DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.18975#0436
386
THE LAWS OF FESOLE
The degree of patience with which you repeat, to per-
fection, this very tedious exercise, will be a wholesome
measure of your resolution and general moral temper, and
the exercise itself a discipline at once of temper and hand.
On the other hand, to do it hurriedly or inattentively is of
no use whatever, either to mind or hand.
6. While you are persevering in this exercise, you must
also construct the same figures with your instruments, as
delicately as you can; but complete them, as in Plate IV.,
by drawing semicircles on the sides of each rectilinear
figure; and, with the same radius, the portions of circles
which will include the angles of the same figures, placed in
a parallel series, enclosing each figure finally in a circle.
7. You have thus the first two leading groups of what
architects call Foils —%.F., trefoils, quatrefoils, cinquefoils,
etc.,—their French names indicating the original dominance
of French design in their architectural use.
The entire figures may be best called " Roses," the word
rose, or rose window, being applied by the French to the
richest groups of them. And you are to call the point
which is the centre of each entire figure, the "Rose-centre."
The arcs, you are to call " foils"; the centres of the arcs,
" foil-centres"; and the small points where the arcs meet,
" cusps," from cuspis, Latin for a point.
8. From the group of circle-segments thus constructed,
we might at once deduce the higher forms of symmetrical
(or equally measured^) architecture, and of symmetrical
flowers, such as the rose, or daisy. But it will be better
first, with only our simple groups of circles themselves, to
examine the laws which regulate forms equally measured
in every direction.
In this inquiry, however, we should find our marbles
* As distinguished from the studiously varied design, executed in all
its curves with the free hand, characteristic of less educated but more
living schools. The south end of the western aisle of Bolton Abbey is an
exquisite example of Early English of this kind.
* [For this term, see (Vol. VIII. pp. 119, 126).]
THE LAWS OF FESOLE
The degree of patience with which you repeat, to per-
fection, this very tedious exercise, will be a wholesome
measure of your resolution and general moral temper, and
the exercise itself a discipline at once of temper and hand.
On the other hand, to do it hurriedly or inattentively is of
no use whatever, either to mind or hand.
6. While you are persevering in this exercise, you must
also construct the same figures with your instruments, as
delicately as you can; but complete them, as in Plate IV.,
by drawing semicircles on the sides of each rectilinear
figure; and, with the same radius, the portions of circles
which will include the angles of the same figures, placed in
a parallel series, enclosing each figure finally in a circle.
7. You have thus the first two leading groups of what
architects call Foils —%.F., trefoils, quatrefoils, cinquefoils,
etc.,—their French names indicating the original dominance
of French design in their architectural use.
The entire figures may be best called " Roses," the word
rose, or rose window, being applied by the French to the
richest groups of them. And you are to call the point
which is the centre of each entire figure, the "Rose-centre."
The arcs, you are to call " foils"; the centres of the arcs,
" foil-centres"; and the small points where the arcs meet,
" cusps," from cuspis, Latin for a point.
8. From the group of circle-segments thus constructed,
we might at once deduce the higher forms of symmetrical
(or equally measured^) architecture, and of symmetrical
flowers, such as the rose, or daisy. But it will be better
first, with only our simple groups of circles themselves, to
examine the laws which regulate forms equally measured
in every direction.
In this inquiry, however, we should find our marbles
* As distinguished from the studiously varied design, executed in all
its curves with the free hand, characteristic of less educated but more
living schools. The south end of the western aisle of Bolton Abbey is an
exquisite example of Early English of this kind.
* [For this term, see (Vol. VIII. pp. 119, 126).]