LETTER III.
GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE.
Rheims, May, 1816.
I engaged a young French artist of the name of Le Blanc to accompany me in an excursion to Chalons sur Marne, and Rheims, in order to assist me in sketching the Gothic Architecture of those two places. The road is not very pleasant; the first part lies mostly through a common field, but with trees of a tolerable size on each side: these trees admit of a side and front view of the country, but not an oblique one: from the straightness of the road, the front continues always the same, and the side view escapes in a moment, so that we have no time to dwell on any object. Tired of one everlasting defect, I began to wish the trees altogether out of the way; but before reaching Chalons, I became still more tired of an open country, to which the eye could hardly distinguish any boundary, and heartily wished for the trees again. The surface of the ground is a continued gentle undulation, and whether with or without trees, the straight road makes this form extremely sensible, and it is hardly possible to conceive any thing more dull and wearisome. This character however is not without exception. La Ferté is situated in a very pleasant valley, with scattered trees, steep banks, villages, and distant hills; and a little beyond the town, the road winds round the head of a charming hollow, of no great depth. The hills are steep, and partly woody, and the scene rich, with the mixture of trees, hedges, and cultivated ground; meadows, vineyards, and abundance of orchards, whose delicious fragrance was wafted by a soft and gentle breeze, very different from the cold winds which swept over the naked country. Chalons offered to our curiosity two Gothic churches. The cathedral, of which I have little to say, and that of Nôtre Dame, which both for its antiquity, and the beautiful effects of certain dispositions not usually met with, is extremely interesting. We find here a number of particulars, which generally accompany each other in these ancient French churches: these are, First, square towers, with semicircular headed openings. The mouldings round the windows are often ornamented; but the buttresses (which have little projection) and the surface of the walls, are always unadorned. Secondly, the windows are without tracery, and those of the choir are disposed three together, the middle one being the largest: this arrangement prevails also in Salisbury Cathedral, and in some other English buildings of the same period. Thirdly, detached single columns, which might almost be called Corinthian, support the arches at the back of the choir. Fourthly, the side aisles of the choir are generally in two stories, and frequently of the nave also: the upper story is supposed to have been for the use of the women. Fifthly, there is a gallery or triforium round the choir, above the two stories of the bas chœur, and below the windows, which is not continued along the nave. Sixthly, the end of the choir is circular, not polygonal, and the little chapels which surround it, and which are hardly ever wanting in France, are also terminated in portions of circles: in the later styles of Gothic Architecture both these became polygonal. Seventhly, the mouldings and ornaments externally are more like the Roman, than they are in the Gothic of a later period. Some of these peculiarities may be traced from the ponderous architecture which preceded it, and some may be pursued into the more ornamental style which followed. In attempting to arrange the productions of architecture in a chronological series, we shall find many aberrations in the style of building, from the exact order of dates: a fashion may be continued in one province, some years after it has ceased to be practised in another. Even in the same city the genius of one man may introduce a mode of construction afterwards generally followed, and there may yet be a considerable interval between its first introduction and its general adoption. It may be said then, that the cathedral of Amiens is less early than that of Nôtre Dame at Paris; meaning thereby to infer, not a precise priority of date in the latter, but that it exhibits indications of an earlier stage of knowledge or of taste; and announces a state of art, which, generally speaking, preceded that exhibited in the former.
I think I can now distinguish four styles of French Gothic; the earliest is that which I have just described, as exemplified in the church of Nôtre Dame, at Chalons; the second, that of the thirteenth century, is exhibited on a magnificent scale in the cathedral of Amiens. Here the lower part of the tower is ornamented with niches and statues; the upper part is comparatively plain, and very light. The windows are single, much larger than in the preceding style, divided by mullions, and I believe always rose-headed. There is only one story of aisles, which is nearly, or quite, as high as the two were before. The piers behind the choir, and every where else, except those of the chevet, are bundled, and adorned with rich capitals, representing detached foliage, or sometimes other objects: those of the chevet are sometimes, but not always simple. This word chevet, I have adopted from Whittington, without knowing whether he is correct in the use of it. It means, I think, in common use, the head-board of a bed. The part indicated by it in churches, as I understand it, is the circular or polygonal end of the elevated building forming the great avenue of the church. It is called also by the French the rond point. Our cathedrals rarely finish in this manner, and I do not recollect any appropriate name for the part in our language. Milner, I believe, calls it the apsis, but this is more properly applied to the great semicircular niche of the ancient Basilicas, in which the architecture of the nave was not resumed, as it always is in Gothic churches. This rond point or chevet, is, in this style, always a portion of a polygon, and not of a circle, and the chapels attached to it are also polygonal. The mouldings are much deeper, and more strongly contrasted than in the former style. Thus, at St. Remi, at Rheims, the bases are moulded nearly as in the first of the following figures,
Fig 1.
Fig 2.
in the cathedral of the same city, as in the last: the first exemplifying the taste of the first period; the second, that of which we are now treating. You may find in the one all the parts which are observable in the other, and in the same order. They are both modifications of the ancient Attic base, but managed very differently in the two examples, and so as to produce very different effects. A similar system of diminished heights, increased projection, and deeper hollows, is carried still further in the succeeding period, but the original disposition is no longer so strictly observed. During the prevalence of this style, the distinct leaves of the capital, imitated however clumsily from the ancient Corinthian, began to give way to running foliage. Besides the edifices already mentioned, the choir at Beauvais exhibits a late example of this style, where some of its characteristics are giving way to those of the third.
In the third style, the roses over the windows were generally succeeded by variously disposed foliage; and even the great rose windows were sometimes displaced for more intricate ornaments, or if the circular form was retained, the winding divisions of its area assumed something of a leafy form. In the former styles, the portals were almost exclusively adorned with shafts, placed in reveals, i. e. in receding angles made for them, thus,