so called from its resemblance to a roll of thick paper, the outer edge of which overlaps the side exposed to view. It was extensively used in the decorated period."

The exquisite skill, taste, and patient labour invariably evinced in the working of early English mouldings, are truly admirable. The deepest hollows are all as clearly and perfectly cut as the most prominent and conspicuous details; and as much so in the village church as in the cathedral. Some examples (of doorways) occur at Bolton and Furness Abbeys, whose arch mouldings extend 5 to 6 feet in width.

"The details of decorated mouldings are for the most part identical with those of the preceding style, with the addition of some new members, and several important modifications of grouping. The latter will be found to produce an entirely different effect, though in description the distinction may appear very trifling. Much greater geometrical precision in drawing both the hollows and the projecting members prevailed. Segments of circles, both convex and concave, were much used, with an avoidance of strong contrasts of light and shade, which imparted a more pleasing, though much less striking, effect. The perfection of moulding, as of all architectural detail, is considered by many to have been attained in this period; yet rich mouldings in it are of rather rare occurrence. Very often plain chamfers are used in all the windows, doorways, and pier arches, while minor parts, such as bases, sedilia, and the like, have fine and elaborate details.

There appear to be three distinct kinds to which decorated mouldings may be generally referred:-I. The plain or hollow chamfer of two or more orders, which, properly speaking, is only the step preparatory to moulding. II. Roll and fillet mouldings, and fillets with hollows between each group. III. A succession of double ogees, or double ressants, divided by hollows of three-quarters of a circle. Sometimes the mouldings of II. are combined with those of III. The mouldings of class II. are generally borne by jamb shafts, now engaged in, and not detached, from the wall. Those of III. are almost always continuous, except in pier arches, where they constantly occur. Four or five of these together give a very deep and rich effect to a doorway. One member of a double ogee is often considerably larger than the other, or those of one order of different size from the others. "The principal forms found in decorated work are:-I. The roll and fillet, the fillet being extremely broad, often as much as 3 and 4 inches. II. The roll and triple fillet, invariably producing a fine effect. Its edge lines are sharp and delicate, and the profile beautifully relieved by the deep side hollows with which it is necessarily connected. III. The ogee. IV. The double ogee, or double ressant. V. The scroll moulding, or ressant lorymer. VI. The wave moulding, which may be called the undy-boltel (A in fig. 1068. ), from its gently undulating surface: scarcely any method of moulding is so common in, or so characteristic of, this period, as two orders of the wave moulding, with a hollow between them: all the varieties of this moulding appear to occur without any definite distinction throughout the decorated and perpendicular periods; it is wider and shallower in early than in late work; the wavy line is even at times very faint. VII. The plain, or hollow, chamfer; and VIII. The sunken chamfer. The boltel, or three-quarter round, is used very sparingly. The hollows are usually of larger size than those of the early English ; and there is this general difference in their use, that in this style they divide groups, in the early English, individual members. A few exceptional instances occur of a tongue-shaped member projecting from the inner side of the principal roll and fillet; this is a very characteristic detail of the class II.

Fig. 1068.

HOWDEN CHURCH; CHOIR.

"In windows, the plane in which the mouldings of the jamb lie is seldom coincident with that on which the side of the mullion is arranged, for this would in most cases give too great thickness to the latter. The difference of inclination may be very slight, but it requires attention.

"In mouldings of the perpendicular period, a comparatively meagre save-trouble method of working them is perceived. Large and coarse members, with little of minute detail; wide and shallow hollows; hard wiry edges in place of rounded softened forms, are all conspicuous characteristics. Their general arrangement on the chamfer plane (figs. 1061. and 1062.), which is a marked feature of this period, gives a flatness unpleasing to the eye in comparison with the rectangularly recessed grouping of the two preceding styles. Three peculiarities are so common, that their absence almost forms the exception to the general usage. These are:-I. A wide shallow hollow, usually occupying the centre of the group, and equal to about one third of the entire width. When the hollow is deep and narrow, it is generally a mark of early work; of late, when wide and shallow; and of debased, when sunken but little below the chamfer plane. One or both ends of the hollow are sometimes returned in a kind of quasi-boltel (as I. fig. 1062.). The boltel is often

formed from a plane by sinking a channel on each face; and occasionally it stands like an excrescence on the surface of a plane (as in figs. 1061. and 1062.); but this is a departure from the usual practice, as well as from the principle of mouldings. II. The constant use of boltels, or beads of three-quarters of a circle, resembling small shafts. And III. The frequency of the double ogee, and some varieties of it peculiar to the period, as shown in the figures above-named. This double ogee appears to be composed of a semi-circular hollow continued in a boltel. All varieties may be considered distinctive criteria of the period. The double ressant is sometimes of a large and clumsy size. The roll and fillet was not extensively used; its form is that of B, fig. 1071.

"Rich and good perpendicular mouldings are not very common, most examples consisting but of three or four very ordinary members, offering nothing either novel or interesting to the view. The doorways are, however, often very deeply recessed, and the engaged jamb shafts bear isolated groups of considerable delicacy. The distinction of the orders is often completely lost in this period, while it is seldom undefinable in the previous one. chamfer plane in many cases is either more or less than an angle of 45°. Sometimes two parallel chamfer planes are taken for the basis of the arrangement of the mouldings.

The

Among the characteristics of the tertiary French style, or the Flamboyant, which has been described and illustrated in pars. 546, et. seq., is that called by Professor Willis, in a most ingenious and valuable paper, read in 1840 before the Institute of British Architects, penetration or interpenetration of the different mouldings and parts. The French antiquaries have called the system in question moulures prismatiques. Neither of these terms seem satisfactory, but of the two we are inclined to prefer the first as most significant. the paper above mentioned, he observes that the practice is very rarely to be seen in English buildings, but produces an instance of it in the turrets of King's College chapel, at Cambridge (fig. 1069.), where the cornice A of the pedestal seems to pierce the plinths of the angle buttresses, and

appears at B. This is, however, by no means a capricious, but rather an indispensable arrangement, by

In

1: 5 3/16

Instances of interpenetration are abundant in France. Amongst those selected by him is one from a screen, in the cathedral at Chartres; it is given here geometrically (fig. 1070.). Fig. 1071. is from the stone cross at Rouen, in which the interpenetration principle is displayed in many of the vertical as well as horizontal members of the structure. The parts A A, mark where the fillet of the mullion pierces the chamfered and moulded parts of the sill. "In many Flamboyant examples, small knobs and projections may be observed, and on a superficial

Fig. 1071.

view might pass for mere unmeaning ornaments, but will be found explicable upon this system of interpenetration." Fig. 1072, "is a window from a house near Roanne, at the base of whose mullions, knobs may be observed, which really represent the Gothic base of a square mullion on the same plinth with the hollow chamfered mullion, and interpenetrating with it." The Professor also states that, "it may perhaps be found that this character belongs to one period, or one district, of the Flamboyant style; " but from our own observation, we are inclined to believe it to have been universal from the middle of the fifteenth century to the period when the style of the Renaissance superseded it. The principles on which it is conducted certainly prevailed

Fig. 1072.
A notion

in Germany and in the Low Countries, as Professor Willis afterwards states. to what extent it proceeded may be perceived by fig. 1073, taken from Möller's Denkmäler der Deutschen Bau

kunst, 1821, and exhibits on the plan a series of interferences contrived with great ingenuity and a consummate acquaintance with practical geometry. The subject is the plan of a tabernacle, or canopy, such as is not unfrequent in churches on the Continent. It shows, says Möller, how the simple and severe architecture of the 13th and 14th centuries had been debased. The square BCDE is the commencing figure.

De

E

Fig. 1073.

A comparison of English and French mouldings has been made, with illustrations, by the Rev. J. L. Petit, in his work, Architectural Studies in France, 8vo. 1854, page 141. Of course Viollet le Duc's Dictionnaire has now become a well of information on this as on many other details. Some few examples are given at the end of the ensuing chapter of this Book. Venetian details have been carefully elucidated by J. Ruskin, in Stones of Venice, Vol. III, 1853, wherein pp. 221-249 are devoted to the examination in succession of the bases, doorways and jambs, capitals, archivolts, cornices, and tracery bars, of Venetian architecture. We do not, however, perceive that any scale or dimension is given to the examples illustrated, the absence of which materially lessens the usefulness of the examples. German details may be sought in Möller's work before quoted; in King, Study Book of Medieval Architecture and Art, 1860; in Statz, Ungewitter, and Riechensperger, Gothic Model Book, 1859; and in Hoffstadt, Gothisches ABC buch, 1840.

SECT. IV.

PIERS AND COLUMNS.

The general plans of the piers supporting the principal arches are either simple or compound: simple, when composed of one plain member; and compound, when consisting of a core surrounded by smaller shafts, detached or engaged. Piers of the earliest period for carrying walls were square, as at the cathedral at Worms. These were relieved by engaged shafts, as in fig. 1074. In the 12th century the shaft begins to take the form on its plan of a Greek cross (fig. 1075.), with engaged columns in its angles as well as on its principal faces.

For the benefit of those making surveys of buildings, we think it useful to subjoin the following recommendation from the "Remarks" of Professor Willis:-" In making

Fig. 1075.

1075a. shows one way in which the plan alone may be made The dotted lines, drawn from the respective members of the pier, mark the direction of the ribs and arches; and upon each of these, at a small distance from the pier, are placed vertical sections of these ribs, as at ABCD."

Norman piers are, in their earlier form, mostly masses of wall, with rectangular nooks containing attached shafts, as at Winchester, figs. 1267 and 1268. The circular (fig. 1076.) and octagonal columns seem to have been introduced about the time of the transition, and continued common in ordinary parish churches throughout the early English and decorated periods. Complex early English piers are so varied in arrangement that it would be impossible here to do more than notice their general characteristics, which consis principally in the number of smaller isolated shafts clinging to a central column, to which they are at intervals attached, in reality as well as in appearance, by moulded bands or fillets (Westminster Abbey, fig. 1278.), wherein a circular shaft is found, with four detached solonnettes (fig. 1058.), and with eight small detached shafts at Ely. Fig. 107. is a gracefully designed pier. One without the colonnettes, and with broader fillets, is a very common form in the early English and decorated periods, with some varieties.

Geometric and decorated piers have their shafts engaged (figs.

1078. and 1079.), so that a clustered column is formed by working out the surfaces of the mass in lines and hollows. The example (fig. 1059.), from Westminster Abbey, has four detached, and four attached, colonnettes to the central shaft, but the reason for this exceptional arrangement has been explained. It would require a volume to set forth the richness

and extent of the great piers in cathedrals and abbeys. Piers in the perpendicular period are generally of oblong or parallelogrammic plan, the longitudinal direction extending

from north to south (fig. 1316.). On the east and west sides half shafts are attached, which bear the innermost order or soffit mouldings of the arch; the rest, including the great hollow, being usually continuous, without the interruption of any impost. The plan of the pier in Henry VII.'s Chapel is a fine example (fig. 1324.) of such an arrangement; and fig. 1059. shows the continued adoption of the decorated piers in the later portion of the nave of Westminster Abbey. Sometimes the ground plan is a square, set angleways (as in the nave of Canterbury Cathedral, fig. 1299., and at Bath Abbey Church, fig. 1320.), and each angle may have an engaged shaft of a

Fig. 1079. HOW DEN CHURCH. circular or ogee form.

SECT. V.
CAPITALS.

The mouldings of capitals and bases are more definitely marked in the various periods than any other kind of mouldings. "It is by no means impossible, even for an experienced eye, to mistake the details of a decorated for those of a perpendicular arch; but no one moderately acquainted with the subject could hesitate in pronouncing the style of a capital or base, provided it possessed any character at all. In the Norman period, when the shaft was round, the highest and lowest members only were square, the parts immediately next them being rounded off to suit the shape of the shaft (fig. 1266.). This is seen in the ordinary form of the cushion capital. We may observe the lingering reluctance to get rid of the square plinth, in the tongue-shaped leaves or other grotesque excrescences which are often seen to issue from the circular mouldings of transition Norman bases." Fig. 1080. is a curious example of the square form in front (N), and the circular moulded form in rear, of the shaft, shown on plan, fig. 1076. As soon as a sub-arch was introduced the corners of the capitals were either cut off or cut out: the former process

the circular capitals and base.

Fig. 1082.
TINTERN ABBEY.

But capitals became octagonal before plinths: and similarly octagonal plinths were retained long after circular capitals had become universal,