rife not abruptly from their roots, but in a bending fweep appear to have quited their extended radicles, to take their upright flight, in like manner the column's thaft is to appear to quit its base in a gradual bend, and affume its upright direction: this bending termination is called by Vitruvius apophyges, from the odvyn, a flying out. The height and projecture of this apophyge he leaves at difcretion; as alfo the cincture of the shaft under it. Perrault makes it 3 minutes high, and 4 projecture from the naked of the thaft, in all columns, in which he commits his judgment; for although this cineture be a part of the fhaft, and not of the bafe, yet the eye muft neceflarily compare it with fimilar members in the bafe juft under it, where cinctures are feldom more than one minute high, and with 3 would be quite prepollerous; in the Ionic even they cannot well be allowed one minute. Befides, fuch a perpendicular height between the torus of the bafe and the apophyge at once deftroys all natural resemblance of trees rifing from their roots; to preferve which appearance certainly the height of this cincture thould be fearce perceptible. The examples of the antique furnifh no rule in this particular, the generality of them have about one minute and a half; in the temple of Vefta at Rome only one, in the temple of Peace little more than half a minute, and in temple of Concord even 53, and this appears moft difgufting. Perrault thought 3 minutes a fair medium among fach a variety. But to let them all afide and fellow nature is far more advifeable, and to give this cincture any height between and one minute, in order to make the apophyge appear, as it ought, to come out from the bafe and not from the fruftrum of a cilinder, as the 3 of Perrault and the 5 minutes of the antique remble. As to the projecture of this cincture, it must be determined by the upper member of the bate, and not fixed, as Perrault has it, at 4 minutes, or 34 from central line; for this obvious reafon, that it must never go beyond the perpendicular of the centre on which is turned the torus next under it ; vet in the Ionic bafe, deferibed in laft number, to reach this

centre of torus it would project 87
minutes, and thus render the fiveep of
the apophyge much too large; and to
confine its projecture within Perrault's
34, would leave an awkward unco-
vered plain on the fally of the torns;
this requires therefore its projecture to
he juft, or little more than, 35 minutes
for this Ionic base.

The diminution, or more properly
to be called, as Perrault obferves, the
contraction of the tops of shafts, is a
very unfettled matter; the rules of Vi-
truvius, founded on his notion of the
optical effects of the contraction, have
been exploded in No. VII. vol. LXXI.
p. 1179, Gent. Mag. In the antique,
the diameter at top in the Doric of the
theatre of Marcellus is but 48 minutes
or 24 from central line, in the lonic
25. In the 3 columns, campo, vaccino,
and in Mars ultor 251. In the portico
of the Pantheon, and in Frontispiece
of Nero, 204. In Fortuna virilis 264.
In Vefta at Tivoli, and within the
Pantheon, 26; and in the temple of
Bacchus even 20. Here then is a fuf-
ficient latitude to countenance almost
any kind of contraction; and it is re-
markable that the more enriched co-
lumns in the antique have the least
contraction.

Now from the contraction of co

lumns, when accompanied with pi-
lafters, as in temples and other build-
ings with porticos, there arifes a per-
plexing deformity in the management
of the epiftyles, to remedy which no
complete invention has yet been de-
vifed. It is a fettled rule, and well
fettled, that pilafters engaged against
the wall are not to take the contraction
at top like their correfpondent co-
lumns, for if they were contracted
they could not mitre at the perpendicu
lar quoins with fide pilafter; and as it
is effentially required that the central
line of the pilafier and that of the co-
lumn oppofite fhould exactly corre
fpond, it will follow that the epitiyle
(whereof the foffit is always to be equal
to the greateft contraction at top of co-
lumu), when fet properly on the co-
lumn, will thew is fofit within the
perpendicular fides of the pilafler that
fupports the other end of this tranfverfe
epificle, and thus fhew a very un-
pleafant deformity. Some have at-
tempted to mend this appearance by
compounding with the difference, and
placing the epiftyle half the contrac-
tion, viz. about 2 minutes over the
perpendicular of the neck of the capi-

ial,