Page:The ecclesiastical architecture of Scotland ( Volume 3).djvu/194

 of this period, and when their general design is considered, these features at Rosslyn will be found not to differ materially from those of the churches of Melrose, Linlithgow, Seton, Trinity College, and other buildings. Compare the disposition of small canopied niches round some central feature, such as the buttress niche (Fig. 778) at Melrose, and the pinnacles (see Figs. 1075 and 1076) at Rosslyn.

On the sides of each buttress at Rosslyn (see Figs. 1072, 1073, and 1091) there is a splayed moulding, a kind of set-off which runs from the front of the buttress back to the wall, on the top of the base string course. A somewhat similar set-off occurs on some of the buttresses of the chapter house of Glasgow Cathedral, built a few years before Rosslyn.

A large number of details from Melrose have a very decided resemblance to those found at Rosslyn. Thus the staircase turret (Fig. 773)

—The Collegiate Church of Rosslyn. Corbels on Window Jambs and Buttresses.

at the west side of the south transept of Melrose is in spirit so very like the work at Rosslyn that, had it been included in the illustrations of the latter, only those who have local knowledge would have detected it. The same remark applies to the south doorway from Dalkeith Church, given further on. A striking resemblance also occurs between the mouldings of the sacristy doors at Lincluden and Bothwell and the details of the clerestory windows at Rosslyn. In all these examples the mouldings consist of an outer and inner shaft, separated by a large hollow, containing carved work; and the shafts have, in every case, caps and bases treated in a similar manner.

The soffit cusping so common in the arches at Rosslyn is a decoration of the most frequent occurrence throughout Scotland; at this period, indeed, there is hardly an arched tomb recess in the country which is not so decorated. Carved rosettes set in hollows, which abound everywhere