Fig. 795.—Melrose Abbey. Wall Arcades and North Doorway in Cloister.
crowned with a parapet filled in with quatrefoils, and resting on an enriched and corbelled cornice. At each angle is a shaft rising from a corbel. The three windows are simple, with pointed arch and cusped trefoil, similar to those of the clerestory of the nave and north transept. The tower has, doubtless, been erected about the same time as the transept.
The above description of the various portions of the abbey suffices to show how full of interest it is to the student of architecture as well as to the artist.
We have drawn attention to the more prominent features, but it is impossible for us here to enter fully into all the multiplicity of details which such an elaborate structure offers for observation and study.
No building in Scotland affords such an extensive and almost inexhaustible field for minute investigation and enjoyment of detail as this. Whether we consider the great variety of the beautifully sculptured figures of monks and angels playing on musical instruments ([Fig. 796]), or displaying “the scrolls which teach us to live and die,” or turn to the elaborate canopies and beautiful pinnacles of the buttresses (see [Figs. 769] and [778]), or examine the rich variety of foliage and other sculptures on the capitals of the nave and the doorway and arches of the cloisters; or if, again, we take a more general view of the different parts of the edifice from the numerous fine standpoints from which it can be so advantageously contemplated, we know of no Scottish building which surpasses Melrose either in the picturesqueness of its general aspect, or in the profusion or value of its details.
Fig. 796.—Melrose Abbey. Figures of Monks and Angels.
It occupies an important position also historically, as it in part supplies an admirable example of that decorated architecture the existence of which in this country has been so often denied, but of which, we trust, a sufficient number of examples are now provided to render that reproach to Scottish architecture no longer justifiable.