Page:Charles Moore--Development and Character of Gothic Architecture.djvu/337

Rh They had, in their arts, imbibed as much of the French spirit as was possible to the Northern nature; under French influence they had learned to build, and they came with their growing arts into England, where by degrees they mingled, in character, in customs, and in arts, with the native race much more completely than they had mingled with the French.

For two hundred years after the Conquest the dominant elements in architecture were decidedly Norman. The Cathedral of Salisbury, the nave and transept of Wells, and the Presbytery of Lincoln, among others, are substantially Norman buildings, differing, as we have seen, from buildings of the earlier Norman style in little more than the substitution of pointed arches for round arches, and in the modification of ornamental details. This architecture cannot, therefore, be properly called English. It is strictly an Anglo-Norman architecture.

Of the two elements, English and Norman, which mainly constitute the English race, the English has, in the long run, proved the stronger; and it has, since the thirteenth century, held the ascendant in arts no less than in institutions. The character, however, that has been impressed upon architecture, since this ascendency became active, is by no means so admirable as that which it had before. The perpendicular style, which alone, since the Conquest, is entitled to be called, in the restricted sense, an English art, is certainly neither Gothic, nor at all comparable in merits to the architecture which it superseded.

In Germany the conditions in the twelfth century were far less favourable than even in England to the formation of a style like the Gothic. The grand Romanesque architecture of the country was, in the main, a native style, and fairly well suited to the conditions of climate and of taste. The Germans showed little disposition to change radically this style, and had little need to do so. The inventive genius of the people was naturally less quick than that of the French; and no event, like the Norman Conquest of England, occurred to infuse foreign ideas, and stimulate to new artistic enterprises. Under these circumstances the Gothic of France had, for a long time, little effect on the architecture of Germany. And when finally it did begin to have effect,