tinuance of the masonic operations which have already destroyed the northern tower. Its work is altogether rude, but full of spirit ; the opposite spandrils have different, though balanced, ornaments very inaccurately adjusted, each rosette or star (as the five-rayed figure, now quite defaced, in the upper portion appears to have been) cut on its own block of stone and fitted in with small nicety, especially illustrating the point I have above insisted upon—the architect's utter neglect of the forms of intermediate stone, at this early period.
The arcade, of which a single arch and shaft are given on the left, forms the flank of the door; three outer shafts bearing three orders within the spandril which I have drawn, and each of these shafts carried over an inner arcade, decorated above with quartre-foils, cut concave and filled with leaves, the whole disposition exquisitely picturesque and full of strange play of light and shade.
For some time the penetrative ornaments, if so they may be for convenience called, maintained their bold and independent character. Then they multiplied and enlarged, becoming shallower as they did so; then they began to run together, one swallowing up or hanging on to another, like bubbles in expiring foam (fig. 4) from a spandril at Bayeux, looks as if it had been blown from a pipe; finally, they lost their individual character altogether, and the eye was made to rest on the separating lines of tracery, as we saw before in the window ; and then came the great change and the fall of the Gothic power.
XXI. Figs. 2 and 3, the one a quadrant of the star window of the little chapel close to St Anastasia at Verona, and the other a very singular example from the church of the Eremitani at Padua, compared with fig 5, one of the ornaments of the transept towers of Rouen, show the closely correspondent conditions of the early Northern and Southern Gothic[1]. But,
- ↑ 10. p. 98. 'Ornaments of the transept towers of Rouen': The reader cannot but observe the agreeableness, as a mere arrangement of shade, which especially belongs to the 'sacred trefoil.' I do not think that the element of foliation has been enough insisted upon in its intimate relations with the power of Gothic work. If I were asked what was the most distinctive feature of its perfect style, I should say the Trefoil. It is the very soul of it; and I think the loveliest Gothic is always formed upon simple and bold tracings of it, taking place between the blank lancet arch on the one hand, and the overcharged cinquefoiled arch on the other.
