Page:History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 1.djvu/599

 Bk. II. Ch. X. CIRCULAR WINDOWS. 567 420. Window at Cliartres. last, after two centuries of earnest trial, the builders of those days found themselves constrained to abandon entirely these beautiful con- structive geometric forms, for tracery of a more manageable nature, and in place of the circle they invented first a flowing tracery, of M'hich the window at Chartres (Woodcut No. 420) is an exquisite example ; and then having shaken off the trammels of constructive form, launched at once into all the vagaries of the flamboyant style. In this style stone tracery was made to look bent and twisted, as willow wands. Its forms, it must be confessed, were always graceful, but constructively weak, and frequently extravagant, showing a complete con- trast to the contemporary perpendicular style followed in England. That failed from the stiff- ness of its forms ; this from the fantastic pliancy with which so rigid a material as stone was used. Greatness or grandeur was as impossible in flamboyant tracery, as grace and beauty were with the perpendicular style ; still for domestic edifices, and for the smaller churches erected in the 16th century, it must be confessed the flamboyant style has a charm it is impossible to resist. It is so graceful and so fantastically brilliant, that it captivates in spite of our soberer reason, lending as it does an elegance to every edifice where it is found, and finding its parallel alone among the graceful fancies of the Saracenic architects • of the best age. Circular Windows. By far the most brilliant examples of this class in France are to be found among the great circular windows with which the west ends and transepts of the cathedrals were adorned. There is, I believe, no instance in France of the great straight-mullioned windows of which our architects were so fond, and even where the east end terminates squarely, as at Laon, it has a great rose window. There can be little doubt that the circle, so long as it was wholly adhered to, was the noblest form architecturally, both externally and internally ; but when the triforium below it was pierced, and the lower angles outside the circle were filled with tracery, making it into something like our great Avindows, the result was a confusion of the two modes, in which the advantages of neither Avere ]treserved. Of the earlier circular windows, one of the finest is that in the Avestern front at Chartres (Woodcut No. 421), of imperfect tracery, like the greater part of that cathedral, but of great size and majesty. Its diaraetei- is 39 ft. across the openings, and 44 ft. 6 in across to the