§ V. Farther. As persons on the outside may often approach the door or
depart from it, _beside_ the building, so as to turn aside as they enter
or leave the door, and therefore touch its jamb, but, on the inside,
will in almost every case approach the door, or depart from it in the
direct line of the entrance (people generally walking _forward_ when
they enter a hall, court, or chamber of any kind, and being forced to do
so when they enter a passage), it is evident that the bevelling may be
very slight on the inside, but should be large on the outside, so that
the plan of the aperture should become as at _b_, Fig. XLIII. Farther,
as the bevelled wall cannot conveniently carry an unbevelled arch, the
door arch must be bevelled also, and the aperture, seen from the
outside, will have somewhat the aspect of a small cavern diminishing
towards the interior.
§ VI. If, however, beside frequent entrance, entrance is required for
multitudes at the same time, the size of the aperture either must be
increased, or other apertures must be introduced. It may, in some
buildings, be optional with the architect whether he shall give many
small doors, or few large ones; and in some, as theatres, amphitheatres,
and other places where the crowd are apt to be impatient, many doors are
by far the best arrangement of the two. Often, however, the purposes of
the building, as when it is to be entered by processions, or where the
crowd most usually enter in one direction, require the large single
entrance; and (for here again the æsthetic and structural laws cannot be
separated) the expression and harmony of the building require, in nearly
every case, an entrance of largeness proportioned to the multitude which
is to meet within. Nothing is more unseemly than that a great multitude
should find its way out and in, as ants and wasps do, through holes; and
nothing more undignified than the paltry doors of many of our English
cathedrals, which look as if they were made, not for the open egress,
but for the surreptitious drainage of a stagnant congregation. Besides,
the expression of the church door should lead us, as far as possible, to
desire at least the western entrance to be single, partly because no man
of right feeling would willingly lose the idea of unity and fellowship
in going up to worship, which is suggested by the vast single entrance;
partly because it is at the entrance that the most serious words of the
building are always addressed, by its sculptures or inscriptions, to the
worshipper; and it is well, that these words should be spoken to all at
once, as by one great voice, not broken up into weak repetitions over
minor doors.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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