It is doubtful where the kind of vault used at Le Puy was first devised. The central dome of S. Michel de l’Aiguille is, perhaps, the oldest of all, and this is, in fact, a square dome, if one may use the expression. The octagonal dome-vaults of the cathedral are probably a little later, but that over the crossing of the church of Ainay at Lyon may possibly be older. A comparison will make it evident that one is copied from the other; and if the Le Puy vault was derived from Lyon, it becomes possible to make the important inference that it was an Eastern influence travelling up the Rhone and distinct from that which is seen at Périgueux, to which we owe this kind of domed roof. Further evidence of this is found in the pendentives of the dome at Brioude,[62] which are identical in intention with the plan of the church of SS. Sergius and Bacchus, at Constantinople, and yet quite unlike the kind of pendentive common in churches of the S. Front type. They are, in fact, the Le Puy and Ainay pendentive reduced to the very simplest conditions. The invention of the flying buttress adumbrated in, and possibly suggested by, the quadrant vaults of Auvergne, finally stopped these various endeavors after new forms of roofs, and set men to work to see how it might most readily be made to serve the boldest and most airy system of design and construction; and in the rage for these, that old system of roofing with domes, which had been, so far as is known,[63] first tried in France at Périgueux, and had afterward spread with such rapidity over a very large district, though with many modifications and variations, was entirely ignored or forgotten. Is it well that we too should ignore it? It is clear that the disciples of the Gothic school may claim it as their own with just as much truth as any other school can; and in some form or other it is often so attractive, so majestic on a large scale, so impressive even on a small scale, that few of us who have much work to do should altogether eschew all use of it, or treat it as though it were the exclusive property of the architects of Classic and Renaissance buildings. I do not feel, however, as most who write on the subject seem to do, that our domes must invariably be supported on what are called true pendentives. I think they are not beautiful, and I do not see that they are especially scientific. The S. Front pendentives are mere corbellings out of the wall, and in truth only imitations of pendentives. At S. Mark’s they are formed with a succession of arches of brick work across the angle of the dome, though this construction is not visible, and these, I suppose, are all wrong; but they are very similar in their intention to the kind of pendentive which I have had to illustrate to-night, and which is in truth much more Gothic and picturesque in its character than the true pendentive, for it admits of any amount of decorative sculpture, and is really precisely similar in its object to the