Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 9.djvu/231

GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 171 successful. Men are not willing to unlearn a term with which they are familiar, however inappropriate, in order to learn another, which, after all, means the same thing-. Although, however, Mr. Hickman's simple division of Church Architecture into four periods or styles, may perhaps have been the one best suited to his time, and to the elementary state of the knowledge of the subject possessed by the best informed archaeologists of his day, it may with propriety be questioned how far such a division is suited to the exigencies of writers of the present day, or to the present advanced state of knowledge on the subject. It behoves us to consider well, (perhaps more especiall} at the present moment, so great an impulse having been recently given to the study of church architecture,) whether Mr. Rickman's system fulfils all the conditions essential to one calculated for popular and universal use, and wdiether we should therefore seek to confirm and to perpetuate it, or whether the time has not arrived for the adoption of a more detailed and accurate division of the long and noble series of buildings which contain the history of our national architecture from the Heptarchy to the Reformation. An enquiry of this kind forms the subject of a little w^ork which is now in the press, in wdiich I have ventured to recommend a nomenclature and a classification differing somewhat from that of jIr. Rickman, and a division of church architecture into seven periods instead of four. The object of the present paper is more particularly to describe and to illustrate one of those periods, which, for reasons that will be obvious to many of my hearers, and which can be made, I think, intelligible to all, I propose to call the Gi:ome- TRiCAL Period of English Church Architecture ; and I have selected this for our consideration, because I conceive that no country possesses in greater abundance the materials neces- sary to illustrate and define it than this country, and that no building in the kingdom contains a nobler example of it than Lincoln Cathedral. In Mr. Rickman's simple classification his Norman style comprises the wdiole of those buildings in which the circular arch was used, whilst those in which the pointed arch was employed were divided into three styles or classes, namely, the Early English, the Decorated, and the Perpendicular. The titles of the two last mentioned, namely, the Decorated and