Part 7

English Gothic architecture has generally been divided into three periods: The Early, the Decorated, and the Perpendicular. The following condensed list of the peculiarities of each period will be found useful for reference. Early English: General proportions more slender, and height of walls and columns greater; arches pointed, generally lancet, often richly moulded; triforium and arcades often with trifoiled heads. Piers were more slender, composed of a central shaft surrounded by several smaller ones almost or quite detached; capitals concave in outline, moulded or carved with conventional foliage, delicately executed. The windows were at first long, narrow, and deeply splayed internally, the glass being within a few inches of the outer face of the wall; later in style more acute, divided by mullions, enriched with cuspated circles in the head, and often with three or more lights—the center lights being the highest. Doorways were deeply recessed, enriched with slender shafts and elaborate mouldings. Buttresses were about equal in projection to their width, with but one set off, or without any. The mouldings were bold and deeply undercut.

In the Decorative style the proportions were less lofty, the arches mostly enclosing an equilateral triangle; mouldings bold, finely proportioned, and often ornamented with ball, flower, foliage of ivy, oak, and vine leaves, the execution being natural and beautiful.

The Perpendicular or Tudor style had walls profusely decorated with paintings, parapets embattled, and paneled; open timber roofs of moderate pitch, but of elaborate construction, having hammer beams, the moulded timbers often richly ornamented with pierced tracery, and carved figures of angels.

Ornamental materials of all kinds, such as mosaic, enamel, metal-work, and inlays were freely employed; but the crowning invention of Gothic artists, which contributed largely to the architectural effect of their finest buildings, was _stained glass_. So much of the old glass has perished, and so much of the new is not even passable, that this praise may seem extravagant to those who have never seen any of the best specimens that still exist. In the choir at Canterbury there is a remnant of the best glass in England, and some good fragments remain at Westminster, but to judge of glass at its best, the student must visit La Sainte Chapelle, of Paris, or the cathedrals at Chartres, Bourges or Rheims, when effects in colors are gorgeous in their richness, brilliancy and harmony. Fresco painting may claim a sort of brightness, and mosaics, when executed in polished materials, have some brilliancy, but in stained glass the light which comes streaming through the window itself gives evidence, while the quality of the glass determines the colors, and we thus obtain a glowing luster which can only be compared to the beauty of the richest gems.

Color was freely introduced both by the employment of colored materials and by painting the interior with colored pigments. Painted decorations were constantly made use of with the happiest effect.

Sculpture is the noblest ornament, and the Gothic architects, of a later day, seem to have been alive to its use, as in all their best works statues abounded. If sometimes uncouth, they always contributed to the effect intended. Whether rising to grace and grandeur or sinking to grotesque ugliness, they had a picturesque power, and added life to the whole. Monsters gaped and grinned from waterspouts; little figures of strange animals twisted in and out of the foliage at angles and corbels; stately effigies occupied dignified niches, and in the head of a doorway there was often carved a whole host of figures representing heaven, earth, and hell, with a rude force and eloquence that, to the present day, has not lost its power.

RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE.

Toward the close of the fifteenth century men’s minds and tastes were ripening for a change. The beautiful Gothic, in its most improved characteristics, did not satisfy. The change first took place in Italy, and was closely connected with the revival of letters. There all the characteristics of the middle ages were rapidly thrown off. The old Roman blood in the Italians asserted itself, and almost at a bound literature and the arts put on the old forms they had displayed fifteen hundred years before. In the schools there was a rage for classic Greek and Latin; and among architects old Roman or Græco-Roman forms were applied to buildings with much freedom and spirit.

The revival of classic taste in art was appropriately called the Renaissance.

In other countries the change came slowly, and people were not prepared to welcome it unreservedly. In France and England there was a transition period, during which most buildings were designed in a mixed style. This in England lasted almost through the century. It was indeed a picturesque and telling style, in its earlier stages called Tudor, and later Elizabethan. In its mixture of classic and Gothic forms there are often incongruities, and even monstrosities; but it allowed unrestrained play for the fancy. Some of the best mansions of the time, such as Hatfield, Hardwick, and Audley End are unsurpassed in their pleasing picturesqueness. The wide oak staircase, with its carved balusters, ornamented newel-post, and heavy hand-rails, the old wainscoted parlor, with its magnificent chimney piece reaching to the ceiling, are all essentially English features, and full of vigor and life, as the work of every transition period is likely to prove. The period in France produced exquisite works, more refined and elegantly treated than those in England, but not so vigorous. No modern buildings are so finely ornamented and yet not spoiled.

In Italy Renaissance churches, magnificent secular buildings, and palaces of wealthy families abound, as in Naples, Rome, Florence, Genoa, Venice, and indeed in every great city.

The plan of Renaissance buildings was uniform and symmetrical; not widely different from those in Italy before the revival of classic art; but it will be remembered that they were by no means so picturesque or irregular, at any time, as were the plans of French and English churches.

The mediæval use of small materials for external walls, involving many joints, has disappeared, and they are universally faced with stone or plaster, and consequently smooth. The principal feature to note is the great use made of that elaborate sort of masonry, in which the joints of the stones are carefully channeled or otherwise marked, and which is known by the singularly inappropriate name of rustic work. The basements of most Italian and French palaces are thus built, and in many cases, as the Pitti Palace, Florence, the rustic work covers the whole façade.

Towers are less frequently employed. In churches they sometimes occur; none more picturesque than those designed by Sir Christopher Wren for many of his parish churches. But in this style the dome takes the place of the tower, both in churches and secular buildings.

The dome is the glory of Renaissance architecture, as it had been of the old Roman. It is the one feature by which Renaissance architects had a clear and defined advantage over those of the preceding century, who had, strange to say, almost abandoned the dome. The mouldings and all other ornaments of this order are much the same as those of the Roman. The sculptures and mural decorations were all originally drawn from classic sources. But these attained very great excellence—the decorative painting of Raphael and his scholars at Rome, Genoa, and elsewhere, probably far exceeding anything which the old Roman decorative artists ever executed.

ROME.

In the capital of the country is St. Peter’s, the most magnificent building of fully developed Renaissance. Beamanti, a Florentine, was the architect, to whom the task of designing a cathedral to surpass any thing existing in Europe, was committed by Pope Julius II. The project had been entertained, and architects worked at it fifty years before; but nothing satisfactory was done. A new design was now made, and the first stone laid by the pope in 1506. Beamanti died in seven years, and six architects, in succession, of whom Raphael was one, proceeded with the work, without advancing it rapidly, for nearly half a century, during which the design was again and again modified.

In 1646 Michael Angelo was appointed architect, and the last eighteen years of his life were spent in carrying on the great work. He completed the magnificent dome in all its essential parts, and left the church in plan a Greek cross, _i. e._, one in which all the four arms are equal, and the dome at the crossing. The boast is attributed to him that he would “Take the dome of the Pantheon and hang it in the air.” And this he virtually accomplished in the dome of St. Peter’s; a work of the greatest beauty of design and boldness of construction. Unfortunately for the symmetry of the structure, the nave was subsequently lengthened, the existing portico built, and Bernini added the vast fore-court, lined by colonnades, which now forms the approach, and sadly obstructs the view. The exterior, seen from the front, is disappointing. The façade is so lofty, and advances so far in front as to quite hide the lower part of the dome.

To have an idea of the building, as Michael Angelo designed it, it is necessary to go round to the back; and there, with the height and contour of the dome fully seen, all its lines of living force carrying the eye with them up to the elegant stone lantern that crowns the summit, some conception of the hugeness and symmetry of this mountain of art seems to dawn on the mind. But, from the best point of view, it is with the utmost difficulty one can apply any scale of measurement to what, by its vastness and perfection, is bewildering. The interior is most impressive. The arrangements are simple. Passing the vast vestibule, there is the nave of four bays, with two side aisles, and an immense central space, over which hangs the great dome. There are transepts and a choir, each with one bay, and an apse; and there are two side chapels.

Since this largest church in the world is divided into so few parts, all of these must be of colossal dimensions. The piers are wonderful masses of masonry, while the spaces spanned by the lofty arches and vaults are prodigious. There is no sense of mystery felt about the interior. The eye at once grasps it as a whole, but hours must be spent before an adequate idea of its gigantic size is at all possible. The beauty of coloring adds wonderfully to the effect. The interior of the dome especially, and the drum on which it rests, are decorated in color throughout, in excellent taste. The designs are simple, the light to show them is ample; and though so rich, there is no impression of excessive decoration. The connection between the dome and the rest of the building seems admirable; and the spectator standing under its soaring vault has an impression of vastness made by no other work of art.

In England the new order was introduced with a longer transition period. For a generation or more the style was mixed. In many instances the main lines are Gothic, while the details are partly Gothic and partly modified Renaissance. This is true of such buildings as Knowle, Penshurst, Hardwick, Hatfield, and many others.

England has churches that take rank among the best in Europe, especially St. Paul’s, London, which has a world-wide celebrity as second only to St. Peter’s. It falls short of its great rival in size and internal effect; being almost wholly devoid of the artistic decoration, in which St. Peter’s is so rich. But the exterior is far finer, and the building is consistent with itself throughout. The plan of St. Paul’s is a Latin cross, with well marked transepts, a large portico, and two towers at the west entrance. An apse of small size forms the end of the eastern arm, and of each of the transepts; a great dome covers the crossing. The cathedral has a crypt raising the main floor considerably, and its side walls are carried high above the aisle roofs, so as to hide the clere-story windows from sight. A great dome, planted on eight piers, covers the crossing. The skill with which the dome is made the central feature of a pyramidal composition, whatever be the point of view; the great beauty of the circular colonnade immediately below the dome; the elegant outline of the western towers, and the unusual but successful distribution of the great porticos, are among the most noteworthy elements which give a charm to this very successful exterior. But no verbal description can adequately present its excellence; nor will the reader be fully satisfied with the meager account here given.

[B] In the present article on Gothic architecture the outline of the excellent text-book by T. Roger Smith has been followed, but the extracts have been abridged to the utmost limit that is consistent with clearness in the presentation.

SELECTIONS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE.

JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY.

“Enthusiastic devotion to liberty is one of the greatest charms of Mr. Motley’s writings.”—_Methodist Quarterly Review._

“Few writers possess a more picturesque and dramatic style, or, by combined freshness and brilliancy, are more successful in sustaining the interest of the reader.”—_H. M. Baird, Ph.D._

It is perhaps noteworthy that our four leading American historians—Bancroft, Hildreth, Motley and Prescott—widely dissimilar in some of their characteristics, were all born in Massachusetts, and graduated at Harvard. A writer can do his best on a theme suited to his taste and genius; and Motley wisely chose the Netherlands as presenting the spectacle of a noble people engaged in a heroic work.

Extract from “Rise of the Dutch Republic.”

After giving a vivid description of the three great rivers—the Rhine, the Meuse, and the Scheld—which for ages had deposited their slime among the sand banks around their mouths, the historian continues: Such were the rivers which, with their numerous tributaries, coursed through the spongy land. Their frequent overflow, when forced back upon their currents by the stormy sea, rendered the country almost uninhabitable. Here, within a half-submerged territory, a race of wretched ichthyophagi dwelt upon _terpen_, or mounds, which they had raised, like beavers, above the almost fluid soil. Here, at a later day, the same race chained the tyrant Ocean and his mighty streams into subserviency, forcing them to fertilize, to render commodious, to cover with a beneficent network of veins and arteries, and to bind by watery highways with the furthest ends of the world, a country disinherited by nature of its rights. A region, outcast of ocean and earth, wrested at last from both domains their richest treasures. A race, engaged for generations in stubborn conflict with the angry elements, was unconsciously educating itself for its great struggle with the still more savage despotism of man.

The whole territory of the Netherlands was girt with forests. An extensive belt of woodland skirted the sea-coast, reaching beyond the mouths of the Rhine. Along the outer edge of this barrier, the dunes cast up by the sea were prevented by the close tangle of thickets from drifting further inward, and thus formed a breastwork which time and art were to strengthen. The groves of Haarlem and the Hague are relics of this ancient forest. The Badahuenna wood, horrid with Druidic sacrifices, extended along the eastern line of the vanished lake of Flevo. The vast Hercynian forest, nine days’ journey in breadth, closed in the country on the German side, stretching from the banks of the Rhine to the remote regions of the Dacians, in such vague immensity (says the conqueror of the whole country) that no German, after traveling sixty days, had ever reached, or even heard of, its commencement. On the south, the famous groves of Ardennes, haunted by faun and satyr, embowered the country, and separated it from Celtic Gaul.

Thus inundated by mighty rivers, quaking beneath the level of the ocean, belted about by hirsute forests, this low land, nether land, hollow land, or Holland, seemed hardly deserving the arms of the all-accomplished Roman. Yet, foreign tyranny, from the earliest ages, has coveted this meager territory as lustfully as it has sought to wrest from their native possessors those lands with the fatal gift of beauty for their dower; while the genius of liberty has inspired as noble a resistance to oppression here as it ever aroused in Grecian or Italian breasts.

Antwerp Cathedral.

The Church of Our Lady, which Philip had so recently converted into a cathedral, dated from the year 1124, although it may be more fairly considered a work of the fourteenth century. Its college of canons had been founded in another locality by Godfrey of Bouillon. The Brabantine hero, who so romantically incarnated the religious poetry of his age, who first mounted the walls of redeemed Jerusalem, and was its first Christian monarch, but who refused to accept a golden diadem on the spot where the Savior had been crowned with thorns; the Fleming who lived and was the epic which the great Italian, centuries afterward, translated into immortal verse, is thus fitly associated with the beautiful architectural poem which was to grace his ancestral realms. The body of the church—the interior and graceful perspectives of which were not liable to the reproach brought against many Netherland churches, of assimilating themselves already to the municipal palaces which they were to suggest, was completed in the fourteenth century. The beautiful façade, with its tower, was not completed till the year 1518. The exquisite and daring spire, the gigantic stem upon which the consummate flower of this architectural creation was to be at last unfolded, was a plant of a whole century’s growth. Rising to a height of nearly five hundred feet, over a church of as many feet in length, it worthily represented the upward tendency of Gothic architecture. Externally and internally the cathedral was a true expression of the Christian principle of devotion. Amid its vast accumulations of imagery, its endless ornaments, its multiplicity of episodes, its infinite variety of details, the central, material principle was ever visible. Every thing pointed upward, from the spire in the clouds to the arch which enshrined the smallest sculptured saint in the chapels below. It was a sanctuary, not like pagan temples, to enclose a visible deity, but an edifice where mortals might worship an unseen being in the realms above.

The church, placed in the center of the city, with the noisy streets of the busiest metropolis in Europe eddying around its walls, was a sacred island in the tumultuous main. Through the perpetual twilight, tall columnar trunks in thick profusion grew from a floor chequered with prismatic lights and sepulchral shadows. Each shaft of the petrified forest rose to a preternatural height, their many branches intermingling in the space above, to form an impenetrable canopy. Foliage, flowers and fruit of colossal luxuriance, strange birds, beasts, griffins and chimeras in endless multitudes, the rank vegetation and the fantastic zoölogy of a fresher or fabulous world, seemed to decorate and to animate the serried trunks and pendant branches, while the shattering symphonies or dying murmurs of the organ suggested the rushing of the wind through the forest—now the full diapason of the storm, and now the gentle cadence of the evening breeze.

GEORGE BANCROFT.

“Bancroft’s writings are as well worthy of study, both for form and substance, as any that have been produced on American soil.”—_John McClintock, LL.D._

“His every paragraph is animated with a philanthropic, liberal and progressive spirit.”—_D. D. Whedon, D.D._

“The work of Mr. Bancroft may be considered as a copious philosophical treatise, tracing the growth of the idea of liberty in a country designed by Providence for its development. It is written in a style marked by singular elaborateness, compactness, and scholarly grace, and is esteemed one of the noblest monuments of American literature.”—_American Cyclopædia._

William Penn.

Penn, despairing of relief in Europe, bent the whole energy of his mind to accomplish the establishment of a free government in the New World. For that “heavenly end” he was prepared by the severe discipline of life, and the love, without dissimulation, which formed the basis of his character. The sentiment of cheerful humanity was irrepressibly strong in his bosom. As with John Eliot and Roger Williams, benevolence gushed prodigally from his ever-flowing heart, and when, in his late old age, his intellect was impaired, and his reason prostrated by apoplexy, his sweetness of disposition rose serenely over the clouds of disease. Possessing an extraordinary greatness of mind, vast conceptions, remarkable for their universality and precision, and surpassing in speculative endowments, conversant with men, with books, and governments, with various languages, and the forms of political combinations as they existed in England and France, in Holland, and the principalities and free cities of Germany, he yet sought the source of wisdom in his own soul. Humane by nature and suffering, familiar with the royal family, intimate with Sunderland and Sydney, acquainted with Russel, Halifax, Shaftesbury and Buckingham, as a member of the Royal Society, the peer of Newton, and the great scholars of his age—he valued the promptings of a free mind more than the awards of the learned, and reverenced the simple minded sincerity of the Nottingham shepherd more than the authority of colleges and the wisdom of philosophers. And now, being in the meridian of life, but a year older than was Locke, when, twelve years before, he had framed a constitution for Carolina, the Quaker legislator was come to the New World to lay the foundation of states. Would he imitate the vaunted system of the great philosopher?

Locke, like William Penn, was tolerant; both loved freedom; both cherished truth in sincerity. But Locke kindled the torch of liberty at the fires of tradition; Penn at the living light in the soul. Locke sought truth through the senses and the outward world; Penn looked inward to the divine revelations in every mind. Locke compared the soul to a sheet of white paper, just as Hobbs had compared it to a slate, on which time and chance might scrawl their experience; to Penn the soul was an organ which of itself instinctively breathes divine harmonies, like those musical instruments which are so curiously and perfectly framed, that, when once set in motion they of themselves give forth all the melodies designed by the artist who made them.