Page:Charles Moore--Development and Character of Gothic Architecture.djvu/241

Rh triforium arcade. In the nave of Paris these bases are quite out of sight from the pavement, notwithstanding the slope that is given to the string-course. This is, however, largely owing to the fact that they are very low and spreading, and could hardly be better seen if the string were entirely removed. At Amiens, however, both string and bases are better managed. The string here is in two courses, the lower member of which (Fig. 131) reassumes the earlier flat-topped profile, but the upper member is sloped so as to reveal the bases of the shafts to one looking from below along a more steeply inclined line of vision than would otherwise show them. But owing to their great height above the pavement these bases would still be largely hidden were they not raised on stilted plinths, which give them a very awkward appearance when viewed from their own level, but which, when foreshortened as they are to the eye viewing them from below, become entirely agreeable in form. In this string profile the character of the drip-mould is avoided by the setting of the upper member at a little distance back from the edge of the lower one, and by the avoidance of undercutting in the hollow beneath. Thus in the ideal Gothic, which the nave of Amiens may be taken to typify, there is a difference founded in reason between internal and external string profiles.

It may be remarked in passing that the true Gothic cornice is never supported by a corbel table—the form of the lower member giving a continuous support to those more projecting. But in Norman pointed design, as in the Cathedral of Rouen, it frequently appears.

In the sections of vault ribs and archivolts there were not the same functional exigencies to provide for; but in architecture the exigencies of the eye are hardly less imper-