Page:Charles Moore--Development and Character of Gothic Architecture.djvu/188

Rh of Salisbury, which is again a mere false screen, with a level cornice cut in the middle by a gable, and with square turrets at the corners. These turrets are crowned with heavy and projecting cornices above which rise octagonal pinnacles, for which last the forms of the square substructures are in no way prepared. At the four corners of the squares, which are left uncovered by the pinnacles, are set diminutive pinnacles similar in form to the larger ones. A less constructive or graceful arrangement than this, especially when taken in connection with the projecting cornices, could hardly be devised. This façade has, however, the merit of being divided by buttresses into compartments corresponding with the nave and aisles, and hence the horizontal lines are neither so continuous nor so pronounced as at Lincoln. A different, though still a singularly defective design is that of the façade of the Cathedral of Wells. It consists of a central portion in three compartments, divided by buttresses, with two vast towers, one on either side forming two compartments more. The central portion embraces both nave and aisles of the building, while the towers project north and south beyond the walls of the aisles. This, especially as the towers are not completed above the rest of the façade, gives a vast total width of front, for which the builders in England seem to have had a singular predilection. The screen-like character, though on account of the strongly accented vertical lines of the buttresses less pronounced here than at Lincoln, is still obvious. The upper portions of the aisle compartments are false walls rising above and masking the aisle roofs, and their level cornices of course contradict the lines of these roofs. The central compartment is surmounted by a rectangular mass of wall which has no more relation to the roof of the nave behind it than the walls of the lateral compartments have to the roofs of the aisles. The portals of English churches are in general strangely diminutive, and those of Wells are especially ineffective as features in the total design. The other openings also of this façade (with exception of three long windows in the central bay) are, like those of Lincoln and Salisbury, very small in proportion to the extent of wall. They are, in fact, little more than loopholes which, were it not for the