Page:Charles Moore--Development and Character of Gothic Architecture.djvu/316

Rh graceful and suggestive of the energy of vegetable growth, but the fillet-like ribs are unpleasantly multiplied, and the leaf-stalks, instead of dying away softly into the mass of the bell — as in the earlier capital of the east transept, — are equally salient and flat-sided down to the astragal. Of the fine surface modelling which the earlier foliage exhibits, there is scarcely any in this foliage of the nave.

In the local and exceptional school of Wells sculpture of peculiar beauty and natural expression is met with, in which a mingling of Anglo-Norman and French characteristics is apparent. The excessive projection of the crocket (Fig. 145) is Anglo-Norman, while the fine surface modelling and the delicate rounding of leaf-stalks and ribs, unlike anything usually met with in England, is French. The graceful, flowing, and thoroughly vital lines, the fine composition of curves and arrangement of masses, give these capitals remarkable beauty, though the extravagant salience of their crockets injures their expression as functional members.

The carving of imaginary and grotesque creatures, though by no means uncommon in England, was, like other sculpture, less general than in France. Nevertheless, examples enough occur to show that a lively fancy and a vigorous executive skill were often exercised in their production. Among the best carvings of this kind were, apparently, those of the buttresses of Bishop Hugh's choir of Lincoln. Very little, however, remains of them.

On the whole, sculptural enrichment in the pointed architecture of England presents no parallel whatever to that of France. To the builders of the island sculpture was not an indispensable element of design. Hence the many important churches—Beverley, Salisbury, and Westminster Abbey among them—in which sculpture is almost altogether absent. The employment of the naked moulded capital, whose monotony is so conspicuous in these and many other buildings, bears witness to this, and bespeaks an imperfect conception of the Gothic idea. The great Gothic Cathedral, with its marvellous organic structure and its vast wealth of associated sculpture, has really no counterpart in England.

In Germany, as in England, comparatively little use was made of figure sculpture as a conspicuous architectural