Page:Suggestions on the Arrangement and Characteristics of Parish Churches.djvu/42

42 strictest propriety, be used, there are two capital objections against it for city Churches. The first is, that its necessarily contracted window openings will not afford the admission of all the light required. The second is, that, in complying with the desire to give a decorative character to a Church, the adoption of the details of Early Pointed—such as deeply-sunk mouldings, banded shafts, foliage, &c.—involves greater expense than the corresponding details of either of the other styles. On the whole, it will be found that the Decorated style possesses the greatest plasticity. Its traceried windows can be made of any dimensions, and its ornamented accessories are not so complicated and difficult in execution as those of the Early Pointed. The Perpendicular style, though more unbending, and a less perfect sort of art than the Decorated, possesses great resources for meeting the demands we are considering. It admits of greater breadth of window space then even the Decorated; its vertical lines harmonize remarkably well with our street architecture; and its ornamentation, being all of the surface kind, renders the execution of its details comparatively cheap.

While I think it wasteful to expend money for cut stone exteriors to country Churches, I think the introduction of dressed stone, “clean-hewn ashlars,” as the old contracts write it, very desirable in town Churches. In cities, where all public buildings, and even private residences, present polished and smooth surfaces, a Church of roughly-dressed masonry, which is quite in character with a country situation, would look mean and inappropriate. But in adopting the use of dressed surface stone, care should be taken to provide for all the ornamental detail which is necessary to produce consistency of design and unity of effect. Nothing, after all, has a poorer effect than a flat surface of finely-chiselled work, pierced by meagre windows, and