DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9541#0660
€36
FURTHER INDIA.
Book VIII.
gilding and painting, can make them ; but, as in the pagodas, it is
overdone, and fails to please, because it verges on vulgarity.
The typical design of all these halls and minor buildings will
be understood from the preceding woodcut, representing the Hall of
Audience at Bangkok. Like all the others, it has two roofs inter-
secting one another at right angles, and a spire of greater or less
elevation on the intersection. Sometimes one, two, or three smaller
gables are placed in front of the first, each lower than the one behind
it, so as to give a pyramidal effect to the whole. Generally, the sub-
ordinate gables are of the same width as those in the centre; but
sometimes the outer one is smaller, forming a porch. In the audience
hall just quoted there are three gables each way. These may be seen
on the right and left of the central spire in the view, but the first and
second towards the front are hidden by the outer gable. The point
of sight being taken exactly in front, it looks in the view as if there
were only one in that direction.
The Burmese adopt the same arrangement in their civil buildings,
and in Siam and Burmah the varieties are infinite, from the simple
pavilion with four gables, supported on four pillars,1 to those with
twelve and sixteen gables, combined with a greater complication of
walls and pillars for their support.
As the Siamese are certainly advancing in civilization, it may be
asked, AVill not their architecture be improved and purified by the
process i The answer is, unfortunately, too easy. The new civiliza-
tion is not indigenous, but an importation. The men of progress wear
hats, the ladies crinolines, and they build palaces with Corinthian
porticos and sash-windows. It is the sort of civilization that is
found in the Bazar in Calcutta, and it is not desirable, in an archi-
tectural point of view, at all events, if, indeed, it is so in any other
respect.
1 This form is interesting to us as it is
that adopted for the Albert Memorial in
Hyde Park, the style of decoration of
which is al-o much more like that em
ployed in Siam than anything yet at-
tempted out of doors in Europe.
FURTHER INDIA.
Book VIII.
gilding and painting, can make them ; but, as in the pagodas, it is
overdone, and fails to please, because it verges on vulgarity.
The typical design of all these halls and minor buildings will
be understood from the preceding woodcut, representing the Hall of
Audience at Bangkok. Like all the others, it has two roofs inter-
secting one another at right angles, and a spire of greater or less
elevation on the intersection. Sometimes one, two, or three smaller
gables are placed in front of the first, each lower than the one behind
it, so as to give a pyramidal effect to the whole. Generally, the sub-
ordinate gables are of the same width as those in the centre; but
sometimes the outer one is smaller, forming a porch. In the audience
hall just quoted there are three gables each way. These may be seen
on the right and left of the central spire in the view, but the first and
second towards the front are hidden by the outer gable. The point
of sight being taken exactly in front, it looks in the view as if there
were only one in that direction.
The Burmese adopt the same arrangement in their civil buildings,
and in Siam and Burmah the varieties are infinite, from the simple
pavilion with four gables, supported on four pillars,1 to those with
twelve and sixteen gables, combined with a greater complication of
walls and pillars for their support.
As the Siamese are certainly advancing in civilization, it may be
asked, AVill not their architecture be improved and purified by the
process i The answer is, unfortunately, too easy. The new civiliza-
tion is not indigenous, but an importation. The men of progress wear
hats, the ladies crinolines, and they build palaces with Corinthian
porticos and sash-windows. It is the sort of civilization that is
found in the Bazar in Calcutta, and it is not desirable, in an archi-
tectural point of view, at all events, if, indeed, it is so in any other
respect.
1 This form is interesting to us as it is
that adopted for the Albert Memorial in
Hyde Park, the style of decoration of
which is al-o much more like that em
ployed in Siam than anything yet at-
tempted out of doors in Europe.