[12] As I first restored the building I placed a square anta in the angles, with pilasters on each face, as are found in the angles of the Erectheium at Athens. I had overlooked the fact that a capital was found with an angular volute, which settles the question; but I still think that architecturally the square pier arrangement would have been the best.
[13] Nothing can be more unsatisfactory than the system of scales used in Mr. Newton’s work. They are in feet and decimals of a foot; a mode of notation very rarely used for any purpose, and never, so far as I know, adopted by any architect in his professional practice. The consequence is that such scales are not to be purchased; and if ordered there is the greatest possible difficulty in getting them made. The inconvenience is aggravated in this case by the slovenly practice of not putting scales to the plates: all the information the engraver condescends to is “Scale 1 ÷ 30,” or “1 ÷ 10,” &c., as the case may be. The consequence is that not one person in a hundred understands to what scale the drawings are made, and not one in a thousand will take the trouble to construct the scales which are indispensably necessary to enable him to study the plates.
[14] As a proper punishment for the introduction of so troublesome a novelty as these decimal scales, either the draftsman or lithographer has separated by a dot all the first figures of the decimals in the plate of the restored order (Plate xxii.). A dimension, therefore, which reads 2·96 or two feet eleven inches and a fraction in plate xxi., reads 2 ft. 9·6, or two feet nine inches and a fraction, in plate xxii. The lower diameter, which scales three feet six inches and one-third, reads three feet five inches and one-third, and so on. In fact, nine-tenths of the dimensions are absolutely wrong. The remaining tenth are right by accident; but most of these are so, simply because the lithographer has been too lazy or too inaccurate to put any sign by which they can be read. All this not only increases tenfold the labour of consulting the plates, but renders it doubtful whether frequently it is not a mere fighting with shadows to contest any theory on such documents.
[15] In a note in p. 162 it is stated that “the wheel is made somewhat smaller than its true scale, as if drawn in strict elevation it would convey a false impression of the effect of the original group.” On what theory, it is difficult to understand; but there is nothing to intimate that the figures or horses are not to the scale 1 ÷ 10, which is marked on the plate. Either, however, the text or the drawing is wrong; unless both are so, which seems probable.
[16] In Plate II. of this work the chariot group is represented as facing transversely, in the Frontispiece and Plate III. as facing longitudinally to the building. It may be as well to mention here that I have introduced several such discrepancies into the plates, which are neither oversights nor errors. This is one; another is that, in Plate II., the lions at the angles of the pyramid are omitted, but inserted in the other three plates: a cymatium has been introduced as crowning the order of the base in one plate, and another moulding substituted in the others. The Monte Cavallo groups have been introduced in Plates I. and III. and omitted elsewhere. The object of these alterations is that, as these are mere suggestions, they are offered as such in order that the reader may exercise his own judgment regarding them. The dimensions, and all those parts which are certain, are repeated throughout; but, unless some further discoveries are made, there must always be some details which must be left to the taste or the knowledge of the restorer.
[17] There is a discrepancy of three inches in this dimension, which must be apportioned somewhere. I fancy it is to be found in the cymatium gutter, but this could only be ascertained from a thorough re-examination of the fragments themselves.
[19] The mode of lighting Greek temples and Greek buildings generally has never fully been investigated by architects. I read a short paper on the subject at the Royal Institute of British Architects on the 18th of November last; and though that is an amplification of my remarks in the True Principles of Beauty in Art some fourteen years ago, it is far from exhausting the subject. But it is enough to prove that the mode of introducing light was as perfect and as beautiful as every other part and every other contrivance of Greek architecture.
[20] Plates I. II. and III.
[21] These stairs, indicated by dotted lines in the plan (Plate I.) being on one side, clearly indicate that the sepulchre was not symmetrically placed to occupy the centre of the building. Curiously enough, the Tomb at Mylassa (Woodcut No. 3) has a doorway placed unsymmetrically, for no reason that can be guessed, unless it were in imitation of its celebrated prototype. What also is curious is that at Mylassa a pillar stands directly over the centre of the doorway leading into the principal chamber of the tomb, exactly as occurs at Halicarnassus, and that chamber has a flat stone-roof, as here suggested, for the Mausoleum.