LECTURES
ON
THE RISE AND DEVELOPMENT
OF
MEDIÆVAL ARCHITECTURE

Fig. 116.—Western Porch, Ely Cathedral.

The restoration of the Vescica Piscis is taken from a print in the British Museum, dated 1730.

LECTURES
ON THE
RISE AND DEVELOPMENT
OF
Mediæval Architecture

Delivered at the Royal Academy
By Sir GILBERT SCOTT, R.A.,
F.S.A., LL.D., Etc.
IN TWO VOLUMES—VOL. I.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET
1879
The right of Translation is reserved.

Printed by R. & R. Clark, Edinburgh.

PREFACE.

Only half of the following Lectures were delivered by me, as the Professor of Architecture, at the Royal Academy. The first seven were delivered while Professor Cockerell held the Chair; but, owing to his infirm state of health, I being then an Associate, was, in conjunction with Mr. Smirke, called in to relieve him of this duty. The eighth and ninth Lectures were prepared six years later, after Mr. Smirke had retired, and those which follow, when I had succeeded him in the Professorship.

The Lectures are naturally somewhat disconnected; and having been written both at various times and for audiences often changing, may be found in some instances to repeat the same facts and ideas, for which, as well as for too great a prolixity of style, I beg to apologise.

They were written with much zeal; and, thanks to my staff, and to my pupils, my sons, and others, they were magnificently and profusely illustrated; more so, perhaps, than any such Lectures had ever been before.

They have lain long in abeyance; but it seemed to me, that “for better for worse,” and notwithstanding the lapse of time, they ought to be published, and Mr. Murray has most kindly undertaken to do this for me.

In correcting them for the press, I have made only verbal alterations, or corrected accidental errors, or omitted a few harsh expressions. Where I wished to amplify, I have done so by notes. The illustrations have been mainly drawn by my friend and assistant, Mr. W. S. Weatherley, chiefly from those exhibited when the Lectures were delivered, with additions from my more recent sketches, and will be found to contribute largely to the elucidation of the text.

Geo. Gilbert Scott.

London, February 1878.

At the time of the sudden and deplorable death of Sir Gilbert Scott in March last, more than 200 illustrations had been made and engraved. The remaining ones are completed in conformity with his marginal directions.

Many of these were prepared by me for the Lectures ten years ago, and all have been compared with Sir Gilbert’s sketches, with the diagrams in the MSS., and redrawn. The engraving is by “Leitch’s photographic process.”

Some valuable woodcuts, lent by permission of Mr. Fergusson and Mr. Murray, have also been inserted among the letterpress.

W. Samᴸ. Weatherley.

20 Cockspur Street,
London, S.W.

CONTENTS.
VOL. I.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
CONTAINED IN VOL. I.

ERRATA.

Page 81, Fig. 19, for Temple of Mars, Ultor, read Temple of Mars Ultor.
“ 94, line 26, for Choir at the Trinity Chapel, read Choir and the Trinity Chapel.
“ 170, Contents, line 6, for Stanford, read Stamford.
“ 175, foot-note, for Beavais, read Beauvais.

MEDIÆVAL ARCHITECTURE.

LECTURE I.
The Claims of Mediæval Architecture upon our Study.

Introduction—Art follows the course of civilisation—Three primâ facie claims Gothic Architecture has upon Study—Additional claim, that it is Christian Architecture—Objections to the title—Explanations of the term—Byzantine the earliest Christian style—Summary of the Historical claims of Mediæval Architecture—Its intrinsic claims—Abstract beauty—Advantages of an arcuated over a trabeated style—Facility in decorating construction, and in converting structural features into elements of beauty—Adaptability to varied climates—Unites all arts in one—Painted glass—Sculpture—Foliated sculpture—Gothic Architecture suited to the severest and most elegant styles—Beauty of external outline—Delicacy of mouldings—Religious solemnity of the interior of its temples—The spirit with which the study of Mediæval Architecture should be undertaken—How to be pursued—Practical objects for which it should be followed up.

IT is with feelings somewhat closely bordering upon trepidation that, availing myself of the liberty given by the regulations recently passed by the Council of the Royal Academy, I venture to address you on a subject which has never, till now, been more than incidentally touched upon within these walls; a subject, indeed, dear to my heart, and entwined among my inmost thoughts and affections, but one which, perhaps for that very reason, I feel it the more difficult to bring before you through the medium of a lecture. It may be at first sight imagined that love, of all the human feelings, is that best calculated to aid in describing the beauties of its object, and in advocating its claims upon the admiration; but it is not so. We can hardly state the reasons why we love our parents or our brothers. We know that it is a feeling which has grown with our growth, and is a part of our very existence; yet it is probable that an acquaintance who has never shared in these warmer sentiments might describe their character and even their virtues more successfully than ourselves. If we seek to investigate them, we find the research all too cold and too methodical to accord with the tone of our feelings; and, like the poet who wished to sing of the Atrides and of Cadmus, the chords of our hearts respond only of love.

So it is with those who have harboured an early affection for the architecture of their native land. Strongly as I appreciate the intrinsic beauty of the monuments of classic antiquity, and the merits of very many works of the Revival, I should doubt whether it were possible for any unsophisticated youth, before studying their architecture as a science, to entertain towards its productions in this country any feelings bordering upon real affection. He may see in them much to admire—much to lead him to study the art which has produced them; and this study will, no doubt, often kindle those warmer feelings which ripen into love. But this is a very different feeling from that deep and filial affection which many a youth, untaught in art, but gifted by nature with a perception of its beauties, has entertained from his tenderest years towards the old churches of his neighbourhood, and which has impelled him to walk from village to village, not only under the balmy influences of summer, but along muddy roads or snowy paths, and, with glowing heart but shivering hand, to sketch the humble porch, the unaspiring steeple, and the mutilated though venerable monument, with feelings of indescribable delight.

It is this instinctive affection which it is so difficult to reason upon, and to which cold investigation seems so uncongenial; yet most pleasant it is, in after life, to find ever new proof that our early feelings have not been misplaced; that those once callous warm up when they are led to examine; that those who, strange to say, disliked the architecture of their forefathers, are now forced to admit some of its beauties; that the style, once despised, has become gradually appreciated, and its study become the favourite pursuit of thousands—every county having its society organised to promote it; that in every country in which it once flourished (Italy herself not excepted), the same revived feeling towards it has arisen; and, finally, that this distinguished Academy has stamped it as equally classic with the architecture of the ancient world, and admitted it to an equal place in the instructions offered to her students.

Having found it impracticable, from previous engagements, to give, as had been kindly suggested to me, a short course of lectures during this season, I propose on the present occasion to limit myself to some introductory remarks on the study of Mediæval architecture, which I trust, with the kind permission of the Council, to follow up next year by one or two further lectures, both upon its original productions, and upon the bearing of the study of them upon our own practice and the architecture of the future.

I will commence by considering the different claims which Pointed architecture has upon our study.

The more carefully we examine into the subject, the stronger and the more numerous do we find these claims to be. To a casual observer, the interest we feel in the subject may appear to be the result of local prejudice or of arbitrary choice, and our Mediæval styles may seem to have no greater claim upon us than those of a hundred other periods or countries. The fact, however, is the very reverse—that Pointed architecture is marked out from others in the most signal and remarkable manner. I will briefly point out some of the circumstances which thus especially single it out.

In tracing the history of civilisation, we cannot fail to perceive that, from the earliest ages to the present, it has followed one not unbroken, yet connected stream, and though branches have struck off in different directions, it has ever had one main channel, which at each period represents the central mass of civilisation; this stream, passing now through this country and now through that, but its place being nearly always so marked as to leave no doubt as to where, in each succeeding age, the main seat of civilisation is to be found. Art has in regular succession followed in the same course—the main channel of civilisation and art having been the same, though each possessing its minor branches.

The earliest seats of mental culture were the great valleys of Egypt and Mesopotamia. There, too, were the cradles of primitive art. The less enduring materials of the Eastern valley have deprived us of the remains of its earlier architecture, but the imperishable ruins of Egypt will tell till earth’s closing day how mighty was her primæval civilisation.

Persia seems to have succeeded to Egypt and Assyria as well in art as in dominion; but long before her political power had been overthrown, the stream of mental power had been transferred to Greece, whose arts and knowledge, partly indigenous and partly derived from Egypt and Assyria, so infinitely excelled all which had preceded them, that we are apt, and with reason, to view them as the only genuine art and civilisation of the ancient world.

Rome, succeeding Greece in external power, borrowed both her arts and literature, but, throughout her whole career, was as subordinate to her in these as she was predominant in power; and when that great catastrophe occurred which crushed to dust the mighty fabric of Roman domination, it was again in Greece that civilisation and art flowed on, and it was thence that those friendly streams proceeded which enabled the Gothic conquerors of Rome to reconstruct what they had destroyed, and among the débris of ancient art and knowledge to sow the seeds and to foster the growth of that richer and mightier civilisation which distinguishes the modern from the ancient world.

In all its earlier stages, the growth of civilisation in the modern, as in the ancient world, was marked by corresponding changes in its architecture. Each age had its architectural style distinctly and strongly marked; a style which, though connecting itself unmistakeably with the long chain of ancient art that, though rudely broken in the West, had been continuous in the Eastern empire, was nevertheless so distinct from any former link in that chain as clearly to mark a new dynasty in human affairs, and to show that the stream which had passed successively through Egypt, Assyria, Persia, Greece, and Rome, was now making wide and deep its channel among those Gothic nations whose progenitors had been viewed as the enemies of art and knowledge, and that the seat of art was henceforth to be established among those vigorous races which had destroyed that of the ancient world.

My object in going over this well-beaten path is to draw your attention to three very marked primâ facie claims which Gothic architecture has upon our study. Firstly, that, though we are in the habit of considering it antiquated, it is in fact the architecture of the modern as distinguished from the ancient world—that, just as the architecture of the earlier half of the world’s history culminated in that of Greece, which must ever be viewed as its most perfect and most glorious representative, so did the indigenous architecture of the newer world reach its culminating point in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries among the nations of Western Europe—the depositaries of a new civilisation. Secondly, that it is the architecture of the Germanic nations, through whose land the main stream of civilisation now runs, as of old it did through Greece, Egypt, and Rome. And, thirdly, that it is the latest original style of architecture which the civilised world has produced; that the chain of architectural styles, commencing in Egypt, and passing on in continuous course through Assyria, Persia, Greece, Rome, and Byzantium, and thence taken up by the infant nations of modern Europe, and by them prolonged through successive ages of continuous progress, terminated in the style which we are treating of, and has never since produced another link of its own.

As, then, the architecture of Egypt claims our respect as the earliest link in the history of architecture, so are our own Mediæval styles especially marked out from all others as being its latest creation. That continuous stream of indigenous art which from the earliest ages of the world had unceasingly flowed onwards—now through this country, and now through that; now smoothly flowing on through a deep and copious channel, and now choked up with rocks, or spreading itself sluggishly and unhealthily through marshes and morasses, but ever progressing—seemed at the end of the period we are speaking of to turn back upon its course, and, instead of creating as heretofore ever new beauties of its own, to content itself with reproducing those of bygone periods: instead of illustrating, as it were, the collateral stream of civilisation which flowed on so mightily by its side, it accompanied it by images of that of an older world—of another family of nations—of another religion; and since then, though civilisation has rolled on in a continuous course, it has failed to produce any style of architecture of its own.

Mediæval architecture, then, is distinguished from all other styles as being the last link of the mighty chain which had stretched unbroken through nearly 4000 years—the glorious termination of the history of original and genuine architecture.

The next claim to which I will direct your attention is, that our style is, par excellence, Christian architecture.

This is a claim which it is so much the fashion of the day to dispute, and even to deride, that it demands somewhat careful investigation. Many who have no hesitation in using the terms Mahometan, Hindoo, or Buddhist architecture, and who do not in the least deny the influence of the various religions of the ancients upon their modes of building, see nothing but fanaticism in attributing any such influence to Christianity; or if they do not deny this influence, they view Pointed architecture as the special property of the Roman Church (though Rome herself boasts of having scarcely admitted it within her walls), and find no style to symbolise their Protestantism but that derived from the heathenism of the ancient world, and whose more recent type is to be found in the great metropolitan church of modern Rome.

Other more reasoning persons object that, as Christianity, in its purest ages, adopted a modified form of the ancient Roman style, and bent it to its uses, the Roman style became by that process a bona fide Christian architecture; and further argue that Pointed architecture, having derived some of its forms from the Saracenic, has thereby lost its title to being considered a purely Christian style.

To meet these objections, it is necessary to explain what we mean by Christian architecture.

There can be no doubt that nearly all forms of architecture have taken their rise in the temple, whose form and character have been regulated by the religion for which it was erected. From the temple it has diffused itself throughout all classes of buildings, carrying with it, in a certain degree, the feeling it had already acquired. No one will deny this of the Egyptian, the Greek, or the Saracenic; and so inconsistent are people on such questions, that the very persons who would laugh at the term “Christian architecture” will almost in the same breath object to the use of our style for secular buildings, on the ground that it will make them look like churches!

Now, what we claim for Pointed architecture is, not that it is the only Christian style which has arisen or is likely to arise, but that it has been more entirely developed under the influence of the Christian religion, and more thoroughly carries out its tone and sentiment than any other style. It is not exclusively, but par eminence, Christian. The early Christians naturally adopted the style which was ready made to their hands. That this style, as they found it, was essentially Pagan, it would be absurd to deny; but it was the only one they knew; and, carefully avoiding the types of Pagan temples, they adopted one of its secular forms, and wholly adapted it to their uses. The buildings thus produced were unmistakeably Christian, but it would be absurd to say so of their style. This being nearly identical with that of their Heathen predecessors, it needed a long course of remoulding before it could justly be predicated of it that it was a Christian style—a style generated under the influence of Christian customs, to fulfil Christian requirements, and to harmonise fully with the sentiments of the religion of those who made use of it.

The earliest style which may fairly be called Christian was the Byzantine. In the East no sudden revolution had affected art or civilisation, but the Greek empire, founded at the moment when Christianity became the established religion, went on quietly adapting its arts and institutions to its new religion. Art having already degenerated under the later Pagan emperors, and difficulties both from without and from within gradually weakening and undermining the power of the State, it was natural that the changing style should not have that full scope which would have been afforded it had the purifying influences of Christianity acquired full sway during the Augustan age. Painting, sculpture, and architectural carving had lamentably fallen off before they were transferred from the Heathen temple to the Christian church, and even the more mechanical features of Roman architecture had departed widely from their original purity of form. The task prescribed to the new religion was not to take the highest form of Pagan art as it had existed under Pericles or Augustus, and to mould it to its own uses and its own purer and holier sentiments: what she had to deal with was a mere wreck of its former self: all its early simplicity destroyed, its vigour enervated, its magic instinct for beauty gone, its artists fast falling back into barbarism; and that not the savageness of early but untutored art, but the effete and nerveless heartlessness of a race whose glory had departed. It was this lifeless body which Christianity had to awaken to new energy—this dull and spiritless lump out of which she had to mould her future arts, and that at a time when the western half of the empire was about to be crushed to powder by the mighty storm of Northern barbarism, and the eastern portion itself weakened by gradual decay and by the incursions of the Goths, Huns, Persians, etc., and eventually by the tremendous inundation of the followers of Mahomet. That such a glorious result as Byzantine architecture should have been produced out of materials so lifeless, and through the agency of a decaying nation, speaks volumes for the power of religion over art.

Let us turn, however, to the Western empire. There the case is still stronger. With the same decayed and lifeless art as their nucleus, the people of Christian Rome had the additional disadvantage caused by the removal of the seat of government, and with it of the seat of art, to Constantinople; nevertheless, their first efforts were so successful, that though, in the words of Thomas Hope, “The architecture of the Heathen Romans, in its deterioration, followed so regular a course, that that which most nearly preceded the conversion of its rulers to Christianity is also the worst,”—the same author tells us that “the early Christian buildings, from their simplicity, the distinctness, the magnificence, the harmony of their component parts, had a grandeur which we seek in vain in the complicated architecture of modern churches.”

What course art would have taken had the Roman empire continued it is impossible to judge. It was destined to share the fate of the empire itself, and to be utterly overwhelmed by that mighty deluge which severs the ancient from the modern world; so that its Christianisation, instead of being gradual and progressive, as in the East, became a complete reconstruction by the successors of those who had destroyed it, though aided in their work by the friendly hands of those who, in the Eastern empire, had kept alight the lamp of civilisation.[1] The architecture of the West, therefore, instead of being a mere translation of the old style from Pagan to Christian uses and expression, was a new creation, formed, it is true, out of the ancient débris, but nevertheless originated, carried on, and perfected by Christian nations and for Christian uses, and may, consequently, be said, even in a stronger sense than that of Byzantium, to be a distinct Christian style; and I suppose none would doubt that its culminating point, and that to which all its progress tended, was the Pointed architecture of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

An argument against its claim to the title has been founded on the theory that the Pointed arch, which is, in some respects, the culminating feature of the style, was not developed spontaneously by our Christian forefathers, but learned by them from the Saracens. As well might it be attempted to sever Grecian architecture from the mythology and traditions of the Greeks, merely because some of its details may find their prototypes in Egypt or Assyria, or to disconnect the native architecture of India from their religion, because its first inspiration seems traceable to the Fire-worshippers of ancient Persia! Even Saracenic architecture itself was an emanation from that of Christian Greece; so that if we are indebted to it for the Pointed arch (a question which I will not now attempt to investigate), she only paid back to the religion from which she had borrowed. No one, however, can study the tendencies of the late Romanesque without seeing that the Pointed arch was becoming every day more necessary to the development of the germ which the rising style contained. The gradually increasing predominance of the vertical over the horizontal, the increase in the height of pillars and jambs demanding a proportionate addition to the arch; the necessities of groined vaulting over oblong spaces, and a hundred other evidences, proved the Pointed arch to be the inevitable result of the already attained developments; and often had it, almost unconsciously, appeared in intersecting arcades. If its systematic adoption can with certainty be traced to the suggestive architecture of the East, surely this does not unchristianise the already Christian architecture of the soldiers of the Cross, who brought the idea home among the spoils won from their unbelieving foes! Is it not rather in the spirit of our religion to receive tribute and homage from all the nations of the earth? And if it may be said of the Christian Church that

“Eastern Java there
Kneels with the native of the farthest west;
And Æthiopia spreads abroad the hand,
And worships,”

it is equally reasonable to expect of her material temples that

“The looms of Ormus, and the mines of Ind,
And Saba’s spicy groves, pay tribute there.”

The character of a style of art does not depend upon the mere material from which it has been fabricated, but upon the sentiments under which it has been developed. Were not this the case, all styles, excepting, perhaps, those in China and Central America, with a few others still more obscure, would be more or less connected with the religion of Egypt or of Nineveh; whereas, in fact, every race up to the sixteenth century, had so moulded the original materials upon which its arts had been founded as to render them expressive, in a great degree, of their own sentiments, and especially of their own religion; and more strongly than in any other case was it so with our own forefathers, when developing the latest of all styles of genuine architecture, and moulding it to harmonise with the sentiment of our holy religion.

The last of the historical claims of Pointed architecture to which I will call your attention is, that it is the native architecture of our own country, and that of our own forefathers. Here, again, I must define my meaning for the sake of meeting a class of objectors who delight to attach a false and exaggerated meaning to an expression.

I do not, then, mean that Pointed architecture belongs to us in any different sense from that in which it belongs to France or Germany: I do not mean to revive the claims of our country to its origination, nor to assert in its behalf any pre-eminent share in its development. All I mean to urge is the simple fact that, by whatever members of our family of nations it was shared, it was, nevertheless, the architecture of our own country—just as much English as we are ourselves—as indigenous to our country as are our wild flowers, our family names, our customs, or our political constitution.

In England, as in France and Germany, the same Romanesque architecture had (with local varieties) grown up with the new civilisation; as it perfected itself it showed in each the same tendencies and the same yearnings, which Pointed architecture could alone satisfy. If it were so that these were at length met by suggestions from the East, it was our forefathers who fought there side by side with those of our neighbours, and the lessons learned and the trophies won were common property. It is possible that France was more rapid in making use of them, and it is certain that Germany was the most tardy in doing so; but in each the result had long been aimed at; in each it was the natural consequence of what had already been attained; and was therefore not the property of one, but the common inheritance of all; and each having attained it, carried it on and developed it in her own way, thus making it in every sense her own.

I am, however, only urging this as a claim which our old architecture has upon our own study. If we investigate the architecture of Egypt, of Assyria, or of Persia, we find that it tells of races with whom we have no national or personal sympathy. If we go to the classic shores of Greece, though there we should be viewing the work of a race whose arts and literature are, more than those of any other people, the property of the world, we nevertheless fail to find anything to connect them in any special sense with ourselves. If we transfer our researches from Greece to Rome—though we now view the vestiges of that mighty empire whose world-wide sway stretched its iron sceptre over our own land, and though we find among them the germ of the arcuated architecture which forms the nucleus of our own styles—they are still severed from us by so wide a gulf that, were it not for the modern revival of their style, they would appear perfectly alien to our race and climate. All these studies must be followed up in distant lands, excepting only those few fragments of Roman work scattered here and there in our own and neighbouring countries—the evidences of universal empire, the footsteps and symbols of ancient servitude. How different is the study of Gothic architecture! Its original exemplars are at our own doors; the very churches, perhaps, in which from our infancy we have worshipped; the monuments of our own forefathers; the works of men bearing our own names, whose armorial badges we are still proud to use; who spoke, in its pristine form, our own language; who sat in our own Parliaments, were lords of still-existing manors, founders of still-surviving charities, men who fought the battles of which we are still proud, and laid the foundations of our liberties and of all those institutions which render the name of England illustrious among the nations of the earth. Surely the architecture which grew up among men so nearly allied to us has a pre-eminent claim upon our attention!

I have thus traced out what appear to me to be the leading historical claims of the style we are treating of, and which I will recapitulate as being—

Istly. That it is the architecture of the modern, as distinguished from the ancient world.

2dly. That it is the architecture of the nations wholly or partially of Germanic origin, in whose hands the civilisation of the modern world has been vested.

3dly. That it is the latest link in the chain of genuine and original styles of architecture, a chain commencing with the first settlement of the human race, and terminating in Gothic architecture.

4thly. That it is, in a stronger sense than can be predicated of any other style, Christian architecture.

5thly, and lastly. That it is pre-eminently the architecture of our own forefathers and of our own land.

I will now proceed to direct your attention to some of the more prominent among its intrinsic claims.

Commencing, then, with its abstract beauty, I will not treat this as a comparative, but as a positive, quality. Differences of taste and education lead us to form varied estimates of the relative merits of the several styles of art, but the most devoted follower of classic antiquity could scarcely question the absolute and intrinsic beauty of a Gothic cathedral. Every style of architecture has had its own glories. The mighty Hall at Karnac; the Hall of Xerxes at Persepolis; that model of symmetry, the Parthenon; the Coliseum at Rome; and that gorgeous congeries of domes which canopied the shrine of Holy Wisdom at Constantinople, all rank among the most noble of the works of man; but who is there so prejudiced as to deny the worthiness of those glorious temples which preside in august serenity over the cities of Northern Europe to an equal place in our admiration? Surely, if abstract beauty and intrinsic grandeur alone are considered, the cathedrals of Amiens, of Rheims, of Chartres, of Bourges, of Strasburg, of Cologne, of Lincoln, Salisbury, or York, with a hundred others, will not suffer by comparison with the works of any previous age? Nay, I am convinced that an unprejudiced umpire would go much further, and pronounce them in most respects far superior to the works of earlier ages; but my argument only requires that they should be admitted as their equals.

The next claim I will state is this—that as trabeated architecture was brought to its highest perfection by the Greeks, so the other great type of construction, arcuated architecture, was perfected by the Mediæval builders; the round-arch variety in the twelfth, and the pointed-arch in the two succeeding centuries. No one who gives the subject a moment’s consideration will doubt the enormous advantages of the arcuated over the trabeated system: indeed, with the materials we have at command in this country, the former style in its purity is in most cases impracticable, as is shown by half our modern attempts at it being in reality arcuation plastered over to look like trabeation.

The peculiar advantages of the pointed arch (though I do not urge them to the exclusion of other forms) are its greater power of carrying weight; its lessened thrust; the facility with which it proportions its height to that of its supporting jambs, and the general feeling of the building in which it is used, whether more or less vertical in its tendency; and its great advantages in groined vaulting.

The next quality I will mention is the extraordinary facility of our style in decorating construction, and in converting structural and useful features into elements of beauty. The arch, its normal feature, supplies to it an endless store of beauty. The vault supplies another inexhaustible fund, and assumes forms unrivalled in any other style. The window, comparatively neglected by the ancient architects, and even hated by the Greeks, was, in the hands of the Gothic builders, a perfect treasury of architectural loveliness; and the introduction of window-glass, an invention nearly unknown to the ancients, became the source of an entirely new and most enchanting art, and one which exercised the most surprising influence upon architecture. The buttress, the natural but unpromising accompaniment of an arcuated style, became in their magic hands, a source of stateliness and varied beauty. The roof, unwillingly shown by the Classic builders, adds solemn dignity to the works of their Northern successors; while, if need be, its timbers are made to contribute liberally to the effect of the interior. The campanile, a structure resulting wholly from practical necessity, became the greatest ornament of Christian cities, and supplied an endless variety of majestic forms, which had no parallels in ancient architecture; and generally, whatever feature, whether homely or otherwise, construction or utility demanded, was at once enlisted, and that with right goodwill and heartiness, among the essential elements of the design.

Carrying out the same spirit, no material was either too rich or too rustic to find an honourable place in the works of these truly Catholic builders. The varied marbles of the Appenines, the polished amethysts of Bohemia, the glass mosaics of the Byzantines, with gold and silver, enamel, brass, and iron, were all brought under tribute to make their richer works glorious; yet they were equally at home in the use of brick, or flint, or rubble, and did not despise even a homely coating of plaster, if only it were honestly and truthfully used. And, what is more remarkable, they excelled in the use of nearly every one of these materials, and varied their design with instinctive precision to meet every one of their individual conditions.

Carrying on the same spirit a step further, Gothic architecture shapes itself instinctively to varied climate and local tradition, and that without sacrificing its leading principles. It is true that its great normal types are found in Northern Europe, and that the north of France may, perhaps, be considered as its central province; yet how admirably does it shape itself to the varied conditions of Italy or Spain, to the valleys of Switzerland or the inhospitable shores of Scandinavia! while in every country where it prevailed it assumes a national type, and in every province a local variety.

In the same way, again, it suits itself to every grade and every class of building to which it is applied. It is equally at home in the humble chapel of the rustic hamlet as in the metropolitan cathedral. The traveller through Lincolnshire is no less charmed by the village churches which rise in such profusion from its level surface than with the majestic minster, which, from its lofty site, surveys the whole county; nor are we, after wondering at the stupendous grandeur of York, the less disposed to be delighted with the little village chapel at Skelton; and even the rudest structures of the most obscure district possess a truthfulness and a sentiment which does more than compensate for their rusticity. To pass again to different classes of building, the Mediæval castles, though belonging to a class which the altered modes of warfare have rendered obsolete, are in their degree as noble and as thoroughly suited to their purpose as the sacred structures. The manor-house, the farm, and the cottage, show equal appropriateness of treatment. The timber street-fronts of Coventry or Brunswick; the brick houses of Lubeck or of the Lombard cities, or those of stone at Nuremberg—all evince the same power of meeting the conditions of purpose or material; while the vast warehouses of the commercial cities of Germany, the town halls of Flanders, and the tithe barns of an English village are, in their way, as admirable and as appropriate as the minster at Rheims or the castle at Carnarvon.

Again, Gothic architecture unites all arts in one, more, perhaps, than has been effected by any other style, or, to say the least, fully as much so.

In its normal form a stone architecture, it does not make all other materials conform to this condition, but treats them each according to its own demands. It is almost equally successful in its timber roofs as in its stone construction, and equally perfect in wood as in stone carving; it treats iron and brass in a manner perfectly suited to the varying conditions; it brings in painted decorations of the richest or the simplest character, as best suits the building; it has introduced one all-pervading art entirely of its own—I mean painted glass; and no art perhaps ever contributed in so large a degree to the increase of architectural effect: its jewellery, enamels, ivory carving, embroidery, tapestry, and all other arts are in perfect harmony; and though it fell short of the Classic styles in the perfection of its figure sculpture, it possessed even here a solemn and severe dignity, hardly equalled at any period, and its draperies often exceeded in beauty those of the Classic sculptors.

In describing the sculptures at Wells Cathedral, our revered professor, who possesses, in a greater degree than any one whom it is my privilege to know, the happiness of being susceptible of enthusiastic emotion from the beauties of a rival school of art to that to which he has especially devoted himself, makes the following remarks:—

“Regarded in the right spirit, we shall wonder at the inexhaustible resources of the artist in delineating the various and opposite characters of his multifarious composition—in which no two are to be found alike, and in each of which we find the appropriate idea—and the fulness of embodiment which sustains the dramatis personæ throughout, with an untiring energy of impersonation in costume, symbol, and action, which excites our warmest admiration.

“We have the sanctity of the Monk, the meekness and abstraction of the supreme Pontiff; the Archbishop; the pious energy of the Bishop in the act of benediction; the prudent Abbot; the devoted Anchorite; the haughty and imposing King; the stark conqueror fiercely justifying his usurpation; the placid and impassible Confessor administering his good old laws ...; the inspired Evangelist or the malignant sprite;—each and all discovering a racy energy of conception which the informed artist may envy.”

Again: “The Mediæval artist appealed sometimes to the imagination, and sometimes to the conscience; and thus gave a degree of sentiment to his works, which the moderns can scarcely attempt,—much less attain....

“But it is the moral understanding of the artist which is most affected by the contemplation of so vast an assemblage of Christian art, as contrasted with the Classical, contained in our museums or in ancient monuments. Habituated to the Grecian model, in which the pride of life, the sensuality of beauty, a superhuman energy, or an unreal Elysium are assumed, deluding with a beau-ideal, and disappointing to all human experience, he is brought here to the full admission of the realities and true conditions of human existence—probation by the sweat of the brow, and the grand achievement of eternal life. Art is here employed to impress the great lessons of Truth, the warfare of the world, the subjugation of the natural to the spiritual man, the honest employment of the intellect in the great cause of religion.... No characters enter into this picture which have not been signalised by some great good to society, or some great triumph over all-absorbing self. Wisdom in its true sense, and varying energies of personal or intellectual strength, in a great cause, are the only passports to admission in these records.”

I need not apologise for quoting at so much length from him who has so often and so eloquently addressed you from this place, and cannot refrain from adding the following admirable reflections to which the work he was describing gave rise:—

“The poetic faculty, the fine sense of beauty, grace, and humour, are the gifts of nature: technical and mechanical skill may be acquired by academy and happy circumstances. The union of these qualifications, which is requisite to perfection in a work of art, is indeed a rare felicity: their separate existence is a melancholy fact, exhibited by the history of schools; in which, for the most part mechanism and technicality usurp the higher attainment, and the wide distinction between the professional practitioner and the inborn artist is made apparent to us. But the end of all sound criticism should be to recognise these distinctions; to seize the poetical conception, however encumbered with a faulty execution; and to appreciate in their true merit the more exalted and the rarer qualities; else the poet descends to the grammarian, and the intellectual artist to the handicraftsman.”

In foliated sculpture the Mediæval artists exceeded those of, perhaps, any other period. In their works you find the finest specimens of conventional or imaginary foliage,—founded on natural principles, yet not imitated from nature,—the best instances of the introduction of natural foliage, either wholly or united with the conventional,—and the most admirable examples of conventionalising nature, or, as Mr. Ruskin defines it, “bringing it into service,” so as to suit it to the material and to the forms, conditions, and purposes of architectural decoration, whether in relief or in painting. And not the least valuable of the lessons we learn from them is the acknowledgment of the mind and imagination of the art workman, who was not, as in classic architecture, employed to make for his capitals, or other features, an indefinite number of facsimiles of a single model, much less, as in most modern works, to copy in a hundred buildings a model which its author never meant to be used but in one; but after having acquired a due amount of skill in the arrangement and execution of his foliage, and a due knowledge of the general tone and feeling which the architect desired to express, was then left, under only general guidance, to the indulgence of his own inventive and artistic faculties, and thus rendered every capital, every boss, and every cusp a distinct and separate work of art, though all in harmony with the ideal of the whole design.

In variety of expression Gothic architecture is excelled by none, being equally capable of the sternest and most majestic severity, and the most exquisite and refined elegance, as well as of all the intermediate varieties.

In beauty of external outline no other style of architecture approaches it; and in the variety, depth, and refined delicacy of the profiles of its mouldings it stands unrivalled. Time would fail me to tell of the wonderful manner in which our style shapes itself to every accidental requirement; grapples with every difficulty, and converts it into a source of beauty; disdains, on the one hand, all artificially effected symmetry, nor, on the other, fears to submit to the most rigid uniformity, should the conditions of the case require it, being equally noble in the castle, where no two parts are alike or, as in the Hall at Ypres, where scarcely any two are different; how it meets every emergency with the utmost frankness and honesty; how it disdains all deception; thus contrasting itself, not with other genuine styles, for none really systematically admit of shams, but with the despicable trickiness which our modern architects have learned from their own plasterers and house-painters. Nor have I time to treat of the boldness, freedom, and originality of its conceptions. But, above all, its great glory is the solemnity of religious character which pervades the interior of its temples. To this all its other attributes must bend, as it is this which renders it so pre-eminently suited to the highest uses of the Christian Church. It was this probably which led Romney to exclaim, that if Grecian architecture was the work of glorious men, Gothic was the invention of gods.

Having—I fear at too great length—sketched out the claims of Mediæval architecture upon your study, I will conclude with a few remarks as to the spirit with which that study should be undertaken, the manner in which it should be pursued, and the practical objects for which it should be followed up.

In the first place, I will premise that your studies should not be undertaken in a spirit of mere antiquarianism. We owe very much to antiquaries, and far be it from me to depreciate the value of their researches; on the contrary, I think that the enlightened system on which they are followed up is one of the things of which our age has to be proud, and one for which, as lovers of art, we have great cause for gratitude; nor do I wish to discourage the pursuit of such investigations by architects. It is, in some degree, a necessary accompaniment to their studies, and will always add interest to them. What I wish to suggest is that our own proper subject is art rather than antiquity. The fact that the types from which we have to study have grown old is accidental: their merits and their value are perfectly irrespective of their age, and would have been as great had they been erected in our own day; nay, more so, for then we should be following up, as in former days, the works of our own immediate predecessors, and should not be suffering, as now, from a great and unnatural hiatus in the history of our art. In the second place, our studies should not be undertaken in a spirit of mere philosophical investigation: that, too, is very useful in its place, and is an important element in the study of art, though somewhat too cold to suit the feelings which belong to the true artist.

I would suggest two classes of sentiments as especially suited to our own studies, somewhat opposite in their character, and each calculated to temper and correct any tendency to undue excess in the other. On the one hand, I would urge that your studies should be the earnest following up of the genuine impulses of the heart;—that their primary characteristics should be warmth, enthusiasm, veneration, and love. “Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.” Never repress in yourselves, nor ridicule in others, the generous impulses of enthusiasm. They are the very soul of art; they are the fresh spring flowers of the youthful mind, the life-spring of every noble thought and action: without them art would cease to exist, and we should sink under the bondage of an iron age. Above all, cultivate these feelings now that you are young: guard and cherish them as you would the choicest and tenderest of flowers; for, depend upon it, the chilling blasts of advancing years, and the deadening contact of a hard and unsentimental world, will have sufficient tendency to nip the precious bud almost before it has time to burst into bloom. On the other hand, it is necessary that the exercise of this zeal, heartiness, and veneration, should be regulated by sound and discriminating judgment,—a perfect and unfettered freedom of thought, and an eye to real beauty of form and reasonableness of construction and design; so that our generous enthusiasm may not betray us into forming erroneous judgments.

However perfect a style of art may be, its productions are not all perfect nor all of equal merit; while every human art has had its period of rise, culmination, and decline; and, enthusiastic and heart-stirring as must be our feelings towards any art in which we hope to excel, and intense as may be our veneration for the skill and noble sentiment of its original masters, these feelings should in no degree be permitted to blunt the sensitiveness of our own instinctive perception of beauty, whether positive or relative, nor to bias the freedom of our judgment as in the comparative truthfulness, propriety, or genuineness of the works of different periods or of different hands. We must keep a constant balance between our zeal and our judgment—not repressing the exercise of either, but giving each its full play, and exercising each in its highest and noblest degree.

I now come to the manner in which Mediæval architecture should be studied.

In the first place, though books and prints are very useful in their degree, let me impress upon you, in the strongest manner, that all real study should be at the fountain head. You may derive information as to the history of art from books, but knowledge of art itself must be derived from works of art. The knowledge derived from books and prints comes to you at second hand—you are seeing through other men’s eyes; the really useful information is that which you obtain at the first hand, and through your own eyes. If you learn a fact from a book, be never satisfied till you have proved it by your own observation; if you are impressed with the beauty of a building from a drawing or a print, make sure of its being really beautiful by examining it for yourselves. Investigate every theory, however rudimental, by actual examination of the data on which it is founded, so that none of your knowledge shall be merely taken upon trust from others.

During a genuine and natural state of art, every one learned it from, and developed it upon, the works of his immediate predecessors. This natural course having been broken up, the most reasonable substitute for it is to study the actual works which surround us, and which were produced while art was still genuine and unbroken. We have not to visit distant shores, and to investigate obscure fragments,—the works of races which have vanished from the face of the earth: we are surrounded on every side by original examples of the arts which we would study; they are the productions of our own country and our own race. The temples from which our authorities are derived are not those of an ancient and bygone nation, but those in which we ourselves worship, and within and around whose hallowed walls sleep the remains of our own forefathers. We study no outlandish or exotic architecture, but that of buildings which from our infancy we have been taught to venerate. We have, then, no excuse if we neglect to obtain our knowledge from the fountain head.

The choice and order of the particular buildings which we select for our studies must depend much upon accidental circumstances; but, as a general rule, I would advise each student to begin with those which are readiest to his hand. If your home is in the country, visit, study, and sketch from your own parish church, and from those immediately surrounding you, widening your circle as you proceed; generally studying the simpler specimens before you venture upon the more magnificent. If you live in London the case is different. The humbler specimens have mostly perished, but the earnest student will still find out many of which the public are ignorant. Here, however, you must for the most part attend to the more magnificent works, and reserve the humbler for your rural excursions; and, above all, you must diligently study the glorious abbey church of Westminster—internally, perhaps, the finest in England, but which, from its proximity, is made nothing like so much use of as it ought to be. Though the village churches round London have suffered more than almost any others, you would still do well to make pedestrian excursions among them, and carefully sketch what remains of them; and by extending your excursions to Waltham and St. Alban’s, to Eltham and Hampton Court, you will find objects of study of the highest merit and the most thrilling interest. I would, however, recommend, as the most profitable mode of following up the subject, more lengthened excursions; as, for instance, pedestrian tours through particular counties or districts, walking from village to village, and carefully sketching everything worthy of note to be found in it, whether ecclesiastical or domestic. This should be repeated over and over again in different districts. If you wish to direct your attention to the nobler productions of architecture, you must seat yourselves down in some cathedral town, and follow it up patiently from day to day, till your time is exhausted. A hasty view to these noblest of structures is of but little use.

Especially would I entreat your attention to those beauteous but melancholy ruins which still mark the sites of ancient monastic institutions. You may find in them the finest and best studied examples of your art—works designed and carried out, not in the bustle and busy hum of cities, but under the quieting influence of learned retirement: they are the works of the most thoughtful spirits of their age, and have received their utmost study and consideration. Not only are they intrinsically among the most beautiful specimens you can visit, but their present condition is calculated to impress them the most deeply upon the imagination and memory.

It is well to visit these remains alone; to stay long at them; to study them thoroughly, and not to repress the emotions to which they are calculated to give rise. I would also plead for them on another ground. There are many of them fast mouldering away or tottering to their fall. A few years more, and many of them will have perished. Lend, then, a friendly hand while they still exist, and rescue from oblivion their noble details by making careful and measured drawings of every part; so that, when the reality is no more, the truthful representation at least will be preserved.

I need hardly say that no works of art can be really profitably studied without drawing from them. The memory will not retain its impressions by mere abstract study and observation. I would not advise hasty and careless sketching, unless your time is so short as to render more impossible, but would urge upon you the necessity of carefully and assiduously drawing whatever strikes you as worthy of it, making measured drawings whenever you can, and noting down your impressions as to the merits or the defects of the work. So study what you see as thoroughly to learn it,—as if no one had ever made drawings of it before. Never buy prints or photographs of it as substitutes for your own work; though they are most useful when you have done all you can for yourself. In this way you will in a few years obtain a good knowledge of the architecture of your own country, and this is the best preparation for studying the contemporary works of other lands.

I would never encourage a student to go too early abroad. Study well our own examples first, and follow up foreign ones later.

When you go abroad, begin with France. It is the great centre of Mediæval art. Perhaps the best course is to take Normandy first, as being most allied to our own country; but still more important is the district round Paris—the old royal domain—which seems to be the heart from which Gothic architecture diffused itself throughout Europe. The architecture of this central district, particularly in works of the thirteenth century, demands the closest and the most diligent study; it is the great standard and type of the style, and, without a good knowledge of it, your studies would be not only incomplete, but defective at the most vital part.

After France, I would recommend Germany. Pointed architecture in Germany is a direct emanation from France, far more so than is the case with that of our own country. Yet it has a character of its own which it is well to study, and the later Romanesque of Germany, which is contemporary with the early Pointed architecture of France and England, is replete with beauty and suggestiveness.

Italy should come after France and Germany; and the study of its Mediæval works is, in my opinion, necessary to the completeness of the course I am suggesting. It should, however, be undertaken with much caution, without which it is apt to lead astray. I have above recommended you never to repress the generous impulses of enthusiasm; I fear, however, I must here make an exception to my rule. On first visiting Italy, the scenes are so new and so exciting, and the effects of the climate and the beauty of the atmosphere so intoxicating to the feelings, that we are apt to view everything through an exaggerating medium. Without repressing noble and generous emotions, I would still suggest that a rigorous watch should be kept over the undue effect of merely external influences. “Put a knife to thy throat if thou be a man given to appetite.” With proper safeguards, however, on this head, southern Gothic is one of the most useful and delightful branches of the studies which lie before you, and supplies many a hiatus which would otherwise exist.

I hope, however, on some future occasion, to say more on this subject. For the present, I will close my remarks on the manner in which Gothic architecture should be studied, by saying that it is not mere architecture which you will have to attend to: painted decoration, whether in its nobler or humbler branches, stained glass, illuminated manuscripts, sculpture, metal-work, jewellery, enamelling, seals, carved ivories, embroidery, and a hundred other subsidiary branches, possess an almost equal claim upon your attention; and many of these must be followed up in museums and public libraries, in collections of archives, and in the sacristies and treasuries of monasteries and cathedrals, where, for the most part, they lie hidden and unknown to the busy world around. Nor would I leave you to suppose that the objects of your study should be either exclusively, or even, perhaps, mainly, ecclesiastical. You must search out with the utmost diligence the remnants of civil, secular, and domestic buildings of the same ages: without this your studies would be imperfect indeed! The caprice of individuals and the love of living in new houses, have rendered these remains most imperfect and fragmentary; yet the fragments are strewn on all sides of us, and demand to be carefully collected, and not a village you pass will fail to supply you with some contribution.

Finally. What are the special objects for which this course of study should be undertaken? They are, I think, threefold.

First. For the mere sake of acquainting ourselves with one of the most remarkable phases in the whole history of art, and that which belonged to our own race, country, and religion. It is one of the most striking characteristics of our day that in it alone, of all periods of the world’s history, the arts of all preceding times are studied and their history understood; and strange would it be if, while traversing every land to glean vestiges of its bygone arts, we should neglect to acquaint ourselves with that noble style which prevailed among our own forefathers, and whose glorious monuments surround us on every side.

The second object is one of a more practical nature. These noble monuments, the pride and glory of our land, have, through the lapse of time and the barbarous hand of modern Vandalism, become in many cases so decayed and mutilated as to demand at our hands the most careful and judicious reparations. This cannot safely be undertaken by any but those who have as perfect knowledge as is possible of their architecture, and who are able to trace out with precision the history and changes they have undergone, and whose feelings are such as to lead them to deal tenderly and lovingly with them. This alone is a sufficient object to induce a careful study of our Mediæval architecture.

There remains, however, a third object to lead us to this study, but it is one on which so much difference of opinion exists, that I must avoid on the present occasion doing more than naming it. I refer, of course, to the revival of Pointed architecture now going on. The promoters of this great movement do not desire to revive a departed art, however glorious, exactly as they find it in its original remains. Such may naturally be the character of their first essays, but it is not their ultimate wish. Their view is rather this: that, feeling deeply the fact that we have long since ceased to possess an architecture which can be said to belong to our race or our age, and fully agreeing with those who desire to see a new development of our art to meet these demands, they feel that the most probable foundation for such a development is the native architecture of our own race and country, and that the thorough study of its principles may tend in time to promote the formation of an architecture of the future, which will be more thoroughly our own than that, however meritorious, which has been founded upon traditions of the ancient world.

LECTURE II.
Sketch of the Rise of Mediæval Architecture.

Anomalous state of things in Western Europe after the destruction of the Roman Empire—Art almost extinct—Saved by the Western Church and the Eastern Empire—Architectural elements of the new races—Charlemagne’s attempts to revive art—Primitive art in England and the north of France—Dawn of better things—Architecture of the tenth century—Schools of art and science—Bishop Bernward’s works—Origin of early styles in France and Germany—Early architecture of Rome—The arcuated and the trabeated systems—Development of Romanesque—Its leading characteristics—Romanesque and Pointed architecture not TWO styles, but ONE—Barrel vaults—Groined vaults—Oblong bays—Main arches of groined vaulting changed from the semicircle to the pointed arch—Flying buttresses—Groin ribs—The pointed arch arose from statical not geometrical or æsthetical motives—Wall ribs remain round long after the wider arches become pointed—Two modes adopted to avoid the difficulty of oblong groining over naves—Sexpartite vaulting.

IN the introductory lecture which I had the honour of reading before you last year, I endeavoured to give an outline of the varied claims of the architecture which was developed in our own and neighbouring countries during the Middle Ages, upon the study both of architects and lovers of art at the present day.

I will not recapitulate what I then said; but, presuming that by honouring me with your presence this evening you admit the subject to be well worthy of your attention, will crave your indulgence while I endeavour, at the risk of appearing to be going over a trite and almost exhausted subject, to give a brief outline of the rise and development of the architecture whose claims upon your study I then attempted to advocate.

My object is rather to trace out the re-awakening of art in the eleventh and following centuries from the slumber in which it had so long lain, than to chronicle its changes during the chaotic ages which followed the final catastrophe of the ancient world. Like the contemporary fable of the Seven Sleepers at Ephesus, its changes during this dreamy interval were but the turnings of the slumberer from the right side to the left, and little need is there to investigate such sluggish and disconnected movements. Our concern is rather with living and energetic art; and if we stop at all to inquire into its semi-dormant condition, it is rather for the sake of judging what were the elements of life which it retained, than from any really practical interest which attaches to its productions.

It is hardly possible to conceive of a state of things so utterly anomalous and contrary to all historical precedent as that of Western Europe after the deluge of Northern barbarism had annihilated the mightiest empire the world ever saw, and almost swept from the face of the earth the arts and literature which it had taken the whole period of human history to generate. Like the giant-slayers of old romance, the barbarous conquerors must have been filled with awe in contemplating the stupendous proportions of their now lifeless victim; and while wandering amidst the mighty monuments of the people they had overthrown, they must have been inspired with deep veneration for their intellectual power, and with ardent longings to inherit some portion of their skill—aspirations which, if we may judge from some of the structures erected by Theodoric, there can be little doubt would have been realised had not every wave as it subsided been succeeded by a fresh torrent of barbarism. The lamp of art was only saved from utter extinction by two surviving institutions—the Western Church and the Eastern Empire; the one seeming to absorb each succeeding wave of conquering barbarism, and the other to supply to each those elements of civilisation by which its fury was in its turn to be abated.

As might be expected from the circumstances of their position, the architectural efforts of the new races were founded on the basis of the Roman monuments, with whose vestiges they were on every hand surrounded, aided by friendly and continuous importations of the still living art of the Eastern Empire. Their elements were the Christianised Roman of the Western Basilica, and the newly-developed architecture of the Byzantine Church. Long, long, however, was it before any distinctive style was developed out of these elements. The efforts of Theodoric must be considered as rather Byzantine than Gothic; and for three centuries so little, if any, was the progress, that we find Charlemagne, the re-founder of the empire, actually despoiling the palace of the early Gothic king to use its architectural fragments in his own structures!

There can be no doubt, however, that the efforts made by Charlemagne for the revival of art would have soon produced some great results had he been followed by successors in any degree worthy of him; but so far from this, the nations he governed seem to have fallen back into almost worse barbarism than before, while the incursion of Northmen, Huns, and Saracens long repressed every effort after better things. We know little of the actual state of architecture during this melancholy period. The notion of Charlemagne having found a distinctive style of architecture in Lombardy, and having transplanted it to the banks of the Rhine, seems to be little more than a myth, though I think it not improbable that the Lombards had already taken some steps towards the formation of a new style.[2]

It is dubious whether a fragment of the structures erected by the Lombard kings now exists from which we may ascertain their style;[3], and though it is possible that the subsequent architecture may have been influenced by them in some degree, it is certain that the models which the Frankish emperor more especially followed were rather found in Byzantine Ravenna than in barbarous Lombardy, and the few remains of his architecture seem to be imitations of either Classic or Byzantine structures.

In England the works of this period were a very rude and unintelligible imitation of those of the same period at Rome, united with a strange translation into stone of their own timber structures, and occasionally enriched with that primitive kind of ornamentation which it is customary to call Runic.[4]

In the north of France it would not appear that the humbler class of churches were much better than those of which we find the remains in our own country. The remnants of one of the churches erected at that period on the site now occupied by Nôtre Dame at Paris, are debased Roman with Corinthian capitals; but the few remains of smaller churches—such as the old church at Beauvais—are not very unlike the Saxon structures in England. Of the latter it is but fair to state that the fragments which remain nearly all belong to merely rustic churches, and are hardly fair specimens of their style; they afford, however, sufficient proof of the rude state of art, though we have the witness of contemporary and succeeding historians to the fact that they were supposed and intended to be in the Roman style—meaning thereby, not that of ancient Rome, but that which prevailed at the period, and which we usually designate as the Basilican style.

The dawn of better things may be dated from the commencement of the tenth century, and may be mainly attributed to the consolidation of the German empire under the three first Othos (936-1002) and their immediate successors, and more especially to the fact of these emperors having had Lombardy equally with Germany, Switzerland, and portions of France under their sway, and thus in some degree uniting in one that vast expanse of country which extends from the banks of the Po to those of the Elbe.

Though Charlemagne had been the first to establish this mighty empire, and that on a yet grander scale, and may claim the title of the founder of modern civilisation, the seeds he had sown scarcely began to take root till the days of his German successors of the tenth and eleventh centuries. I say German successors, because the kings of France were his successors as Frankish kings, the others as German emperors; and from this time forward we find a sort of contest or competition ever going on, both in politics and arts, between those who represented him in those two capacities.

From the commencement of the tenth century we find one style of architecture for a time spreading over the plains of Lombardy, the valleys of Switzerland, and that of the Rhine, and extending itself over Saxony and all the civilised parts of Germany.

I do not say that the style was absolutely identical; but still it was essentially the same. It was promoted by the same all-pervading political influence; and there can be no doubt that the same ecclesiastics, and even the same artists, were engaged in carrying it out; and that even among those most remote from one another a constant interchange of views as to taste and construction was ever going on, while the differences which we observe would arise rather from those of climate, material, and proximity to the relics of ancient art, than from any essential or intended difference of style.

The force of the influence brought to bear at this period upon the furtherance of art may be judged of from the accounts we have of the schools of art and science established so far north as Hildesheim (in the neighbourhood of Brunswick and Hanover), by Bernward, Bishop of that see, at the close of the tenth and the commencement of the eleventh century. Bernward was tutor, and afterwards chancellor, to Otho III., and there are extant portions of an elaborate treatise on geometry from which he instructed that prince. He was himself skilled in many arts, as wall-painting, the illumination of MSS., mosaics, working in metals, cutting and setting precious stones, as well as in architecture itself; and it is said that “whenever he found a youth with a feeling for art, he took him into his laboratory, and instructed him with the greatest kindness in giving the required forms to stubborn metals, hard stone, wood, and ivory. The most artistic of these young men he always took with him when he travelled, especially when he went to Italy, that their taste might be improved by seeing masterly works of art, and hence be enabled to execute similar works at home.” Bernward rebuilt his cathedral and erected the church of St. Michael at Hildesheim (still existing); and of his works in metal there remain the gates and the spiral column (of which casts may be seen at the Crystal Palace), as well as the great corona, in the cathedral. I have dwelt the longer on these particulars because we happen to have more complete records of Bernward than of most of his contemporaries in art, and because the sphere of his operations was at a point so distant from the recognised centres of art; and when it is recollected that he was cotemporary with the erection of many of the great Romanesque cathedrals of Germany—as Mayence, Spire, and Bamberg, and of multitudes of less important churches (at the dedication of many of which he was present), and further, that he lived earlier than the erection of the Cathedral of Pisa, the Church of St. Mark at Venice, or St. Zeno at Verona—it will be seen at once how early and energetic was the architectural movement in Germany under those emperors who were also kings of Italy; and we need not wonder at the immense hold which the architecture, thus generated, had over the national mind of Germany.

It is probable that about the same period a style somewhat analogous to the Lombardo-Rhenish, though more strongly tinctured with Classic detail, was growing up in Provence and the other southern provinces of France, spreading itself northward, and thus meeting the German variety on the borders of Switzerland and in Burgundy. The dates, however, of buildings in those districts seem too indefinite to be argued upon with confidence, though it is certain that at a date somewhat later a very noble and refined variety of Romanesque, but with a strong Classic admixture, prevailed there.

About the same time the development of a distinctive style was promoted in the North by an apparently adverse cause. The Northmen, under Rollo, having ravaged and possessed themselves of an extensive province in the north of France, and having soon afterwards joined the Christian Church, set themselves vigorously about the task of repairing the sacrilege which, in the days of their ignorance, they had committed: nearly every ecclesiastical edifice in their new dominions had been destroyed, and never, perhaps, had a new and vigorous people a more perfect carte blanche for generating a new phase of architecture. We accordingly find that they soon covered their land with edifices; at first, it is true, rude and simple,[5] but subsequently possessing elements of dignity and massive grandeur of a very high order.

Of the central district of the Frankish monarchy at this period we have few architectural relics. The weakness of the Carlovingian monarchs, and the almost entire dismemberment of their dominions, left them, probably, little able to carry out great works; yet it cannot be doubted that the active genius of the race—surrounded as they were by the Romanesque developments of Lombardy, Provence, Rhineland, and Normandy—could not have failed to have produced works fully proportioned in merit to those of their neighbours, though during the period of subsequent greatness they were not deemed worthy to be retained.

We now arrive at the period at which the real subject of which I have undertaken to treat commences; and it may here be well to give a few moments’ consideration to the intrinsic nature of the art at this time being generated.

The early architecture of Rome,—locally occupying a position between the Greek colonies to the south and the Etruscan cities to the north,—partook, as it would seem probable, of the characteristics of both, and was more especially marked by the union of the Greek orders and their trabeated structure with the arched construction shadowed forth by the buildings of Etruria. The whole history of Roman architecture seems to evince a competition ever going on between these rival systems. It was at first an unequal contest, for the arcuated system had never, when first taken up by the Romans, had the advantage of being treated as the vehicle for architectural decoration—it was as yet mere construction; while the trabeated system had passed through a refining process of two thousand years’ duration, and had been brought by the Greeks to the highest pitch of beauty and perfection. The Roman structures display every step in this contest, some of their greatest structures being purely arcuated and merely constructive, others as purely trabeated—mere imitations of Grecian architecture; but the majority uniting both in different proportions, the Grecian element being very commonly little more than a decorative overlaying of the arched reality. As time moved on, the arched construction steadily gained ground: not only were openings arched over, but wide spaces vaulted both with domes, continuous cylindrical vaults, and those of the groined or intersecting form.

During the later ages of Pagan Rome, though architecture as a decorative art was on the wane, the triumph of arched construction became more and more complete. Columns hitherto used to support horizontal entablatures were employed directly to carry arches, the architrave being bent into a semicircle instead of lying horizontally upon the column; while spaces of gigantic span were covered with groined vaulting, some reaching to a width never since attempted.

In the Eastern empire the dome became subsequently the favourite form of vault, though, in each division of the empire, the arching over entire buildings in all its branches was practised with the greatest skill and success.

During the dark interval which followed the Gothic invasions, though constructive skill was immensely reduced, the preponderance of arcuated over trabeated architecture became yet more complete. The Greek element having during the later Roman period become merely decorative, and therefore no more than an artificial adjunct, it was natural that the overthrow of the ancient civilisation should at once sweep it away as a useless luxury, and that the real and useful portions of architecture should alone survive, though the actual skill in using them would be reduced. We find, accordingly, that during this interval architecture became purely arcuated, though in Western Europe the more difficult forms of arcuation, such as the vaulting over of large spaces, were usually avoided. This art, however, was never forgotten nor lost, but simply disused from diminution of skill, and the grand characteristic of the reawakening of architecture was the revival of these more difficult systems of construction; so much so, indeed, that nearly every structural change which we trace from the tenth to the thirteenth century arose, more or less, from the endeavour first to revive and then to carry on to higher and higher perfection the construction of arches and vaulting, and to elevate it from mere construction into the highest place among the means of producing beauty of decoration and sublimity of effect.

In the south of Italy the architecture continued all along to follow, in the main, the character of the Roman Basilica; and for a long period, it is probable, as I have before stated, that most of the Northern churches were rude imitations of this type; but gradually, in the countries north of the Po, a new form came over the architecture, which ever after distinguished Northern from Southern buildings, and which may be designated by the family name of Gothic, not only as being the progenitor of the style which has generally received that title, but as being actually in a great degree the style of the nations of Gothic extraction as distinguished from those of Roman parentage. This style has generally received the name of Romanesque, or Romane, to distinguish it from the pointed-arched style which succeeded it, but is by Mr. Fergusson more philosophically termed the round-arched Gothic, while he transfers the term Romanesque to the Christianised Roman or Basilican style. This is far more correct than the usual nomenclature; but as the latter is established by custom I shall not depart from it, but shall, for convenience, designate this round-arched Gothic style—as distinguished from the Christian Roman and from the Pointed style—by the customary name of Romanesque.

Of this style the following may be enumerated as the leading characteristics:—

1. Subordination of the arches.

2. Subdivision of piers to meet the subordination of arches.

3. Introduction of systems of moulding and decoration proper to subdivided arches.

4. The use of shafts or colonettes as means of decoration and accentuation.

5. The entire relinquishment of Classic proportions in the columns, which are henceforth proportioned in thickness to their load, irrespective of their height.

6. A system of decoration of its own, founded on Roman and Byzantine, but worked up into a new character, more or less independent of the original type, according to the locality, and to its removal from or proximity to antique monuments.

7. Great thickness of walls to resist the thrust of vaulting, aided by flat, pilaster-like buttresses in the principal planes of pressure.

8. In many cases—indeed, as a general rule—an air of gigantic massiveness in the entire construction.

9. The vaulting at first exactly accords with that of Roman buildings, embracing the barrel vault, the groined vault, and the dome, in nearly all the hitherto attained varieties. The arches always either semicircular or segmental.

The above characteristics are chiefly of a mechanical nature. The style possesses, however, sentiments of an infinitely nobler kind than anything which these mere material elements could impart. It possesses a sternness and dignity almost unearthly—a majestic severity of sentiment which seems, as it were, as if intended to rebuke the unpitying barbarity of the age, and to awe its rude and lawless spirits into obedience to the precepts of the Divine law. Its aspect is religious to the utmost extreme; but it expresses the stern uncompromising severity of religion rather than its more winning and elevating attributes—the asceticism of St. John the Baptist, the rebuker of sin and the preacher of repentance and of righteousness, rather than the spirituality of St. John the Evangelist, the preacher of Christian love, devotion, and praise. The sentiment they would express seems not so much “Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness,” as “Fear before Him, all the earth;” and the task they prescribe to their ministers to be rather to proclaim “the day of vengeance” than “the acceptable year of the Lord”—less to “bind up the broken-hearted and comfort all that mourn,” than to “lift up their voice like a trumpet, and show the people their transgressions.”

This stern simplicity is not, however, universal, for from the first the Romanesque architects occasionally indulged in even rich ornamentation, and, at a later date, often carried it to profusion; yet, even in the richest decorations, they continued grave and severe—their lines were hard and precise, their foliage strong and harsh, and their figure sculpture (unless intended to be grotesque) was the very image of sternness—rude in art, but often of great dignity of expression; and though in an age like ours, of technical perfection and flippant criticism, it often provokes a smile, it was, in its own simple and untechnical age, well calculated to produce wholesome and solemnizing impressions.

This is the style of which we should first treat when attempting to trace the history of Mediæval architecture. It is a mistake to imagine Pointed architecture to be severed by a great gulf from the Romanesque—the Pointed Gothic from the Round: it is its legitimate offspring, or rather itself in a more advanced stage of its development. The change from the round-arched to the pointed-arched Gothic is no change of essential principles; it is but the carrying on to their inevitable results of the principles of refinement, purification, elevation, the perfecting of the construction, and the softening down of the asperity of expression, which were going on during the whole of the Romanesque period. Nearly every characteristic of Pointed architecture finds its type, or its perfected model, in the Romanesque. They are not two styles, but one—the earlier and the later phases of the same architecture; the latter being only the carrying on to perfection of the progression which had, during every moment of its dominion, and in every province of its empire, been uniformly going on in the former.

Though the refining process went unceasingly on during the whole history of Romanesque architecture and affected all its features, it would appear that the constant endeavours to bring to perfection its various systems of vaulting were among the greatest causes of the change from the Round to the Pointed style, I will, therefore, endeavour to give a concise outline of the changes in this branch of construction during the period under consideration.

The churches of Western Europe up to this time, like the early basilicas, were for the most part covered with timber roofs; and the task which the Romanesque builders proposed to themselves was to convert them into vaulted churches.

The most normal and readily invented vault is that of the continuous barrel or demi-cylindrical form, covering an oblong building from end to end, and the most readily conceived idea, where the building has to be roofed over such a vault, is to fill in the space between the arch and the triangle of the roof solid, and make it at once the ceiling of the room and the support of the roof covering. Such a vault, however, has considerable outward thrust, and, being heavily loaded at the crown, would require walls of great thickness to stand against it. Let us suppose it applied to the nave of a basilica in place of the timber roof, and it is obvious that, being balanced on two ranges of columns, it could not stand for a moment without some very effective contrivance in the construction of the aisles to buttress up the walls and pillars on which this barrel vault is to rest.

Fig. 1.

In the Baths of Diocletian, the Basilica of Maxentius, and other great Roman halls, this was met by cross walls pierced only by small archways, and placed at intervals, dividing the aisles into chambers, each of which was covered by a short barrel vault at right angles to that over the central space ([Fig. 1]). This, however, would be inconsistent with the uses of a church, and, indeed, applies to a groined rather than a barrel vault, though a very similar expedient was sometimes used by the Romanesque builders, by covering the aisles with cross barrel vaults, as those above described, supported by arches across the aisles, instead of by cross walls ([Fig. 2]). Another system was to cover the aisles by a half or little more than a half longitudinal barrel roof, forming a continuous arched buttress to the continuous central vault ([Fig. 3]). This gave them a perfectly vaulted building of trustworthy construction, provided only that the aisle walls were of sufficient strength. The barrel vaults were often both strengthened and their monotony relieved by arched ribs added to their thickness over each pillar of the nave, and repeated over the aisles, while these planes of extra strength were carried through to the exterior in the form of buttresses of small projection against the aisle walls ([Fig. 4]).

Fig. 4.

The builders of such churches were not, however, ignorant of the principles of the groined or intersecting vault formed by the inter-penetration of two demi-cylinders, and so largely used by the Romans. They did not use them in such buildings, because their main vault rising into the roof, they could not, under the same roof-plane, introduce the intersecting vaults,—though this had been effected in Roman structures by a series of cross gables over the cross vaults. In churches of the same kind, however, we find the groined vault used to carry a gallery in the aisles, all the rest remaining as before ([Fig. 5]).

Fig. 5.

It would appear that the obvious mechanical advantages it offered led at an early period, in the south of France, to the substitution of the pointed for the round arch in the great vault of churches of this construction; but I will suppose for the present the semicircle to be strictly adhered to. The great defect in such a church as I am supposing would be want of light in the nave from the absence of clerestory windows; and as such windows had been in use from the days of the earliest basilicas, this loss would be fully appreciated.

Fig. 6.

The first idea for obviating it was to lower the springing of the vault for the sake of bringing the thrust to bear upon a portion of the wall more capable of resisting it, and, by raising the nave relatively to its aisles, to obtain space for a range of small windows between the roof of the aisle and the springing of the main vault ([Fig. 6]). This, however, was a most unsatisfactory arrangement—it compromised the security of the structure, and gained but a very miserable range of lights.

Fig. 7.

This difficulty led to the somewhat unpalatable measure of lowering the springing of the main vault so much as to bring its crown below the level of the walls, and to convert it from a barrel into a groined vault. The springing being then level with the impinging line of the aisle roofs, a good abutment was obtained, while the cross vaults afforded ample space for clerestory windows ([Fig. 7]). I called this an unpalatable expedient for two reasons:—Ist, Because it involved the loss of the entire height of the roof as a part of the interior; and, secondly, because it led to the relinquishment of the incombustible construction, by rendering it impossible to make the vaulting to form the actual roof, and the consequent necessity for a timber roof above it. In a Northern climate, however, this was not an unmitigated loss, for a vault immediately under the roof-covering is always damp, and extremely difficult of repair; and we shall see that the loss of height was soon compensated for by a subsequent invention, while the substitution of a groined for a barrel vault not only introduced a beautiful in place of a comparatively dull form, but did away with the illogical characteristic of a continuous vault supported by detached pillars; the load being now collected together into points immediately over its supports. The same cause would naturally lead to the abandonment of the half-barrel vaulting of the aisles, the need of abutment being now not continuous, but in detached points. The aisles were consequently covered with groined vaults, a cross wall being raised upon their transverse arches, or arcs-doubleaux, which served as buttresses to the main vault, or would even carry external buttresses against the clerestory wall. The blank wall in the nave, caused by the space between the groining and roof of the aisles, was subsequently occupied by a gallery, so well known as the “triforium.”

A difficulty here presented itself, which I must state before proceeding further, as much stress had been laid upon it, and it unquestionably exercised a strong influence upon the subsequent arrangements. It is this: the simple groined vault being formed by the intersection of demi-cylinders, demanded that the space covered by it should be divided into perfect squares. Now, the aisles of a church being usually about half the width of the nave, it follows that the groining of both cannot be square. If those of the aisles are so, those of the main vault must be about twice as wide as they are long ([Fig. 8]); while if these are made square, those of the aisles will be twice as long as they are wide ([Fig. 9]). The first alternative was that most usually adopted north of the Alps, though the second was more frequent in Italy. The difficulty was how to groin these oblong bays. It was not, however, a new difficulty; it had occurred in Roman structures, where it was met by the simple expedient of raising the springing of the narrower vault so high, that its crown was level with that of the wider one. This answered the purpose, but it produced a most unpleasant line of intersection, reducing the vault, in fact, for a portion of its height, to a mere strip of the arc-doubleau, and giving a winding intersection for the remainder of the height, as two cylinders of unequal diameter do not intersect in a plane. The mathematical solution of the problem would have been to make the section of the narrower vault, an upright semi-ellipse; but this does not appear to have been at any period adopted, or, if at all, in exceptional cases only. The pointed arch would have been an approximate expedient, and its introduction has been very ingeniously attributed to this difficulty,—a theory to which I shall have again to allude.

Another solution of it would be to make all the arches semi-circles, but to raise up the crown of the vaults of a smaller diameter in a curve to meet the others, thus making it (roughly speaking) a portion of an annulus instead of a cylinder.

This had one great disadvantage: that it cut off a considerable portion of the space for the clerestory windows; or, if the level of the main vault was raised to obviate this, it became impossible to have a tiebeam to the roof. The system actually adopted in most instances would appear to have been a union of that last named with the Roman mode of stilting the narrow vaults, the difference of height being made up partly by raising its springing, and partly by elevating the crown ([Fig. 10]).

Fig. 10.

While these perplexities, however, were under consideration, several others arose, every one of which led to the introduction of features essential to the perfecting both of the style and construction. The first was the desire to elevate the central vault to a higher level, both for the sake of compensating for the loss sustained when it was brought down below the roof, and also to obtain a greater space for the clerestory windows. This involved, again, the difficulty as to abutment, through its raising the springing of the vault above the roof of the aisles. We have seen that, where reduced to a similar difficulty with the barrel vault, the architects of the south of France had at an earlier period resorted to the pointed vault as having less outward thrust: the same expedient was now had recourse to for groined vaulting, the main arches of which were now—towards the middle of the twelfth century—changed from the semicircle to the pointed arch. When the elevation of the clerestory above the aisles was but moderate, this was often found sufficient; but the construction was precarious, and in many instances failed, and a more perfect mode of meeting the case was required.

What was demanded was the power to elevate the clerestory with the main vault to any reasonable height above the aisle, without endangering the stability of the structure.

Here the recollection of an earlier expedient came to the rescue. It will be remembered that the early barrel vaults were buttressed by half barrel vaults over the aisles, thus doing away with the clerestory. A continuous vault demanded a continuous abutment; but, now that the pressure was concentrated into detached planes, it became sufficient that the abutment also should be in those planes; and though the continuous semi-vault would do away with clerestory windows, detached semi-arches would have no such effect. The thought accordingly occurred of erecting the arc-doubleau of the old semi-vault in open air as a buttress to the main vault of the groined church; and hence that much-admired, and, of course, also much-depreciated feature—the flying buttress. The pressure being concentrated upon points, it became also necessary to fortify those points by attached buttresses of considerable projection, such as we henceforth find to have become a leading external characteristic of Mediæval structures. The wall, in fact (where the system was carried to its extreme limits), became a mere curtain, needed rather for enclosure than for strength, and capable of being pierced with windows to any required extent; a liberty which the contemporaneous development of stained glass caused to be unhesitatingly taken advantage of.

I must, however, return to the vaulting, having overstepped my chronology by not yet noticing another most important invention. I mean the introduction of groin-ribs—those narrow arches erected under the lines of intersection of the vaults. The early groins had no ribs excepting the transverse ones, or arcs-doubleaux; the edges at which the vaults cut one another were left bare, and were the weakest parts of the construction; often but faintly marked, and not necessarily lying in planes. In more complicated vaults, such as now became necessary, this system could scarcely be continued; and the introduction of a stone rib, under every intersection, may be viewed as the crowning fact in the development of vaulting.

It is impossible to lay too much stress upon its importance, for it changed the entire geometrical system. Up to that time the construction of groining was wholly governed by the forms of the vaulting surfaces; the intersections being allowed to take their chance, and to present any irregularity of figure, while the wide surfaces of vaulting were apparently carried on mere pins’ points at the springing—correct enough as a mathematical figure, but ill calculated for strength. Now, however, the intersecting lines assumed the government of the construction, and the form of the surface was made to accommodate itself to them. They were always in planes,[6] and always true figures—usually arcs of circles; but the panels of vaulting became often irregular in their configuration, and could be twisted to meet contingent requirements without offending the eye; while the ribs, all meeting in a solid springer at the foot, brought down the pressure, and deposited it firmly upon the points of support.

Fig. 11.

It will be seen from the above that the pointed arch was not introduced into Mediæval structures from mere caprice—merely from seeing it elsewhere and taking a fancy to its form,—but from the necessities of construction, from its increased strength and diminished thrust. It was at first used for the main arch only of the greater vault. The same reason soon led to its introduction wherever great weight was to be carried, as under towers, etc.; but for all small arches the semicircle was long retained. I have alluded to the very beautiful theory that it was introduced for the side arches of oblong groins, simply as a means of obtaining arches of equal height with only half the span with those of the main vault. True it is, that, at a later date, it became most useful for this purpose. But a careful study of the monuments in which it is first systematically used clearly shows that its introduction was from statical, and neither geometrical nor merely æsthetical motives; for in the face of that theory we find the narrower arch or wall-rib remaining round long after the wider arch had become pointed ([Fig. 11]). Such is the case in nearly all the earlier of the French transitional churches, as at Noyon and at St. Germain des Pres, and we see the same at Canterbury. In most of these buildings the narrow arch is stilted and the crown of the cross vault raised up as before described, thus losing a part of the clerestory wall, a disadvantage obviated when the pointed arch became more frankly acknowledged.

Although, however, the pointed arch was actually adopted from simple necessities of construction, its advantages in all points of view soon became apparent. In an essentially arcuated style it becomes necessary not only to have the command of a form of arch capable of carrying the greatest weights and of requiring the least abutment, but it is essential to have at command an arch of variable proportions. It carries absurdity on the very face of it that, while able to give our piers a greater or a less degree of height at pleasure we should have no such power over the arch they sustain; not to mention the numerous cases in which we have to bring together arches of unequal span, and which nevertheless demand an equal height. The rules of harmony imperatively demand that the arch should be equally capable of modification in its proportions of height to width, with all other features of the architecture.

Fig. 12.

In the above outline of the history of vaulting I have, for the sake of simplicity, omitted two modes actually adopted to avoid the difficulty of oblong groining over naves. The first, which was common in German round-arched churches, was to make the vaulting of the nave simply to comprise two bays of the aisles, thus bringing the main vault equally into squares with those of the aisles. The second was the use of what Dr. Whewell has entitled sexpartite vaulting, and which is common both in France, Germany, and England ([Fig. 12]). It adopts the system last named, but subdivides the double bay by a triangular slip of vaulting ([Figs. 13], [14]). The real solution arose, however, from the free and simple use of the pointed arch, which gave the result which is seen at Westminster[7] and in nearly all the vaulted churches of the thirteenth century—the simple groined vault with arches of equal height, though the side arches are sometimes stilted, not from necessity, but merely to afford greater space for clerestory windows.

Fig. 13.

Fig. 14.

On this plain and practical result M. Viollet le Duc (of whose admirable essay on vaulting, together with those of Dr. Whewell and Professor Willis, I have made free use) makes the following striking remarks:—

“It had required fifty years for the architects of the end of the twelfth century to arrive, from the still Romanesque vaults of Autun and Vezelay, at this great result; and from this moment the entire construction of religious edifices was derived from the disposition of the vaults; the form and dimension of the pillars—their spacing; the window-openings—their width and height; the position and direction of the buttresses—the importance of their pinnacler; the strength, the number, and curvature of the arched buttresses; the disposing and the carrying off the rain water; the system of covering,—all proceed from the combination of the vaulting. The vaults govern the ossature of the monument to a point to which it would be impossible to raise it otherwise than by commencing rigorously to plan them previously to laying the first courses of the structure. This rule is so well established that if we see a church of the thirteenth century destroyed to the level of the bases, and of which the plan alone remains, we can with certainty trace the plan of the vaults, and indicate the direction of all the arches and their thickness. At the end of the fourteenth century the rigour of the system is still more absolute; we can trace, in examining the base of an edifice, not only the number and direction of the arches of the vaults, and know their strength, but the number of their mouldings and even their profiles. In the fifteenth century it is the arches (mouldings) themselves which descend to the floor, and the pillars are only vertical fasces formed of all the members of these arches. After this, we demand how is it that serious men have been able to repulse, and still do repulse, the study of the architecture of the Middle Ages as having been only produced by chance?”

It will be seen from what I have above stated that the order in which the pointed arch was successively adopted for different parts of a building, and the motives which led to its adoption, may be roughly classified under the heads of Statical, Geometrical, and Æsthetical, or positions in which it was demanded for soundness of construction, for the mathematical agreement of parts, and for harmony and beauty of effect.

The first head embraces all wide-spanned arches, especially those I have pointed out as the first in which it made its appearance: the transverse arches of wide vaulting, also arches carrying towers, and others bearing great weight on their crown, and all which are defective in abutment, or demand the addition of buttresses (for remember that, though buttresses were rendered sources of beauty, they originated in necessity, and the aim was to keep their projection within bounds, rather than unduly to increase it). The second, or geometrical class, includes, primarily, the narrower arches of oblong vaulting; for, even had the transverse section continued round, the pointed arch must soon have suggested itself for the narrow arches of the sides; and though for a time the idea did not occur, the necessity of it is only the more apparent in the want of harmony, the undue stilting, and the loss of clerestory space which arose from its neglect. Under the same head come all other cases of irregularly formed vaulting in which the sides differ in width, and arches of varied proportion are therefore needed. Of the same kind are many other cases in which arches of different widths are in the same range, and where—though the statical view would demand that the widest span should have the strongest arch—geometrical agreement suggests the contrary; as, for instance, in the choir of St. Germain des Pres, at Paris, and many others, where the side arches are all round; but those of the apse, being narrower, are pointed. These two pressing necessities having once established the use of the pointed arch in a large number of the most important positions, a natural feeling for harmony would come in to suggest its use in many others. First we may mention windows under the narrow compartments of groining—as in clerestories, apsidal chapels, etc.,—where, as soon as the pointed arch was used for the vaulting, the round-topped window would present a certain degree of discord, as we see at St. Cross,[8] and at St. Joseph’s Chapel[9] at Glastonbury. Then again, as windows became more elongated, the round arch became ill-proportioned to the jambs; and generally, as the architecture acquired a more aspiring tendency, the pointed arch was found more congenial with its spirit; so that, little by little, from being an exception, used from mere constructional expediency, it became the prevailing feature of the style; the semicircle being reserved for those positions only in which want of space forbade the more elevated form. Still, however, it was never abandoned, and in every period of Pointed architecture we find it occasionally making its appearance, used from motives of convenience alone, as the pointed arch had at first been by reason of its strength.

After this it will be seen of how little importance it is to inquire whence the form is derived; for it was introduced not as a matter of taste, but of utility—not as a change of style, but to meet the practical requirements of that already in use. The pointed arch was, in fact, as early (or thereabouts) in its invention as the round;—it is foreshadowed in the works of the Egyptians, the Pelasgi, and the Etrurians; it was used by the Romans, and, I believe, by the Byzantines and other Oriental Christians, and by the Sassanian Persians, and was from an early period the prevailing arch among the Saracens. It is absurd, then, to suppose it unknown to the inhabitants of Western Europe, who were in constant communication with the East; and the most natural thing to expect was that, as soon as they wanted it, they would make use of it; though there is nothing unreasonable in the supposition that they were especially reminded of it, in consequence of the two circumstances of the Crusades and Norman Conquest of Sicily. In the case last named, indeed, the conquerors had at once adopted it, simply because it was the prevailing arch of the country, and, as Mr. Gally Knight remarks, “with no scientific object, and without any reference to the vertical principle.”

The wonder which has been expressed at the introduction of the pointed arch reminds me of a very homely tale, which I must apologise for repeating before so grave an assembly. An unimaginative individual, on visiting the Falls of Niagara, was greatly perplexed at the astonishment expressed by his companions; and on one of them exclaiming to him—“Is it not a most wonderful fall?”—replied, “Wonderful? no! I see nothing wonderful in it. Why, what’s to hinder the water from falling?” Much the same reply is applicable to the wondering inquiries after the source of the pointed arch. When the builders of the twelfth century found they wanted it; when they had seen its form in the first proposition of Euclid; when they had actually used it hundreds of times in their intersecting arcades; when they knew that it was constantly used in the East, with which they were connected by trade, science, pilgrimage, and war; and when they knew that their brethren had used it in Sicily, and their fellow-countrymen in Provence; we may well ask, with our unsentimental friend, “What was to hinder them from using it?”

Simple, however, and obvious as were the means, the result was magical! It is not the materials of art to which its expression is due, but the sentiment—the heart—the soul of those who use it. This particular form of arch had long been used without one hint at such expression resulting from it. It had been highly conducive to beauty, but little, if at all, to elevation of sentiment: when, however, it came into use as an aid to the upward strivings of the architects of Northern Christendom, as an element placed in the hands of men who had been labouring for centuries, with all their energy, to render their architecture expressive of the ennobling sentiments of religion—it became, in their hands, a means of perfecting that solemnity of expression which the Romanesque buildings possessed in so wonderful a degree, and of adding the most exalted sublimity to its hitherto stern and rigid grandeur; just as the simple action of gravity gives to the Niagara Falls a sublime and overwhelming majesty; such as the same cause acting under different conditions has no tendency to produce.

I must apologise for having occupied so long a time on these merely preliminary and, perhaps, not very interesting topics. I hope in my next lecture to be able to give an outline of the transition as it showed itself in the different countries, and also to point out and illustrate the changes in the decorative and more purely artistic features of architecture by which it was accompanied.

LECTURE III.
The Transition.

Gradual refinement of Romanesque—French architects the earliest to systematise the pointed arch—The English before the Germans—The Italians from the Germans—Fully acknowledged in France 1140—Suger’s work at St. Denis—Carving in French churches—Corinthianesque outline of capitals—Distinctly Byzantine capitals—A route by which Byzantine foliage may have reached France—The importation indisputable—Its effects seen in Early English capitals—West front of Chartres—Fluting on basement of doorways—Cathedral of Noyon—St. Germain des Pres, Paris—Cathedral of Sens, prototype of the Choir and Trinity Chapel at Canterbury—Notre Dame, Paris—A new kind of foliage—The capital “à crochet”—English transition—Incipient specimens—Refined Norman—Pointed style, with reminiscences of Romanesque—William of Sens—William the Englishman—Influence of French work—Oakham Castle—Glastonbury Abbey—Cathedral of St. David’s—Temple Church, London—Chichester Cathedral—Tynemouth Abbey—Hexham Abbey—Unfoliated capitals—Round moulded capitals—Characteristics of English and French transition—The German transition—Practical lessons from studying these changes—Principles to which the transition was pioneer.

IN my last lecture it was my endeavour to illustrate the mechanical and structural portion of the process by which the Romanesque, or round-arched Gothic, became changed into the Pointed style—a change which I showed to have resulted primarily from causes purely constructional, and arising from the mere necessities of the case, though subsequently carried on into parts, in which the change in the form of arch, though not statically necessary, was demanded from reasons of geometrical and æsthetic harmony. I further showed that the change was not, by any means, that abrupt revolution which it is often described as having been; that a large proportion of the distinctive characteristics of Gothic architecture are common to its round-arched and pointed-arched varieties; that these two forms of architecture are hardly to be called two styles, but rather the grand divisions of one style—the latter being the natural and logical result of the progression ever going on in the former, during every moment of its prevalence, and in every country where it prevailed.

The portion of the subject, however, on which I then treated, was only the mechanical framework of the style—its mere ossature, to use M. Viollet le Duc’s expression, or—as a celebrated palæontologist, who did me the honour of being present, said—the “backbone” of the subject. My object this evening is to overlay this skeleton with the muscles and sinew, and with the external expressions of its inner life; to show that those dry bones lived; or, in other words, to show the changes in the decorative features of the architecture, and in the sculptural art which accompanied it. I have further to trace out the transition as exhibited in the structures of different countries—and especially of France, England, and Germany;[10] and in a general manner to inquire both into their peculiar characteristics and into the order of their chronological precedence.

The tendency I have so often mentioned to refine and to elevate the character of the Romanesque architecture is common to all the countries where it prevailed. In all we find the severe simplicity of its earlier productions gradually and steadily relaxing throughout the whole period of its history; the rudeness of its early decorations disappearing in favour of a more artistic treatment; its ponderous massiveness becoming lightened; its low proportions changed for more lofty ones; and the general asperity of its character becoming softened down; so that in its later stages it seems often to possess nearly every feature of the succeeding style, excepting the pointed arch and the elevation and lightness which followed its introduction, though it also possessed features which its successor speedily discarded. I especially refer to those systems of ornamentation—most of them of Oriental origin—by which the Romanesque buildings may usually, irrespective of their arches, be distinguished from those of the succeeding periods.

The pointed arch having, as I have before shown, been first introduced in the vaulting,[11] where its particular statical advantages were most required, it naturally follows that the change would commence earliest in those countries in which the builders set themselves most actively about the solution of the problem—the steps of which I somewhat at length traced out in my last lecture; I mean the conversion of the basilica, with its timber roofs, into a completely vaulted structure; and I think there can be no doubt that that country was France.

This, however, would not be the only condition on which the probable precedence among the different nations, in taking the step which was necessary to generating a perfect form of arcuated architecture, would depend. It seems necessary that it should not be a country already so thoroughly provided with noble churches as to preclude the probability of a great architectural movement, nor one which had already made so determined an effort in perfecting its national style as to have become too much enamoured of its successes to be in a position to strike out boldly in a new line: indeed, it should be a people of so active a spirit, and with so strong a tendency to progress and to change, as to render it improbable that they should ever settle down in quiet contentment with their own attainments. The question as to where the great stride forward was to be expected would naturally lie between France and Germany—the dominions of the two great successors of Charlemagne in his kingly and his imperial capacities. Neither Italy nor England were so likely: the former, from her too great proximity to Classic monuments; while the latter—though her political power was equal to that of France, her continental possessions most extensive, and her architectural strivings most vigorous—had too newly risen from the position of a conquered country to take the first place in such a movement, and was also the less likely to do so from the fact of her builders having for the most part avoided the vaulted construction (on a large scale at least), from which the first advance was largely suggested.

The matter lay, then, between France (I mean the actual centre of the Frankish monarchy, of which Paris was the focus) and Germany. The latter, however, had already made her great architectural movement, and was (and not without cause) becoming selfsatisfied with her achievements. She had generated a glorious style, and covered her land with monuments of which she might well be proud; while the part of France immediately under the royal power had not yet been able to erect structures of a magnitude worthy of her position as the great representative state of Western Europe. The immense influence gained just at this time by the French monastic establishments, as well as their schools of learning and science, and still more the increase of the regal power under the wise government of Louis VI., and by the annexation of the southern provinces through the marriage of his successor, brought about the commencement of the great building period in France, a little before the middle of the twelfth century, and the active genius of the people decided the rest. The consequence was that, though the refinement and perfecting of the Romanesque architecture went on uniformly in all the countries I have named, and though its transition into the Pointed style is as distinctly national in England and Germany as in France, the precedence as to the time at which the grand advance was made must be unhesitatingly awarded, I will not say to France (for some parts of it were particularly tardy), but to that district of France round Paris, the focus of the royal power—that portion of it, in fact, which was immediately under regal government, as distinguished from that of the great vassals of the Crown. We must further in justice admit that, though each country had its own transition, founded directly upon its own national and even local variety of Romanesque, each was also in some degree tinged and influenced by the early developments arrived at in the royal domain of France.

I wish to be as specific as possible on this point, for the sake of steering between two exaggerated views. The one view is this: Seeing the transitional style of each country to be distinctly national—a logical and consistent transition from their own local Romanesque—to conclude from this that the result was absolutely independently arrived at, though a considerable chronological interval may have intervened. The other is the conclusion that, as the central French architects had been the earliest in systematising the pointed-arched developments, all other countries had simply followed in their wake, and done no more than follow the fashions set at Paris. The truth lies between these contradictory views. The communication ever going on throughout Europe caused each country to know pretty perfectly what was going on in others; their Romanesque in each was about on a par as to advancement, and in each the want of the pointed arch must have been nearly equally felt. Each, then, had its national and logical transition; but the French having outstripped the others as to time, many of their minor developments were adopted ready-made (if I may say so): so that though each transition is clearly national, and distinct from that of other countries, we nevertheless find, both in Germany and England, features which have as clearly been borrowed from the French.

The English—though it would appear likely, from their adherence to open timber roofs, that they would have felt the want of the pointed arch less than the Germans, who more usually vaulted their naves,—nevertheless outstripped their more phlegmatic kinsmen in its adoption. This may have arisen from two causes—the constant use in England of central towers, the frequent failures of which, when supported by round arches, would have given them another reason to desire one of greater strength; and also their intimate connection with France and the vast domains in that country which came under the rule of our kings.

It is true that (with the exception of Anjou and Maine) the provinces held by Henry II. were those in which the Romanesque style held out the longest; yet the fact that the two countries were at the time almost as one—the English provinces of France being larger than, perhaps, either England itself or the independent domain of the French king—their ecclesiastical systems intimately united—the French language spoken by all the higher orders in England, who held possessions perhaps of almost equal extent in both countries—it is hardly probable that the state of architecture should be greatly different in England and in France.

The Normans, however, and the Aquitainians had both a strong affection for their own Romanesque styles, which had in each country more strongly marked characteristics than that of the royal domain of France; and this predilection seems to have kept back their strivings for a short time, and to have produced a similar effect in England—which, nevertheless, was the next country to royal France—and the parts immediately around it, to make the change towards the Pointed style, leaving Germany to come on at the close of the century, when we had already matured our Early Pointed or Early English style, and Italy to adopt it still later, and through the medium of the Germans, as a return for the Lombardic Romanesque which three centuries earlier she had imparted to Germany; “As if,” to use the eloquent words of Mr. Petit, “that mighty river, that bore the tide of Roman civilisation into the heart of Europe, had infused into the nations through which it flowed a veneration for Roman memorials; with a wish to preserve and perpetuate them, by establishing, according to the principles of their construction, a kindred and lasting style of their own:” but, as I may add, on finding at length those principles to be imperfect, desired to send back to the source of this early civilisation those more advanced developments and increased beauties which these nations had generated from them.

Having thus roughly indicated the national order in which the transition showed itself, I will proceed to describe its characteristics and its productions in these different countries, beginning with France.

I have before mentioned that in the south of France there is reason to believe that the pointed arch was used for barrel vaults from an early date; and in the celebrated domical churches of Perigord and Angoumois it is used below the pendentives of the domes, as well as in the section of the domes themselves: this, if the usually adopted opinion be correct, would bring it into the centre of France early in the eleventh century. It is certainly found in the royal domain from the commencement of the next century, but it is from about 1140 that we must date its systematic introduction as a fully acknowledged architectural element.

I will not pretend to say what is the earliest work in which it is thus admitted, nor attempt to investigate the commonly received opinion which attributes the launching of the new style (if such it should be called) to Suger, the celebrated Abbot of St. Denis. As, however, the architectural progress at this period was clearly most active within the influence of the court of Paris, and as Suger was not only one of the wisest and greatest men in the kingdom, but was a great minister of state, it is not unnatural that his personal influence upon art should be powerful. In the year 1140 he had rebuilt the nave of his church, and also the west front, as it existed previously to the wretched restorations which have rendered nearly worthless the most valuable landmark in the history of the transition. So far as we can now judge of it, it presents a very early transitional character, the round and pointed arch being almost indiscriminately used. Of the three portals, the central one has a round arch; the others are very slightly pointed. Their character is gorgeously rich, the shafts being either elaborately carved with surface ornamentation, or having full-length figures attached to them, and the arches replete with sculpture, agreeing, indeed, precisely in character with those of the west front of Chartres and some others. The parts which are original are beautifully executed, and the capitals are of that perfectly Byzantine variety of the Corinthianesque type which I shall shortly have to describe more in detail. In the interior, the arches of the vaulting, and those carrying the towers, are all pointed, but contain some strictly Romanesque features. On the whole, the work has a decidedly Romanesque appearance, but, nevertheless, has the pointed arch so freely used in it as to show that it was anything but the first essay.

Fig. 15.—St. Denis. Interior of one of the Apsidal Chapels.

In the same year (1140) Suger laid the foundations of the eastern end of the church, which, as it is said, “with stupendous celerity” he had so far completed by the year 1144, as to permit of its consecration; the king, with his capricious queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and a multitude of the great men of the country, being present at the ceremony.

Fig. 16.—St. Denis. External Sketch of one of the Apsidal Chapels.

Fig. 17.—St. Denis. Part of Capital from one of the Apsidal Chapels.

Of the church of Suger the two ends with portions of the transepts are all that now remain; the whole of the intermediate portion, forming little less than the entire church, were rebuilt from the ground in the succeeding century, including even the pillars of the apse; so that we are not able to ascertain the design of an internal bay of his church. What remains of the eastern part embraces the pillars round the ambulatory of the apse, with all the apsidal chapels, including also their crypts. Of one of these chapels I exhibit an internal ([Fig. 15]) and external ([Fig. 16]) sketch. From these it will be seen that though the crypt—from want of height as much as from any other cause—has round arches, the upper chapels are purely pointed, and are very elegant in their design. The pillars are cylindrical, with Corinthianesque capitals ([Fig. 17]), the windows and vaulting pointed, and the whole, though obviously early, has very little of a Romanesque air, much less so than our own transitional specimens of a much later date, and, what is more remarkable, less than many French churches of twenty years later. The chapels, however, in the crypt are much more Romanesque, all their arches being round, and their vaulting without ribs, though the details agree with those of the chapels above.

The principal remnant beyond what I have here mentioned is the doorway of the north transept. This is pointed, and generally has a more advanced air than those in the west façade, though on examination the details differ but little. There are full-length figures attached to the shafts, and angels carved in the arch mouldings, as those of the western portals and as those at Chartres; and such parts of the foliage as have not been renewed are most beautifully carved in the same Byzantine style. Of the same character also are a number of capitals from the monastic buildings preserved in a neighbouring shed.[12]

I will now crave your indulgence while I make a digression on the subject of the carving in French churches of this period. No one can have failed to notice the Corinthianesque outline of the capitals which prevail in France from early in the twelfth to the end of the thirteenth century. It has, indeed, been remarked by writers on the subject, that this Corinthian character greatly increased just before the period of the transition. Though the effects of importations of Byzantine taste are evinced in the Romanesque ornamentation throughout the whole period of its duration, it seems generally to have come in the form of manufactured goods, woven fabrics, jewellery, etc., etc.; and though the patterns, both of Byzantine and other

Oriental manufactures, are to be traced in the Romanesque ornaments, and were the origin of many of those most familiar to us, actual architectural features of Classic form, such as capitals, do not seem to have been very directly copied, excepting where the remains of antique buildings were at hand to offer models. The Romanesque capitals of earlier date are, in many cases, of types belonging to no other style, though in others they betray a distant descent from the Roman; and the cushion capital, and perhaps others, seem derived from Byzantium; but generally their forms differ much from the original, till we approach the period of which I am treating, when suddenly they assume an almost Classic form—the acanthus being freely used, and that of a variety resembling that of ancient Greece ([Fig. 18]), as distinguished from Rome ([Fig. 19]); and the same Greek leafage being found in cornices ([Fig. 21]), scroll-work ([Fig. 20]), and almost every other position in which it could be used. Not having travelled in the south of France, I will not venture to be very dogmatic as to the cause of this sudden change. I fancy, from such drawings as I have seen, that this Byzantine capital prevails a good deal in the south of France, but I am not able with certainty to distinguish it from the capitals directly imitated from Classic remains around.[13] M. Viollet de Duc views them all as being of this origin, calling them Gallo-Romaine, as distinguished from the Romanesque capitals found side by side with them. I view those, however, I am treating of as distinctly Byzantine, and the following facts suggest a route by which the purely Byzantine foliage may have reached the north of France.

The Church of St. Mark, at Venice, was erected between the years 977 and 1071, and its capitals are, many of them, precisely of the kind I am naming ([Fig. 22]), and are also identical with many at Constantinople ([Fig. 23]). No one who has had a training in drawing the Corinthian capital will fail to recognise at Venice that variety of the acanthus by which he has been accustomed to distinguish the Greek from the Roman Corinthian. According to M. de Verneill, the Church of St. Frond, at

Perigueux, was built at nearly the same time, in the centre of France, but under the influence of Venetian merchants. This church is a direct imitation of St. Mark’s at Venice; but besides the distinctly Byzantine forms which characterise this and the numerous family of churches which imitate it, it contains capitals of exactly the same kind as those at Venice ([Figs. 24], [25]); and from shortly after this time we find them becoming prevalent in districts

Fig. 26.—Capital from the Column of Marcion, Constantinople.

the other Byzantine features of the Perigordian churches are not followed. I give a series of capitals from Constantinople (Figs. [23], [26]), Venice ([Fig. 22]), and Perigueux ([Figs. 24], [25]), which can be compared with those I exhibit from St. Denis ([Figs. 20], [21]), St. Germain des Pres ([Fig. 27]), etc., etc., to show how indisputable and how direct is the importation, though, unlike the works of Classic architects, we find no two capitals alike. They have other points of resemblance to the Corinthian capital, as the cauliculi, and a rudimental relic of the concave-planned abacus. This we find also in Pisan architecture, and in that of the Moors in Sicily, and probably in all styles which were influenced by the Byzantine; and it was, no doubt, derived from the practice, which arose when the Corinthian capital began to be used directly to bear an arch (and that overhanging the column), of placing a strong square block over the more delicate abacus, to defend it against the fracture to which it would otherwise have been subject. These features will be found in nearly every church of the transitional period in the part of France of which I am speaking, and probably in nearly all parts.[14]

Fig. 27.—St. Germain des Pres, Paris.

The Corinthianesque foliage became the originator of the magnificent capitals which pervade the finest French works of the thirteenth century, though the foliage became entirely altered; and in our own country, though the Byzantine original is seen, I believe, only in the work of William of Sens, at Canterbury,[15] the effects of it are visible in the outline of many of our finest Early English capitals, though these are so distinctly national, and differ so much in treatment from those in France.

Nearly contemporaneous with Suger’s work is the west front of the Cathedral of Chartres, one of the very noblest productions of the style. It is not, I believe, exactly known when this façade was either commenced or completed, but the towers were actively progressing in 1145. The three central portals are of peculiar magnificence (Figs. [23], [30], [31], [32], [33]); they are too elaborate for me to venture upon illustrating them by drawings.

Figs. 29, 30, 31, 32, 33.—Enriched Shafts from Chartres

The figures in the jambs are, as was usual at the period, in the same block with the shafts themselves, and their extraordinary elongation, and the long upright folds of their draperies were, no doubt, intended to harmonise with their position as parts of columns. The heads are of peculiar dignity and grace. These doorways are probably the finest remaining of the transitional period. Their excessive richness contrasts strikingly with the severe though noble simplicity of the remainder of the façade, and displays not only that tendency to lavish all the resources of art upon the doorways, which so especially characterises French art, but also illustrates, in the most striking manner, the absolute independence of the architecture of mere ornamentation, and, at the same time, the freedom with which it avails itself of it; the rich doorways and the severely plain towers being equally glorious specimens of the style, and neither suffering in the least by juxtaposition with the other.

I will just call attention to the singular ornamentation of the pedestal or basement of the doorways, by means of fluting, etc. This was common in France at that period, though I am not able to trace it to its source. It is almost identical with that of the western doorway of St. Germain des Pres,[16] and we find it carried out with still greater richness in the somewhat later doorways which flank the western façade at Rouen.

The capitals in this façade (at Chartres) are of the kind I have above described. The southern tower and spire are most noble in their composition, and are hardly exceeded in beauty by those of any subsequent period.

The next example I will allude to is the Cathedral of Noyon. The date of this cathedral is unknown; but the old church having been destroyed by fire in 1131, and the Bishop (Beaudoin), who shortly after succeeded to the see, being an intimate friend of Abbot Suger, it has been put down almost as an historical certainty that he commenced rebuilding the church not long after the erection of that of St. Denis, and that the designs were made under the advice of Suger. I am not prepared either to subscribe to this implicitly or to dispute it. On first examining the church, my impression was adverse to this theory; but St. Denis itself looks so much later than it is, and the apparent anomalies in the dates of this period are so perplexing, that one is disposed to hesitate before disputing a theory supported by such men as Viollet le Duc. If, however, the idea be correct, I should limit the early date to the lower portion of the choir. The same intermixture of the round arch with the pointed obtains throughout the cathedral; but not only are the mouldings of later section in the western parts (as M. le Duc points out), but the capitals which prevail in the upper storeys of the choir itself are of a kind which I cannot think so early as the date assigned.

The capitals of the lower storey (or the aisles and apsidal chapels), are of the Corinthianesque description, intermixed with others of interwoven stalks, etc., and are eminently beautiful.

I give a sketch of one of the apsidal chapels, both within ([Fig. 34]) and without ([Figs. 35], [36]), as a parallel to those at St. Denis. The comparison will certainly tend to confirm the theory as to its date, as the prevalence of the round arch gives it an appearance of even earlier age; but we shall see from other examples that this evidence is not wholly to be relied on.

Figs. 34, 35.—Cathedral of Noyon. Interior and Exterior of one of the Apsidal Chapels.

Fig. 36.—Cathedral of Noyon. Plan of one of the Apsidal Chapels.

The plan of this church is exceedingly beautiful, having apsidal terminations, not only to the choir (Fig. 36), but to each transept. In this it is supposed to have been imitated from the noble transepts at Tournay, with which see Noyon was connected till the year 1153, almost the very year to which both of these works have been attributed, though the transepts at Tournay are still purely Romanesque, and that of the very grandest and boldest kind, excepting only the pointed vaulting; while those at Noyon (which, however, are somewhat later than the choir) are of very light and almost flimsy construction, and though containing many round arches, are, in their whole aspect, of the Pointed style.

The church at Noyon is of a construction to which I barely alluded in my former lecture—that in which the aisles are of two storeys, both of which are vaulted.

It is customary to call this second storey a triforium, but I should rather term it a gallery, for the triforium proper occupies the interval between the roof and the vaulting of the aisles, a space which occurs over these galleries; so that a church of this construction has four storeys—the aisle, the gallery, the triforium, and the clerestory; the triforium being, as its name seems to import, the third storey, though in churches of the more customary type it is only the second. This construction was very common at this period in France and Germany, though in England I recollect only one instance—the choir of Gloucester—which, however, is so altered as almost to conceal its construction.[17] The vaulting at Noyon is pointed, but its side cells are, I think, in every case round. The exterior of the apsidal chapels at Noyon is not unlike those at St. Denis, though without its crypt. Like it, it has columns used for buttresses, an idea inherited from those of earlier date—as those at Nôtre Dame du Pont at Clermont, at Issoire, and many others.

There are noble portals on the east sides of the transepts in which the carved foliage is of the most gorgeous description, and which were formerly replete with sculpture, every vestige of which is now gone, having been most carefully cut out at the Revolution.

On the whole, this church is one of the best studies of the transition, though defective in one important element—a date.

The next example I will notice is the Church of St. Germain des Pres at Paris, an example of special value from its possessing the element which we lack at Noyon. It was dedicated in 1163, or nineteen years after St. Denis.

The comparison of St. Germain with St. Denis leads to one of the most curious questions connected with this part of architectural history; for during this interval of nearly twenty years no progress whatever would appear to have been made; indeed, to judge from the buildings, one would be disposed to transpose their dates; for while the eastern part of St. Denis, in 1144, is purely pointed (the crypt alone excepted), St. Germain, in 1163, has round arches used in most prominent positions, though in other respects exactly agreeing in detail; and this in a most important church in the royal city itself.

How is this long stagnation to be explained?

I will not pretend to answer it positively, but I would suggest the following solution:—Two years after Louis VII. and Queen Eleanor attended the consecration of St. Denis, they set out on a great Crusade—the one at the head of 10,000 warriors, the other of a troop of Amazons she had levied from among the ladies of her court. The Amazons and their inordinate amount of baggage led to the destruction of the army at the battle of Laodicea. The king returned to his dominions impoverished and humbled, shortly after which his Amazonian consort, obtaining a divorce, deprived him at one stroke of half of his dominions, and transferred the rich Provençal dower to Henry II., the English king. I would suggest, then, whether this sudden stoppage in the development of architecture may not be accounted for by the equally sudden exhaustion of the resources of the French kingdom, as the early commencement of the improved style has been in a measure attributed to its previous increase in prosperity?

Fig. 37.—St. Germain des Pres, Paris. Two Bays of Choir.

The sculptural art at St. Germain des Pres seems exactly on a par with that at St. Denis and Chartres. The capitals are either of the Byzantine Corinthianesque, or are filled with animals (natural and grotesque), or consist of a union of both. They are exceedingly fine examples of their style, and I have selected one[18] of them as a type of the style. The design of the interior of the choir, though severely simple, is exceedingly fine, and in some degree original. I exhibit a sketch of two of its bays ([Fig. 37]).