320 ROMAN AECHITECTUEE. Part I. great columns in front of the piers, employed merely as ornaments, or as vaulting shafts were in Gothic cathedrals, to support in appearance, though not in construction, the springing of the vaults, ^ The side-aisles were roofed by three great arches, each 72 ft. in span, and the centre by an immense intersecting vault in three compartments. The form of these will be un- derstood from the annexed sections (Woodcuts Nos. 201 and 202), one taken longi- tudinally, the other across the buildino-. As will be seen from them, all the thrusts are collected to a point and a buttress placed there to re- ceive them ; indeed almost all the peculiarities afterwards found in Gothl* A^aults are here employed oa a far grand- er and more gigantic scale than the Gothic architects ever attempted; but at the same time it must be allowed that the latter, with smaller dimensions, often contrived by a more artistic treatment of their materials to oVjtain as grand an ef- fect and far more actual beauty than ever were attained in the great tran- sitional halls of the Romans. The largeness of the parts of the Roman buildings was indeed their principal defect, as in consequence of this they must all have appeared smaller than they really were, whereas in all Gothic cathedrals the repetition and smallness of the component l)arts has the effect of magnifying their real dimensions. The roofs of these halls had one peculiarity which it would have been well if the mediieval architects had copied, inasmuch as they were all, or at least might have been, honestly used as roofs without any necessity for their being covered with others of wood, as all Gothic vaults unfortunately were. It is true this is perhaps one of 203. Pillar of Maxentian Basilica. (From an old print quoted by Latiirouilly.) ' One of the pillars of this basilica re- mained in situ till the year 1()14, when it was removed by Carlo Maderno, by order of Paul V., and re-erected in the piazza of St. M. Maggiore, where it now stands as a monumental column, support- ins a statue of the Virgin. The column, with its base and capital, is as nearly as may be 60 ft. in height; the whole monument, as it now stands, 140 ft.
