File:An essay on the history of English church architecture prior to the separation of England from the Roman obedience (1881) (14596852270).jpg

Identifier: essayonhistoryof00scot (find matches)
Title: An essay on the history of English church architecture prior to the separation of England from the Roman obedience
Year: 1881 (1880s)
Authors: Scott, G. Gilbert (George Gilbert), 1839-1897
Subjects: Church architecture Church architecture
Publisher: London, Simpkin, Marshall and co.
Contributing Library: Getty Research Institute
Digitizing Sponsor: Getty Research Institute

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the light-ness of the effect, by diminishing the proportion ofthe solid stonework to the glazed openings, but itdid more than this. It converted, what had beenmere piercings in a stone shield, into bars of stonesurrounding piercings. Those who dislike the later developements of thestyle, are accustomed to view the change, from geo-metrical tracery to flowing, as the first stage of anassumed deterioration. By this change, as they say, aaa These are fac-similes of sketches made by a friend I have already referred to him—whose loss, after more than twenty years, is felt as a recent sorrow. I do notwonder at what men suffer, but I wonder often at whatthey lose. We may see how good rises out of pain and evil ;but the dead, naked, eyeless loss, what good comes of that ?The fruit struck to the earth before its ripeness ; the glowinglife and goodly purpose dissolved away in sudden death.(Ruskins Stones of Venice, ii., f). I49) C?«^ ^Sfacio, tu nescis mode, scies aiitempostea. PLATE XXVIII.
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TINTERN ABBEY-CHURCH. WINDOW OF THE CLERESTORY^ THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. the form of the opening, on which alone a rationaldecoration of the window should be based, becamesubordinate to the lines which the stone tracery-bars describe, a merely accidental element. But to be consistent, such purists should drawthe line at an earlier stage of the evolution. Theadmission of—what they consider—a false principlewas made, not when geometrical forms gave place toflowing, but when, about the middle of the thirteenthcentury, the notion first occurred of piercing theeyes of the plate tracery. It was then, that piercedopenings gave place to circles and quatrefoils ofstone. The line of the tracery-bar, then for the firsttime became of interest; and flowing-tracery becameinevitable as soon as plate-tracery had become con-verted, by this simple innovation, into bar-tracery. Those who would consistently maintain Mr.Ruskins views on this matter, must condemn thegeometrical trace

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