Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 9.djvu/235

 GOTHIC ARCIIITECTUKE. 175 the year of our Lord 1190 ; that of the Geometrical Period at or about the year 1245 ; that of the Curvihnear Period at or about the year 1315 ; and that of the KectiHnear Period at or about the year 13G0. It will be seen that I assume a period of seventy years to be the duration of the Geometrical Style, whilst to the Lancet I assign a period of fifty-five years, and to the Curvilinear a period of only forty-five years. My principal task then is to name to you some of the principal buildings of this Geometrical Period ; to point out to you those peculiarities which entitle them to separate classification, and to explain those points of resemblance and contrast which, on the one hand, assimilate them, and on the other distinguish them from those of the preceding and following styles. The leading and most cliaracteristic feature of the buildings of this period, as already stated, is the form of the tracery of their windows, to which, as consisting generally of the simplest geometrical figures, the term Geometrical has been given. It is distinguished in this respect, therefore, from the Lancet Period, in which tracery was never employed, as well as from Curvilinear, in which the forms of the tracery are almost invariably of a flowing or undulating character. Taking this rule, then, as our principal guide in deter- mining the duration of the Geometrical Period, we have first to find out if possible the precise time when tracery of what- ever kind began to be used ; and secondly, the precise time when flowing tracery began to be practised : the interval will be the proper measure of the duration of what we have ventured to call the Geometrical Style. There appears to be little doubt that the first important building of authentic date in which tracery, properly so called, began to be practised, was the Abbey Church of St. Peter at Westminster, the foundation stone of which was laid with great pomp and ceremony by King Henry the Third, in the year of our Lord 1245. The choir and transepts w^ere con- structed within a few years of this date, and exhibit through- out the wdiole of their details a strong assimilation in their forms to those of the Lancet Period. In their windows, however, a remarkable difl'erence is to be noticed : in the greater part of them the plain lancet head has vanished, and in its place is to be seen, in the lowest and highest window^s,