Page:Charles Moore--Development and Character of Gothic Architecture.djvu/116

Rh the interior of a French church, in consequence of which it  has a strikingly consistent and monumental effect that is in some degree lost when the timbers of the triforium are exposed to view.

In the aisles, as in the clerestory and triforium, the openings, in the fully developed style, reach from pier to pier—a thin wall for enclosure, carried up to the window sills, being all the wall that is visible from the interior.

Thus were the walls of the former style practically suppressed, their place being taken by screens of painted glass, sustained by a slender framework of stone wrought into beautiful geometrical designs.

We have now examined the leading structural developments of French Gothic buildings as far as concerns their longitudinal bays, and it only remains to examine those of the eastern and western terminations, and also of transept ends, and of towers and spires.

The traditional semicircular apse, greatly enlarged and varied in the developed style by a polygonal form, is the characteristic eastern termination of French churches, though in exceptional cases this form gives place to the square, as at Laon Cathedral, where the original round apse was replaced at an early period by a square end.

A more beautiful termination than the round or polygonal apse, as designed by the mediæval architects of France, it is hard to conceive. No part of the Gothic edifice does more honour to these builders. The low Romanesque apse—vaulted as in older times with a plain semi-dome—presented no constructive difficulties, and produced no very imposing effect. But the soaring French chevet, with its many-celled vault, its divided stories, and its encircling aisles, taxed the utmost inventive and executive skill, and deserves universal admiration.

It is now hardly possible to trace the earliest development of the Gothic chevet. That of St. Denis was destroyed in the thirteenth century, and certainly not one of an earlier date exists complete. The apse of Senlis has lost its original vault, and is therefore serviceable as an example only so far up as the clerestory string. But the apse of the Cathedral of Noyon remains complete and in excellent condition. Like all early Gothic apses it retains the semicircular plan, which had