pier destined to carry a vast load might be subdivided, and its apparent proportions thus lightened, the individual shafts of which it was composed, not having each its own proper load, might be viewed as decorative only, and be made exceedingly thin for their height. The use of such thin shafts did not, however, originate in the Middle Ages. Canina shows in his work on _Domestic Architecture Decorated with Ornaments of a Light Form_, that it was frequent among the ancients, though not often adopted by modern Classic architects. Even for really constructive pillars it is admissible where the material is of remarkable strength, as in the case of metal columns, and, in a less degree, with those of marble or granite where the load is very small; but it is especially so where the columns are of a decorative rather than a functional character, in which case it is not only lawful, but correct, to show this by making them of slender proportions. The liberty, however, which I here defend, must, as all other liberty, be kept within reasonable bounds, and must be regulated by a correct eye and sound judgment. Another sound exercise, as I think, of reason and liberty, which was universal among the Romanesque and Byzantine architects, was the departure from the rule of the ancients that all capitals and other recurring objects of a like nature should be worked to one and the same pattern. It may be that the unity of a colonnade, united by a single and unbroken entablature, demanded this. I am not finding fault with it in Grecian or Roman architecture; but where the capitals are separated by arches, or did not form a continuous range at all, the effect would be most painfully monotonous if the sculptured capitals were all alike, as if cast in a mould by the hundred. We accordingly find it established as a universal law that, though moulded or other mechanically-formed capitals might, if you please, be alike, no such slavery should be imposed upon the sculptor; but that he should have the fullest scope, within the reasonable limits suggested by the requirements and the general balance and harmony of mass and outline, for the freest exercise of his own imagination. Now, though these and other developments of the Romanesque period were founded on a thoroughly practical and logical course of reasoning, it by no means follows that a perfected form of arcuated architecture had yet been arrived at, any more than that the decorative system had been brought into a thoroughly refined or artistic form.