Page:Charles Moore--Development and Character of Gothic Architecture.djvu/81

Rh main group (A, Fig. 24), the abaci are well covered by the three great ribs, and the bases of the small shafts which carry the longitudinal ribs, the lateral abaci of the intermediate group B, in the same figure, have the larger portions (e, in the plan D) of their surfaces unoccupied, since there are no diagonal ribs to be supported here. This is manifestly illogical as well as unpleasing to the eye. The only arch in this pier which springs from this level being the intermediate transverse rib, the central shaft which carries it

FIG. 24.

is the only one that requires a capital here. The lateral shafts ought to continue unbroken to the higher point from which the longitudinal ribs spring, as they do in the intermediate system of the choir.

In the Church of Mantes, a construction of the same epoch which bears much resemblance to Paris, the vaults are also sexpartite; and they are here prepared for by piers which are alternately massive and slender—the massive ones having all their vaulting members built up from the pavement—as at Senlis and Noyon. But the vault supports, unlike those of Senlis and Noyon, consist, as in Paris,