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Of all the forms of column and capital existing in Egypt, the Greeks, however, only selected that straight-sided fluted type of which the Beni-Hassan example is the best known, but by no means the only instance. We first meet with these fluted columns at Corinth, of very sturdy proportions, and having a wide, swelling, clumsy moulding under the abacus by way of a capital.
Let the height of the capital, including its abacus, be equivalent to the thickness of the base of a column. Let the breadth of the abacus be proportioned so that diagonals drawn from one corner of it to the other shall be twice the height of the capitals, which will give the proper breadth to each face of the abacus.
Over the short and solid shafts of Paestum, it became flat and almost horizontal; they needed there an expression of emphatic and sudden grace; they meet the abacus with a moulding of passionate energy, in which the soft undulations of Beauty are nearly lost in a masculine earnestness of purpose.
It has been instinctively done in some degree by many, empirically in some degree by many more; thoughtfully and thoroughly, I believe, by none. § XXII. We have hitherto considered the abacus as necessarily a separate stone from the bell: evidently, however, the strength of the capital will be undiminished if both are cut out of one block.
XXIV., of which a is a proportion for a colossal building, b for a moderately sized building, while c could only be admitted on a very small scale indeed. The greater the excess of abacus, the steeper must be the slope of the bell, the shaft diameter being constant.
But the inquiry into this subject is too difficult for the general reader, and I shall content myself with proving four laws, easily understood and generally applicable; for proof of which if the said reader care not, he may miss the next four paragraphs without harm. The more slender the shaft, the greater, proportionally, may be the projection of the abacus.
In the Corinthian capital, which has the same general feeling as the Ionic, the elastic tension is still further diminished through the renewed emphasis on the mediating abacus, the reduction of the size of the volutes, and the overhanging floral carvings.
The bases and caps of these, as of the other larger shafts, are of the usual Manoelino type, round with a hollow eight-sided abacus.
It has a drip-mould covered with closely set balls, and four orders of mouldings of which the second is a broad chamfer with a row of flat four-leaved flowers; the abacus is well moulded, but the capitals, which are somewhat bell-shaped, have the bell covered with rude animals or foliage which are still very romanesque in design.
Flutings also adorn the short architraves each side of the fanlight, and the abacus of the pilaster columns which is carried across a supplementary lintel in front of the lintel proper, the latter being several inches to the rear because of the deeply recessed arrangement of the door. The detail combines Doric and Ionic inspiration.
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