Page:An Encyclopædia of Cottage, Farm, and Villa Architecture and Furniture.djvu/954

 1617 1618 on 930 COTTAGE, FARM, AND VILLA ARCHITECTURE. by the eye that is familiar with the works of later date. Hence it is that Architects who will endeavour to imitate the more ancient mode are so constantly seen to run into the error of adoptinjr with it the ornamental details of later periods ; since they find their nominal st^de of too strict a character, both for their taste and their convenience, when applied to minutiae. Thus, the embellishment of tracery (the« well-known kind of ornament expressed in fig. 1617), with- out which little of richness can be bestowed on the detail of Pointed Architecture, ex- hibits, during the period under J- consideration, only the rude- (-^ ness of the primitive form, as^ shown in the door-head, gable aperture, &c., of fig. 1616; being, indeed, not far removed from the style of ornament characteristic of the " Carpenter's Gothic," of which we shall have occasion to say more hereafter. The mould- ings, also, in use at this time had not acquired either that variety or that distinctiveness of character possessed by those of after works. The moulded capitals and bases of columns might readily be traced to their Norman and thence to their Roman origin, fig. 1618, a, c. The ribs of groined arches, &c. (6, in the same figure), show in their section an excess of serpentine line ; and a want of that significancy and fitness which characterise the mouldings of the fifteenth century. The foliage, likewise, of this date, was not unfrequently liny and poor, as compared with the full, undulating, and shadowy forms of a subsequent period. In short, the whole range of this species of tlie style exhibits Pointed Architecture in its infancy, sufficiently dignified and picturesque, indeed, to assert the superiority of the master principle ; but not yet sufficiently refined to demonstrate the possibility of uniting qualities which later science has so successfully combined, the impressive in the total, and the exquisitely beautiful in the detail. 1883. The Middle Period of the Pointed Style. But, before the close of the reign of Henry III., the pointed style had entered upon that which we will designate its middle period of developement, which may be considered as extending thenceforward throughout the first half of the century following; viz., the fourteenth. The Jimits of this period we fix less with a regard to the lapse of years, than to the variation of style ; and thus we consider such a work as Westminster Abbey to belong rather to this jjcriod than to the former, as having a greater affinity to the prevailing style of York Cathedral, which also comes under this middle class, than it has to that observable in the cathedral at Salisbury ; although its completion may be said, on the average, to have followed that of the latter only at an interval of some twenty years. In the efficiency of the style, then, during its middle period, we discern very rapid advances towards perfection. Instead of a triple 1619 window, headed by three distinct arches, we see now single windows of as large dimensions, sur- mounted by one arch of the same tall proportion as before, being divided into two, three, four, six, or eight days (bays, lights, or compartments), by mullions, which, rising into the head, branch out into a great variety of ornamental outlines, enriched with tracery. The earlier and smaller attempts of this kind exhibit simple combinations on the same principle as that shown in fig. 1619. In larger subjects, the composition of the window head be- came, of course, much more complex ; sometimes, indeed, uniting in one" several such examples as fig. 1619, with that more elaborate one,