CAPITAL

The highest member of a pillar. The capital consists of the abacus , the bell , the neck , or astragal , and each of these varies in the several styles, as well in form as in relative importance. A few of the more prominent variations may be enumerated. In the Saxon period, the abacus is usually a low, flat, unmoulded slab; the rest of the capital, if it has any character, approaches that of the succeeding style. In the Norman capital the abacus is square, of considerable thickne , generally slightly bevelled at the lower side, and sometimes moulded. The bell, resting on a cylindrical shaft, and fitted with a square abacus, is circular at the bottom, and becomes square at the top, and the way of resolving the round into the square gives it its peculiar character. In examples, however, of any richne , the abundance of decoration often obscures its constructive character. In the period of transition to Early English, the abacus sometimes becomes octagonal, seldom, however, a regular octagon, but a square with the corners slightly cut off. It is also sometimes circular. The upper surface continues flat, but the under part is more frequently moulded. The bell often approaches the Cla ic capital in design, and sometimes even in treatment, as at Canterbury; but this is a rare amount of excellence. More frequently a lotus-like flower rises from the neck, and curls beneath the abacus. The neck is still a mere round bead. In the next, or Lancet period, the abacus more frequently becomes circular, the top is seldom flat, the mouldings usually consist of two rounds, with a deep undercut, hollow between, the upper one a little overhanging the under, and in the hollow a trail of nail-head or dog-tooth is often found. The bell, also, is deeply undercut, and in some instances, where effect is sought in moulding rather than in carving, it is repeated; but, in moderately rich examples, the bell is usually covered with foliage of which the stems spring from the neck, generally cro ing one another as they rise, and breaking into leaves near the top, where they throw off a profusion of crisped foliage, which curls under the abacus; a stray leaf, in very rich and rather late examples, sometimes shooting up, over the hollow, to the upper member of the abacus. The whole treatment of this foliage in capitals and corbels, where it follows the same law, has sometimes a boldne and a grace, though it never deserts its conventional type, of which no description, and no engraving even, except on a large scale, can convey an idea. The neck of the Early English capital is generally either a rounded bowtel of rather more than half a cylinder, or a semi-hexagon, the latter with the sides sometimes slightly hollowed. In the Geometrical period, the abacus continues round. It is no longer, except in rare instances, flat at the top: the scroll moulding begins to appear, and sometimes a hollow intervenes between it and the first member of the bell. The bell, when moulded, rather follows the routine of the last style; but, when foliated, the leaves or flowers, without losing anything of the force and boldne of the latter, have a naturalne never approached in any other style: we begin to recognise the oak, the hawthorn, or the maple, as familiar friends, and no longer need to employ conventional terms to designate their foliage, or the method of its treatment. In the Decorated period, the scroll moulding is almost constantly employed for the abacus and for the neck; the ball-flower sometimes occurs in the hollow of the abacus, but not so frequently as the dog-tooth in the Lancet period. The mouldings of the bell are generally the roll and fillet, or the scroll, in some of their forms; and the foliage entirely loses the nature of the Geometrical, without recovering the force of the Early English. It surrounds the bell as a chaplet, instead of creeping up it, and, instead of indicating the shape which it clothes, converts the whole between the neck and the abacus into a flowered top. In the next and last period, the abacus is sometimes so nearly lost in the bell, or the bell in the abacus, that it is hard to separate them. The form of both becomes generally octagonal, and a great poverty of design is apparent: this is the case in ordinary instances of pillars with entire capitals. In later examples, and where there are greater pretensions, the capital does not extend to the whole pillar, but the outer order of the arches is continued to the base, without the intervention of a capital, only the inner order being supported and stopped by an attached shaft, or bowtel, with its capital, and so the capital loses all its analogy with the cla ic architrave, and no longer carries the eye along in a horizontal line.