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 even, 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.
I must now refer for a moment, before we quit the consideration of
this, the second mental element of Gothic, to the opening of the third
chapter of the _Seven Lamps of Architecture_, in which the distinction
was drawn (Sec. 2) between man gathering and man governing; between his
acceptance of the sources of delight from nature, and his development
of authoritative or imaginative power in their arrangement: for the two
mental elements, not only of Gothic, but of all good architecture,
which we have just been examining, belong to it, and are admirable in
it, chiefly as it is, more than any other subject of art, the work of
man, and the expression of the average power of man.
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