Page:Charles Moore--Development and Character of Gothic Architecture.djvu/177

Rh gathering them into groups. In both cases the imposts are continuous—that is to say, there are no capitals nor mouldings at the springing of the arches,—and even the sections and the roll mouldings on the edges of the jambs and arches are the same. If the drip-moulds were removed from the arches of Wells, the only difference between the two examples would be that the one has round and the other pointed arches; but the Abbaye-aux-Dames is not, like Wells, devoid of continuous supports. It has shafts rising from the pavement to the springing of the vaults and dividing each of the three stories into bays. It is in this important respect much more like a Gothic building. The lower piers and pier arches are, moreover, actually lighter than those of Wells, though they have fewer subdivisions, and the individual parts are therefore more massive. It may, indeed, be said that the piers of the Abbaye-aux-Dames are more like Gothic than they may at first seem, while the piers of Wells are a good deal more Romanesque than they seem. Between the buttress systems of the Abbaye-aux-Dames and Wells there is no essential difference, though the two buildings are at least a century and a half apart in date. Both have their flying buttresses concealed beneath the aisle roof, and both display only pilaster strips externally.

In external aspect the nave of Wells closely resembles this early Norman building; the difference consisting in little more than the substitution, in the openings, of pointed arches for round arches. The same is equally true of most other early English structures. The triple arches of the clerestory, the grouping of openings in the west end, and the great lanterns at the crossing of nave and transept—features which have been generally regarded as peculiarly English—are all derived from this Norman art of the Continent. So plain, indeed, is the identity of characteristics, that one has only to make the comparison in order to perceive that the early pointed architecture of England is essentially a Norman product, and that it is, at most, very imperfectly Gothic.

Few early pointed buildings in England are any more Gothic in principle than those already noticed. The choir of Ely, the choir and smaller transept of Worcester, the great transept of Lincoln, the choir of Chester, the transept