as an important independent mode of expression as well as an architectural adjunct. Hitherto its technical and pictorial qualities have chiefly occupied the attention of connoisseurs of painting, and far too little respect has as yet been paid to its no less important architectural purpose, without a recognition of which its complete character cannot be understood. The spirit of the Renaissance—from which we have largely derived our habits of thought in matters of art was that of a time of severance of the arts which in earlier times had always been intimately associated; and the disposition to regard painting too much as an independent art of expression has made it difficult for the critics of the Renaissance and of recent times to comprehend it in its relation to the other arts of the Middle Ages.
In stained glass there were no peculiar styles either in England, Germany, Italy, or Spain. The use which in Romanesque times had everywhere been made of this mode of filling in apertures continued in each of these countries during the Gothic period. In many cases fine examples of Gothic glass design were executed, especially in England and Germany, but they were always more or less directly copied or imported from France. Good examples in England occur in Canterbury and Lincoln as well as elsewhere; but nowhere save in France was there, in this art, an active spirit of original invention, nor was there anything in the character of the architecture to stimulate its production. In England, as we have already seen, the east end of the church alone had an opening on a really large scale; and even here several narrow lancets often took the place of the single large opening.
