Page:County Churches of Cornwall.djvu/27

 INTRODUCTION 5 points of interest. It is pleasant in this welter of cosmopolitan design to be reminded that time was when art was local and parochial and provincial." The Celtic fervour of Church feeling that ran through Cornwall in the 15th cent., and continued in full vigour until checked by Henry VII I. 's late- born reforming zeal and by the severely Puritanical leanings of Edward VI.'s guardians, manifested itself with startling liberality in the fabrics and fit- tings of the churches. In this it had a remarkable counterpart, which has hitherto, we believe, gone unnoticed, in western Brittany. Mr. W. H. Ward, in his recently published (September, 191 1) fine work on The Architecture of the Renaissance in France, describes the Breton churches of the 16th cent, in terms that might be almost transferred to Corn- wall. He tells of churches differing entirely from those of the rest of France, built of various granites and therefore hard in feature, relieved with mould- ings of the dark, close-grained stone of Kersanton (like the Catacleuse of Cornwall), of low elevation and destitute of clerestories, and usually consisting of three equal-lengthed aisles. Then comes a differ- ence, for he tells of the special cult of the dead so rife among the Bretons, which led to the enclosure with stately gateways of their churchyards, and of the erection therein of costly ostuaries or bone- houses, or elaborate calvaries. In Cornwall the particular strain of warm Celtic devotion happily took another direction, namely, an earnest endeavour