Page:Charles Moore--Development and Character of Gothic Architecture.djvu/259

Rh spur is found; but in this porch it is curiously (though very appropriately, since these bases rest on a ledge which is above the eye) placed upon the under side of the torus, as shown in Fig. 151.

The characteristic profile of the string-course in this architecture is made up almost exclusively of curves, as at a, Fig. 152, from the choir of Lincoln. The principle of the drip-mould is partially carried out, but not with such completeness as in the external strings described in the last chapter. The want of steepness in the watershed, its curved outline, and the incision near the lower edge, interrupting the

FIG. 152. flow of water where it ought to flow quickly, are certainly not appropriate characteristics. These defects, together with the absence of a sharp under edge to cut off the drip, make this profile far less functional than the common French type. Many variations are met with in strings of this same general character, of which b, in the same figure, from Glastonbury, is an example, while often associated with such profiles are others of almost purely French character, as c, from the clerestory of the choir of Lincoln. At Wells, in the mouldings at the level of the impost of the arch over the central portal of the west facade, these two types are curiously brought together, as at d, in the same figure.

In the Gothic of France the corbel table is, from the earliest times, omitted. But in England this feature of the