Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 9.djvu/232

 172 ON THE GEOMETRICAL PERIOD OF the Perpendicular, ^Mr. Ptickman professed to derive from the character of their windows, conceiving, no doubt justly, that no part of a building exhibits peculiarities of style in so prominent and characteristic a manner as its windows. In strict accordance with this rule, which may be assumed to be a correct and valuable one, I propose to show that had ]Ir. Rickman gone a step further and classed the whole of the buildings of pointed architecture, according to the forms of their windows, under four heads instead of three, he would have obtained a classification equally simple but more intelh- gible and consistent : he would have obviated much that is confused and indefinite, and therefore perplexing, to the architectural student, in his description of buildings which belong to the class to which we are now referring ; and would have enabled us to compare the buildings of our own country with those of corresponding character, and nearly contem- poraneous date on the Continent, in a manner that would have established an analog}'' between them, which, according to the present classification, has no apparent existence. Every one who is acquainted with Mr. Rickman's descrip- tions of the buildings of the Early English st^de, is aware that he did not limit the buildings of that period to those in which the lancet window only appears, but included many others in which windows occur of many lights, containing heads filled with tracer}' consisting of foliated circles, and other simple geometrical figures. In thus admitting traceried windows of whatever kind, within the category of Early English work, he appears to have had some difficulty occasionally in his descriptions, and to have been at a loss in fact to know where to draw the line between Early English and Decorated work. Thus in speaking of the presbytery of Lincoln Cathedral he describes it as a sort of " transition to the Decorated style," and of many other similar buildings which may be ranked as amongst the finest in the kingdom, as belonging to the same class. Again, no one who has paid much attention to the build- ings of the Decorated style, or who has consulted the descriptions of such buildings given in Mr. Rickman's Appendix, can fail to have observed that the windows of this style are divisible into two classes : one in which the leading lines of the tracery are of simple geometrical, and the otlicr in which they are o^ founng character. Nor is tin's