unted by pediments, while in
the tower are large round-headed niches with pediments. (Fig. 93.)

[Illustration: PLAN OF SAO VICENTE]

The entablature of the upper order is carried straight across the whole
front, with nothing above it in the centre but a balustrading
interrupted by obelisk-bearing pedestals, but at the ends the towers
rise in one more square story flanked with short Doric pilasters.
Round-arched openings for bells occur on each side, and within the
crowning balustrade with its obelisks a stone dome rises to an
eight-sided domed lantern.

Like all the church, the front is built of beautiful limestone,
rivalling Carrara marble in whiteness, and seen down the narrow street
which runs uphill from across the small _praca_ the whole building is
most imposing. It would have been even more satisfactory had the central
part been a little narrower, and had there been something to mark the
barrel vault within; the omission too of the lower order, which is so
much taller than the upper, would have been an improvement, but even
with these defects the design is most stately, and refreshingly free of
all the fussy over-elaboration and the fantastic piling up of pediments
which soon became too common.

But if the outside deserves such praise, the inside is worthy of far
more. The great stone barrel vault is simply coffered with square
panels. The chapel arches are singularly plain, and spring from a good
moulding which projects nearly

[Illustration: FIG. 93.

LISBON.

SAO VICENTE DE FORA.]

[Illustration: FIG. 94.

LISBON.

SAO VICENTE DE FORA.]

to the face of the pilasters. Two of these stand between each chapel,
and have very beautiful capitals founded on the Doric but with a long
fluted neck ornamented in front by a bunch of crossed arrows and at the
corners with acanthus leaves, and with egg and tongue carved on the
moulding below the Corinthian abacus. Of the entablature, only the
frieze and architrave is broken round the pilasters; for the cornice
with its great mutules runs straight round the whole church, supported
over the chapels by carving out the triglyphs--of which there is one
over each pilaster, and two in the space between each pair of
pilasters--so as to form corbels.

Only the pendentives of the dome and the panelled drum remain; the rest
was replaced after the earthquake by wooden ceiling pierced with
skylights. (Fig. 94.)

Though so simple--there is no carved ornament except in