(par. 2492, ct seq.), written, we are inclined to consider, before the publication of Pugin's propositions.

A more strictly architectural definition of the term Gothic architecture has been deduced from the writings of various investigators, as being that combination of art and science in building which followed the adoption, during the middle ages, of broken arches for vaults, openings, and ornaments, in lieu of the previously existing arches of continuous lines. The term Gothic architecture, according to such writers, does not acknowledge as its legitimate productions any structures that are point vaulted and point arched, point vaulted but not arched, point arched but not vaulted, or neither arched nor vaulted, unless they conform to rules approved by the builders in north-western Europe (and especially in England) during the middle ages. These regulations are, in effect, nine :-I. Daylight must not fall upon any apparently horizontal plane surface, however small, except pavements, steps, seats, and tables. II. Every arch must be moulded within a chamfer, or at least be chamfered. III. Every impost must follow the plan of the arch or arches which it receives. IV. Every pillar must be an assemblage of juxtaposed shafts or mouldings. V. Every pier must be polygonal, or at least circular in plan. VI. Every base must follow the plan of the pillar or pier to which it belongs, or at least be either polygonal (preferably octagonal), or cylindrical if under shaft. VII. All decoration must be worked within the plane of the walling to which it belongs, except in the cases of bases, bands, capitals, cornices, copings, and dripstones. VIII. Roofs of high pitch and flying buttresses, spires, and pinnacles, tracery and foliation, are incidental, rather than peculiar, features. IX. The continuous arch may be exceptionally employed when it, with the rest of the building in which it occurs, exhibits submission to the preceding regulations.

These regulations were observed to the north of the Loire and of the Alps, which was the seat of what may be designated original Gothic. South of those boundaries we have to deal with what may be designated imitative Gothic, to which, as a matter of course, appends itself one of the two divisions, Christian and Mahomedan, of Pointed art. We take it for granted that the reader is already convinced that the Romanesque and Byzantine perfect developments of Roman construction do not become transitional to original or imitative Gothic architecture merely by the introduction of the pointed arch as a mere form, independent of the regulations above enumerated. On the contrary, they become new styles, with their own periods of transition and development; which, by those writers who do not feel that the architecture of the Mahomedans has been as consistent as that of north-western Europe, are at present considered as mere solecisms, deserving to have the epithets of pointed Romanesque and pointed Byzantine given to them.

These regulations, therefore, define the difference between Gothic and Pointed architecture. They exclude from the title of Gothic those branches of the transition from Romanesque art which, in Germany, Italy, and the Spanish peninsula, were, whatever the period might be, merely imitation Gothic; as they also exclude any branch of the pointed Byzantine school, which was employed by the Normans in Sicily, or by other Christian communities.

The readers who are desirous of considering this subject more in detail are referred to Freeman, History of Architecture, 1849, wherein Chapter I. Part II. treats upon the "Definition and Origin of Gothic Architecture;" and concludes with the observation : "We may then define Gothic architecture as a style whose main principle is verticality, a principle suggested by the pointed arch, and carried out in its accompanying details." A writer in the Archæological Journal, for February 1847, has expressed his notion that "it would be very possible to build a thoroughly good Gothic church, taken entirely from ancient examples, without a single pointed arch throughout; " a principle which would astonish most of the talented practitioners of the present day.

An eminent amateur has written a very studied and elaborate explanation of what he considers to constitute Gothic architecture. "I believe," says Mr. Ruskin, in Stones of Venice, Vol. II. Chap. VI., after a short inquiry into the mental power or expression, "that the characteristic or moral elements of Gothic are the following, placed in the order of their importance: -I. Savageness; II. Changefulness; III. Naturalism; IV. Grotesqueness; V. Rigidity; and VI. Redundance. These characters are here expressed as belonging to the building. As belonging to the builder they would be thus expressed :-I. Savageness, or rudeness; II. Love of change; III. Love of nature; IV. Disturbed imagination; V. Obstinacy; and VI. Generosity. The withdrawal of any one, or any two, will not at once destroy the Gothic character of the building; but the removal of a majority of them will." He then proceeds to examine them in their order; but our limited space prevents our following him word for word, and we have found it necessary to curtail some of the following paragraphs.

In defining its outward form, he states that the most striking feature is that it is composed of pointed arches. "I shall say then, in the first place, that Gothic architecture is that which uses, if possible, the pointed arch for the roof proper ;" and subsequently adds, “Our definition will stand thus: Gothic architecture is that which uses the pointed arch

for the roof proper, and the gable for the roof mask."-"All good Gothic is nothing more than the development in various ways, and on every conceivable scale, of the group formed by the pointed arch for the bearing line below, and the gable for the protecting line above (fig. 1056.). The subject of the masonry of the pointed arch has been discussed in Chapter XI. of Volume I. (of his work), and the conclusion deduced, that of all possible forms of the pointed arch (a certain weight of material being given), that generically represented in fig. 1057. is the strongest. But the element of foliation must enter somewhere, or the style is imperfect; and our final definition of Gothic will, therefore, stand thus:-Foliated architecture, which uses the pointed arch for the roof proper, and the gable for the roof mask."

Fig. 1056.

Fig. 1057.

The figure 1057, though of the outline as given by Mr. Ruskin, really exhibits the stone arch erected in granite across the chancel of the Bruen Testimonial Church at Carlow, designed by the late J. Derick (Builder, 1854, p. 34.). The trefoiled arch exercises a force within the building neutralising the outward thrusting force of the lancet arch, the two forces producing a state of rest.

"A few plain and practical rules," continues Mr. Ruskin, "will determine whether a given building be good Gothic or not, and if not Gothic, whether its architecture is of a kind which will probably reward the pains of careful examination :--I. Look if the roof rises in a steep gable, high above the walls. If it does not do this, there is something wrong; the building is not quite pure Gothic, or has been altered. II. Look if the principal windows and doors have pointed arches, with gables over them. If not pointed arches, the building is not Gothic; if they have not any gables over them, it is either not pure or not first-rate. If, however, it has the steep roof, the pointed arch, and gable all united, it is nearly certain to be a Gothic building of a very fine time. III. Look if the arches are cusped, or apertures foliated. If the building has met the first two conditions, it is sure to be foliated somewhere; but, if not everywhere, the parts which are not unfoliated are imperfect, unless they are large bearing arches, or small and sharp arches in groups, forming a kind of foliation by their multiplicity, and relieved by sculpture and rich mouldings. If there be no foliation anywhere, the building is assuredly imperfect Gothic. IV. If the building meets all the first three conditions, look if its arches in general, whether of doors and windows, or of minor ornamentation, are carried on true shafts with bases and capitals. If they are, then the building is assuredly of the finest Gothic style. It may still, perhaps, be an imitation, a feeble copy, or a bad example, of a noble style; but the manner of it, having met all these four conditions, is assuredly first-rate. If its apertures have not shafts and capitals, look if they are plain openings in the walls, studiously simple, and unmoulded at the sides. If so, the building may still be of the finest Gothic, adapted to some domestic or military service. But if the sides of the window be moulded, and yet there are no capitals at the spring of the arch, it is assuredly of an inferior school."

"The next tests to be applied are in order to discover whether the building be good archi. tecture or not; for it may be very impure Gothic, and yet very noble architecture; or it may be very pure Gothic, and yet, if a copy, or originally raised by an ungifted builder, very bad architecture :-I. See if it looks as if it had been built by strong men; if it has the sort of roughness, and largeness, and nonchalance, mixed in places with the exquisite tenderness, which seems always to be the sign-n.anual of the broad vision and massy power of men who can see past the work they are doing, and betray here and there something like disdain for it. If it has not this character, but is altogether accurate, minute, and scrupulous in its workmanship, it must belong to either the very best or the very worst of schools: the very best, in which exquisite design is wrought out with untiring and conscientious care, as in the Giottesque Gothic; or the very worst, in which mechanism has taken the place of design. On the whole, very accurate workmanship is to be esteemed a bad sign. II. Observe if it be irregular, its different parts fitting themselves to different purposes, no one caring what becomes of them so that they do their work. III. Observe if all the traceries, capitals, and other ornaments, are of perpetually varied design. IV. Lastly, Read the sculpture. Preparatory to reading it, you will have to discover whether it is legible (and, if legible, it is nearly certain to be worth reading). The criticism of the building is to be conducted precisely on the same principles as that of a book; and it must depend on the knowledge, feeling, and not a little on the industry and perseverance of the reader, whether, even in the case of the best works, he either perceives them to be great, or feels them to be entertaining."

"The variety of the Gothic schools," says Mr. Ruskin, in another portion of the same work, "is the more healthy and beautiful, because in many cases it is entirely unstudied, and results, not from mere love of change, but from practical necessities. It is one of the

chief virtues of the Gothic builders, that they never suffered ideas of outside symmetries and consistencies to interfere with the real use and value of what they did. If they wanted a window they opened one; a room, they added one; a buttress, they built one; utterly regardless of any established conventionalities of external appearance. Every successive architect employed upon a great work built the pieces he added in his own way, utterly regardless of the style adopted by his predecessors. These marked variations were, however, only permitted as part of the great system of perpetual change which ran through every member of Gothic design, and rendered it as endless a field for the beholder's inquiry as for the builder's imagination; change, which in the best schools is subtle and delicate, and rendered more delightful by intermingling of a noble monotony, in the more barbaric schools is somewhat fantastic and redundant; but, in all, a necessary and constant condition of the life of the school. Sometimes the variety is in one feature, sometimes in another: it may be in the capitals or crockets, in the niches or the traceries, or in all together, but in some one or other of the features it will be found always. If the mouldings are constant, the surface sculpture will change; if the capitals are of a fixed design, the traceries will change; if the traceries are monotonous, the capitals will change; and if ever, as in some fine schools, the early English for example, there is the slightest approximation to an unvarying type of mouldings, capitals, and floral decoration, the variety is found in the disposition of the masses, and in the figure sculpture."

SECT. II.

PERIODS OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE.

The divisions of Gothic architecture in England, as made by King, Dallaway, Millers, and others, have been used in Book I. Chap. III.; but their subdivisions and nomenclature have been discarded by later investigators; and many tables have been put forward of divisions and subdivisions. Thus, Britton's nomenclature (1807) was, English 1189–1272; decorated English 1272-1461; highly decorated, or florid, English 1461-1509; debased English 1625. Millers's division (1807) was early English 1200-1300; ornamented English 1300-1460; and florid English 1460-1537, as adopted herein in Book I. E. Sharpe classifies the style as, Romanesque-Saxon period until 1066; Norman 1066-1145, Gothic-transitional 1145–1190; lancet 1190-1245; geometrical 1245-1315; curvilinear 1315-1360; and rectilinear 1360-1550.

The following table introduced by Rickman, Attempt to Discriminate, &c., shows his nomenclature and the duration of the periods; these names have maintained themselves, in consequence of their general appropriateness, from 1819 to the present time:—

The reign of Richard I. was the chief period of the transition from the Norman to the early English style; that of Edward I. for the change from the early English to the decorated style (the Eleanor crosses belonging rather to the latter, than to the former, style); while in the latter part of the long reign of Edward III. the transition to the perpendicular style commenced, and was almost completed by the time of the accession of Richard II.

Similar tables of the duration of styles in foreign countries have been given in the section POINTED ARCHITECTURE, in Book I.

Rickman, in describing the style to which he gives the name "decorated," especially classes under that style the tracery in which the figures such as circles, trefoils, quatrefoils, &c., are all worked with the same moulding, and do not always regularly join each other, but touch only at points; this," he says, "may be called geometrical tracery." The Rev. G. A. Poole, Ecclesiastical Architecture, 1848, remarks that "a very large proportion of the buildings in which this kind of tracery is used, belongs to the previous period, called early English. The examples which might have been supposed to clear up the difficulty only make it greater. Thus, in speaking of the chapterhouse at York, which has splendid geometric tracery, he says, “The chapter-house is of decorated character;" yet the chapter-house is clearly of a character which prevailed during a considerable part of that period which Rickman assigns to the early English style. The general tendency has likewise been, of late, to range with the early English by far the greater proportion of those examples which answer to Rickman's definition of geometrical decorated; a few of the later examples only being treated as transition from early English to decorated. The mouldings, it is true, are generally of perfectly early English character, and so are the clusters of foliage, the bosses, and other ornamental appendages. Instances occur in which the simple early English lancet was used during the period of the geometrical tracery. How, then, are the two styles, if they be two, to be separated, in a system which is in part chronological? How are they to be united, in a system which is also in part founded on similarity of parts?

"It is, however, perhaps the most perfect of all the styles; for its tracery has the completeness and precision of the perpendicular, without its license and exuberance; while its minor details partake of the boldness and sharpness of the early English, which need not fear to be compared with the ornamental accessories of any subsequent style. Besides the intrinsic beauty of this style, it is important as affording the first full development of tracery and of cusping, with all their power of enriching large windows, and of bringing together several lights as one whole."

"In pursuing the study of mediæval architecture, it may be held as an axiom," writes Brandon, Analysis of Gothic Architecture, “that personal inspection of the old churches of England is the only means by which it can be possible now, either to appreciate the genius of our medieval architects, or to sympathise with the spirit which animated them. But it is probable that even experienced observers may sometimes be misled by a practice of occasionally assimilating work in a later style to some already existing portion of an incomplete general design. Indeed it forms a strongly marked exception to the usual practice; for it was a general rule with the builders of the middle ages never to fall back upon a past era of their art, even when engaged in completing structures of a bygone age." He then describes the proceedings in this respect at St. Alban's Abbey Church, at Westminster Abbey, and at Fotheringay Church, Northamptonshire.

The early English character of Westminster Abbey Church has been so well preserved throughout, that in many cases it requires a close inspection before it is possible to detect the presence of decorated or of perpendicular work. Thus the windows in the aisles erected by Henry V. are very decidedly of early decorated character; the customary octagonal and moulded cap of the perpendicular period occupy the place of the corresponding circular and foliated members, which, had the windows really been erected some hundred years earlier, would assuredly have surmounted the boltels placed in their jambs,

Fig. 1058. WESTMINSTER ABBEY; TRANSEPT Fig. 1059. WESTMINSTER ABBEY; PILLARS OF NAVE (L, EASTERN
AND CHOIR. EARLY ENGLISH.
BAYS, DECORATED-M, WESTERN BAYS, PERPENDICULAR.)

In the earlier plans of the nave piers four shafts stand clearly detached from the main body of the pier, fig. 1058.; but subsequently the pier was worked with eight shafts, fig. 1059. (L); and, later still, with eight shafts, fig. 1059. (M) all attached to the central

mass, indicative of the altered fashion of the day, in which detached shafts, once such a favourite feature, were entirely discarded.

In the piers they worked the bands of the 13th century (N) with the mouldings peculiar to the 15th (O). Figures 1060, both drawn to the same scale, show how they departed both from the outline and size of the original. In the triforia, the early English design is equally apparent in the earlier and later portions of the work; but the mouldings in each are true to their styles. Although the groining is tolerably in keeping throughout, yet in the aisles and in the later portion of the vaulting, the original spring and height of the ridge rib has been preserved, while to the elegant acutely pointed lancet of the earlier groining an obtusely pointed arch has been preferred, which, consequently, it has been necessary to stilt. Brandon gives illustrations of the early English and perpendicular arcades under the windows, a feature which, though long disused and supplanted by a system of panelling, is yet followed out. "I am not aware," writes the Rev. J. L. Petit, "whether sufficient attention has been given to the attempts occasionally made by the mediaval architects to assimilate their work to the portions erected in an earlier style. In some instances, as in the choirs at Ely and Lincoln, this is done without sacrificing any of the distinctive features of the style then in use; but in Beverley Minster, and in Whitby Abbey, the case is different. In the latter, the whole of the early English arrangement of the choir, as regards its lancet windows, is continued in the transept, though the ornaments with which it is enriched show that this part clearly belongs to the decorated period. The triforium in the former is uniform throughout the whole church, for the same is continued in the decorated work, except the disuse of marble in the shafts."

The same system of using previous ideas, but working them out with later details, is exemplified in the Sketch Book of Wilars de Honecort, an architect of the middle of the 13th century. In comparing his sketches with drawings from the original works, their extreme inaccuracy and contempt of detail is evident. He sketched them because he saw there was something in the general arrangement which, with alterations, might become useful. He therefore drew each with his own improvements to it. As to the details, Wilars did not want them, for he was perfectly convinced that those of his own time were better than anything previously executed. The reader will find reviews of this work in the Builder for 1858, with some woodcuts of the illustrations.

Besides this question of assimilation of style, there arises that of similarity of work in different buildings, resulting from the superintendence or design of one master mind; but this is so extensive a subject that in our limited space we dare not do more than name it for the attention of the student or reader. Another interesting important point is that of the transition from one period into another, such as the decorated into the perpendicular. A curious example of this exists in the church at Edington, in Wiltshire, an account of which, with woodcuts, is given by Parker, in the 6th edition of Rickman's Attempt, 1862.

SECT. III.

MOULDINGS.

It will probably surprise many of our readers that even so late as 1845, the statement was made that "but little acquaintance with mouldings is evinced in the works of most modern architects." Such was the opinion expressed by F. A. Paley, when he published his very useful Manual of Gothic Mouldings. "Viewed as an inductive science," he writes, "the study of Gothic mouldings is as curious and interesting in itself as it is important in its results. Any one who engages actively in it will be amply repaid, if only by the enlarged views he will acquire of the ancient principles of effect, arrangement, and composition. But the curves, the shadows, and the blending forms, are really in themselves extremely beautiful, and will soon become the favourites of a familiar eye; though viewed without understanding they may seem only an unmeaning cluster of holes, nooks, and shapeless excrescences. Perhaps few are aware that any group can be analysed with perfect ease and certainty; that every member is cut by rule, and arranged by certain laws of combination. The best work on Gothic mouldings which could possibly be written will do no more than set him in the right way to obtain a knowledge of the subject by his own research. The look of a moulding is so very different in section, projected in a reduced size