There is a fine antique example of the kind in the British Museum, in which the volutes are placed diagonally, and beneath each face of the capital there is not a mere flat mask, but a head, cut out in bold relief, all of them different from each other. The whole is excellently well composed, and highly interesting as a study. One of the varieties of Ionic capitals shown by Piranesi is that from a column in the Church of Santa Maria Transtevere at Rome, which is ornamented on its face with a small head or bust upon the face of the intervolute and abacus, and the eye of the volutes themselves is unusually large, and contains a small half-length female figure carved upon it,—which, though it can be distinctly seen in a drawing, can be hardly perceptible in the column itself. The only other variety of or _invention_ for the Ionic capital that we can notice is one that has frequently been practised by Italian Architects, and which may be distinguished as the _festoon_ or festooned capital, the volutes being turned diagonally, and a festoon being suspended from the eye one volute to that of the other beneath each face. This not only gives variety and richness to the capital, but by increasing its volume or bulk, increases its importance also, and produces great play of light and shade: there is harmony together with diversity in the combination of forms, the curve of the festoon being, though dissimilar, in agreement with the outline of the volutes. The columns of the circular portico to the Church in Langham Place have capitals of this description, in which cherub heads are introduced into the festoons; and so far as the mere capitals go, that specimen of Ionic is entitled to much praise: the misfortune is, that the Order is not satisfactory as a whole; for the increased richness of the capitals requires that there should be a corresponding degree of richness given to the entablature. At present there is no proportion—that is, with regard to decoration—observed; for the same entablature, or cornice at least, which is in keeping with a smaller and plainer capital, cannot be equally adapted to a larger and more ornate one, but partakes of either excess, or the ‘too much’ in the one case, or of deficiency, or the ‘too little’ in the other,—not perhaps as to size, but in regard to the _quantum_ of embellishment. To obviate the meagreness and insignificance of the usual Italian Ionic capital, Sansovino and some others have frequently given it a necking, either plain or enriched, which, even when plain, greatly improves the general appearance of the column by increasing the depth of the capital and reducing the height of the shaft. To make this the clearer, let us, without pretending at all to exactness, call the column nine diameters high, and the capital either half a diameter, or a whole one, accordingly as it is without or with a necking: now in the first case the capital will be to the shaft (base included) only as one to _seventeen_, whereas in