Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/70

56 battlements, and moats, and the chief apartments looked into the interior quadrangle as the safest. Oxburgh Hall, in Norfolk, is one of this mixed class. Though called a hall, it is moated, and has a massive gateway of a remarkable altitude. Raglan Castle, built in the reign of Edward IV., has more of the true castellated style; Warwick and Windsor, more of the union of the two styles. At the same time, such castles as had their gateways battered down and rebuilt at this period, present in them all the older characteristics of castellated buildings. Such is the gateway of Carisbrook Castle, built in the reign of Edward IV., and the west gate of Canterbury, built towards the close of the fourteenth century, which retain the stern old circular towers, lighted only by mere loopholes and œillets.

The style of ecclesiastical architecture prevailing through this century, and to the middle of the next, is that called the Perpendicular. It appears to have commenced about 1377, or at the commencement of the reign of Richard II., just twenty years prior to this century; and it terminated at the Reformation, in the reign of Henry VIII. The Reformation was anything but a reformation in architecture. That great convulsion broke up the period of a thousand years, during which, from the first introduction of Christianity into this island, this peculiar character of architecture, often called Gothic, but more properly Christian, had been progressing and perfecting itself. The Saxon princes and prelates, evidently copying the Grecian in their columns, but adding curves and ornaments unknown to the Greeks, and introducing principles of pliancy, and of long and lofty aisles, from the suggestions of the forests, in which they were accustomed to wander, and the linden groves which they planted, originated a new school of architecture, in many particulars far exceeding that of the classic nations. No church took up and perpetuated this noble Christian architecture more cordially and more inspiredly than the Catholic. Over the whole of Europe, wherever the Roman Church prevailed, it erected its churches and monasteries in a spirit of unrivalled grandeur and beauty. In architecture, in music, and in painting, it acquitted itself royally towards the public, however it might fail in spirit, in doctrine, or in discipline. The remains of painted windows, to say nothing of the productions of such men as Raphael, Michael Angelo, Guido, and a host of others, who drew their inspiration from the devotions of that church, are sufficient to excite our highest admiration; and the sublime anthems which resounded through their august and poetical temples, through what are called the dark ages, were well calculated to enchain the imagination of minds not deeply reflective or profoundly informed.

In every country we find, moreover, a different style in all these arts—music, painting, and architecture; demonstrating the exuberance of genius turned into these channels during long centuries, when all others, except warfare, seemed closed. Our own country had its distinctive style in these matters, and in architecture this Perpendicular style was the last. During its later period it considerably deteriorated, and with the Reformation it went out. In England sufficient power and property were left to the Anglican Church to enable it to preserve the majority of its churches, and many of its conventual buildings: in Scotland the destruction was more terrible. There public opinion took a great leap from Catholicism to the simplicity and sternness of the school of John Knox; and in consequence of his celebrated sermon at Perth, in which he told his congregation that to effectually drive away the rooks they must pull out their nests, almost every convent and cathedral, except that of Glasgow, was reduced to a ruin.



Of the Perpendicular style we have many churches throughout the country, and still more into which it has been more or less introduced into those of earlier date in repairs and restorations. Every county, and almost every parish, can show us specimens of this style, if it be only in a window, a porch, or a buttress. Rickman is of opinion that full half the windows in English edifices over the kingdom are of this style. Whilst our neighbours on the Continent were indulging themselves in the flamboyant style, and loading their churches with the most exuberant ornament, as in the splendid cathedrals of Normandy and Brittany, our ancestors were enamoured of this now and more chaste style. There are writers who regard the perpendicular lines of this style as an evidence of a decline in the art. We cannot agree with that opinion. The straight, continuous mullions of the Perpendicular are—combined with the rich and abundant ornaments of other portions of the buildings, as the spandrils enriched with shields, the finely-wrought and soaring canopies, and crocketed finials, the canopied buttresses, the groined roofs