Page:Charles Moore--Development and Character of Gothic Architecture.djvu/141

Rh the thirteenth century. In this case the octagonal drum is much more elongated than at Chartres, as are all the other proportions of the structure. The pinnacles which here also rise from the angle buttresses are triangular in plan, and consist each of three slender monolithic shafts, which reach to about one -half the height of the drum, carrying pointed arches surmounted by acute pyramids. The axes of these pyramids are not vertical, but are inclined inwards towards the diagonal faces of the drum, preparing the eye for the inclined lines of the spire, their apexes rising just above the drum cornice. A tall pointed arched opening pierces each cardinal face of the drum, and a tall dormer, with acute and pierced gable, breaks each face of the spire. Above these members the walls of the spire are pierced on each face with two narrow upright openings and one circular opening. Engaged coursed shafts rise against the angles of the drum, and crockets adorn the angles of the spire and of the summits of the pinnacles.

In spires of this form the diagonal walls of the octagon are sustained by squinches in the re-entering angles of the tower, and these, with their superstructure, bind and weight its walls, and thus help to consolidate the fabric; while the oblique pressures of the spire are reduced to a minimum by thinness of masonry, and by the weight of the abutting dormers.

Of early Gothic spires on a large scale few now exist. In many of the cathedrals and larger churches the progress of the works was arrested before these features were reached, as at Paris; and in others spires were constructed and subsequently destroyed, as at Laon. But such constructions as we have noticed are enough to show that the imaginative and mechanical resources of the Gothic artists were largely displayed in them as well as in other parts of the fabric.

In the general external aspect of the French-Gothic church, except in that which is presented by the front, the structural system is everywhere plainly expressed. We see at a glance that this is not an architecture of walls and trussed timber roofs, but that it is an architecture of vaults maintained by piers and buttresses. So marked is this appearance that M. Renan, in his excellent