Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 7.djvu/320

222 REMARKS ON THE COMPLETE GOTHIC 111 the two former cathedrals, tracery occupies all the windows, and appears as an universal element of the st^de. Salisbury is as complete Gothic as Amiens or Cologne in other respects, but has no tracery whatever in the ndows. This and some other distinctions quite justify us, I conceive, in regarding the style of which Salisbury is a type (Early Emjiisli) as different from the complete Gothic of Cologne and Amiens. The English style which is first distinguished by tracery is that which Mr. Rickman has termed the Decorated; and the propriety of this term consists principally in its denoting the introduction of this new element of decorative tracery, in addition to those which the earlier st^de contained. The Decorated st^de has doubtless some other peculiarities ; but before I say anything of these, let us further consider the subject of tracery. The subordination of one part to another, of smaller parts to larger, which we may trace in the frame-work of a Gothic building, appears also veiy carefull}^ marked in windows. Professor Willis has very fully explained this principle by resolving the tracery of a "s'indow into its successive orders.* Mr. K. has remarked the same thing in a certain way. Thus, he says (xxxviii.) of the tracery of St. Catharine's, Brunswick, that it is formed of staves of single, double, and triple size, the more slender always determining the smaller spaces. This, in another place, is what he appears to call the law of the membering (gliederung) ; the shafts and hollows being carried out on a greater scale in the larger members, and more and more delicately in the smaller ones. We may remark, that some of the great German and French works, as Cologne and Amiens, are to an English eye defective as to this subordination. Others, on the contrary, as Strasburg, and much of the later French work, are conspicuous for the careful attention to the rule. But we must say a word of the modifications which tracery underwent in the progress of time. From the causes already mentioned, the first forms were " geometrical tracery : " to this succeeded, in England, flowing tracciy," in which the ■* Professor Willis says (Remarks, by the accompanying hypothesis of its p. 57), " The merit of first pointing out derivation from basket-work, which I the regular subordination of mouldings doubt has deterred many from giving it in tracery belongs to Sir James Hall, the attention it deserves. Mr. Rickraaji whose essay on Gothic architecture con- has also noticed it, with his usual concise tains an elaborate dissertation on this clearness, but I do not think it is so gene- subject, unfortunately shorn of its utility rally attended to as it ought to be."