Page:Charles Moore--Development and Character of Gothic Architecture.djvu/50

26 capital which carries out the principle of bearing up so emphatically marked in the bell. And to this the graceful reverse curves of the helices only add value by contrast. It is noticeable that in Gothic of the best character the sculpture of functional members is not such as to disguise their general contours. The bell of the capital, for instance, is never so much cut away or so loaded with projections as to injure the main mass.

This life and this beauty, based upon logical principle, extend through the entire Gothic system; and in nothing are they more marked than in the profiles of mouldings. The profiles of string-courses, for instance, which in the Romanesque style retain the level upper line peculiar to antique mouldings, and suitable to a southern climate, are in the Gothic gradually changed to a form in which the level line gives place to a steep sloping line which sheds water quickly, and is hence adapted to the stormy climate of the North. This steep right line is associated with curves of varying flexure beneath, forming simple and effective mouldings enriched in the sheltered hollows by sculpture. These profiles assume a great variety of forms, while they never fail to exhibit graceful lines and proportions. In capitals and bases a subtle sense of function and of beauty is always conspicuous, though these forms also are of endless variety. The profile of the capital is made up of lines that are adapted in all their parts, as they are not in any other style, at once to the shaft which the capital crowns, and to the load which it carries. The base also—almost always some modification of the Attic type—is equally admirable in its profile, giving, with artful grace, real and apparent stability to the shaft. Indeed, there is hardly a more beautiful thing in Gothic art than one of these base profiles. The proportions of its parts, the use of contrasting angles, and especially the character of the curve of the lower torus, are unsurpassed, if indeed they are equalled by any of the mouldings of antiquity.

In a definition of Gothic architecture none but the truest form of the art properly concerns us. The many offshoots, imitations, and modifications of Gothic, which subsequently sprang up in different parts of Europe, often no doubt possess great interest, and even sometimes great