Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 4.djvu/199

 HINTS ON GLASS PAINTING. 181 such would be unsuitable, but because perspective drawing had not reached that advanced state which sculpture had. The sculptured figures in the Easter sepulchre at Hawton in Nottinghamshire, and the west front of Wells cathedral, with many other instances, shew that graceful design, both in the representation of the human figure and grouping, was not undervalued. The easy and natural character of foliage in the Decorated style, in which perspective drawing is not required, affords also an argu- ment that we owe many stiff and formal designs to inability rather than to choice. The 28th plate entitled French glass, dated about the middle of the thirteenth century, exhibits a degree of grace and beauty that we do not commonly meet with. But in English Decorated work a figure of great beauty is occasionally met with ; in a tracery light in the east window of Acton church near Stafford is a remarkably elegant kneeling female figure, probably of about the third quarter of the fourteenth century. There can