in the rough
Romanesque windows; a huge hammer-shaped capital being employed to
sustain the thickness of the wall. It was rapidly superseded by the
double shaft, as on the right of it; a very early example from the
cloisters of the Duomo, Verona. Beneath, is a most elaborate and perfect
one from St. Zeno of Verona, where the group is twice complicated, two
shafts being used, both with quatrefoil sections. The plain double
shaft, however, is by far the most frequent, both in the Northern and
Southern Gothic, but for the most part early; it is very frequent in
cloisters, and in the singular one of St. Michael's Mount, Normandy, a
small pseudo-arcade runs along between the pairs of shafts, a miniature
aisle. The group is employed on a magnificent scale, but ill
proportioned, for the main piers of the apse of the cathedral of
Coutances, its purpose being to conceal one shaft behind the other, and
make it appear to the spectator from the nave as if the apse were
sustained by single shafts, of inordinate slenderness. The attempt is
ill-judged, and the result unsatisfactory.

[Illustration: Fig. XVII.]

Sec. XXVIII. 2. When these pairs of shafts come near each other, as
frequently at the turnings of angles (Fig. XVII.), the quadruple group
results, _b_ 2, Fig. XIV., of which the Lombardic sculptors were
excessively fond, usually tying the shafts together in their centre, in
a lover's knot. They thus occur in Plate V., from the Broletto of Como;
at the angle of St. Michele of Lucca, Plate XXI.; and in the balustrade
of St. Mark's. This is a group, however, which I have never seen used on
a large scale.[44]

Sec. XXIX. 3. Such groups, consolidated by a small square in their centre,
form the shafts of St. Zeno, just spoken of, and figured in Plate XVII.,
which are among the most interesting pieces of work I know in Italy. I
give their entire arrangement in Fig. XVIII.: both shafts have the same
section, but one receives a half turn as it ascends, giving it an
exquisite spiral contour: the plan of their bases, with their plinth, is
given at 2, Plate II.; and note it carefully, for it is an epitome of
all that we observed above, respecting the oblique and even square. It
was asserted that the oblique belonged to the north, the even to the
south: we have here the northern Lombardic nation naturalised in Italy,
and, behold, the oblique and even quatrefoil linked together; not
confused, but actually linked by a bar of stone, as see