It Stands By The Cathedral, And Inclines So Far On One Side From The Perpendicular, That In Dropping A Plummet From The Top, Which Is One Hundred And Eighty-Eight Feet High, It Falls Sixteen Feet From The Base.

For my part, I should never have dreamed that this inclination proceeded from any other cause, than an accidental subsidence of the foundation on this side, if some connoisseurs had not taken great pains to prove it was done on purpose by the architect.

Any person who has eyes may see that the pillars on that side are considerably sunk; and this is the case with the very threshold of the door by which you enter. I think it would have been a very preposterous ambition in the architects, to show how far they could deviate from the perpendicular in this construction; because in that particular any common mason could have rivalled them; [All the world knows that a Building with such Inclination may be carried up till a line drawn from the Centre of Gravity falls without the Circumference of the Base.] and if they really intended it as a specimen of their art, they should have shortened the pilasters on that side, so as to exhibit them intire, without the appearance of sinking. These leaning towers are not unfrequent in Italy; there is one at Bologna, another at Venice, a third betwixt Venice and Ferrara, and a fourth at Ravenna; and the inclination in all of them has been supposed owing to the foundations giving way on one side only.

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