The sculptured foliage of this style has the same characteristic as the preceding in being a representation of natural foliage and flowers, and though less bold, is quite equal to it in point of execution. The bosses, capitals, and mouldings, and even the stringcourses, are often most rich in their details.

The wooden-roofed porches of this style, where the covering extends over the front, are distinguished by the use of barge-boards in front of the gable, which serve the purpose of hiding the ends of the rafters. They were usually carved out a flowing foliated arch, with the spandrils pierced and ornamented.

as

The parapets of this style were pierced with flowing tracery instead of the geometrical forms previously used. There is no great difference between the spires and those of the preceding style excepting in the tracery and arches of belfry windows, &c.

Graceful and beautiful as this style undoubtedly is, it contained within itself the elements of its own destruction. Had the geometrical forms never been abandoned, this style could not have come into existence, and if the Geometrical style had not developed the principle of subordination of parts, the principle of fusion, which marks the last stage

of Gothic architecture, would have had no opportunity of growth.

Owing to the influence of this idea of fusion, even the most important features were at length merged in the production of a collective unity; the capitals of the piers became more wiry and slender, and at last were removed altogether; stringcourses and bands became fewer in number the pier-arches assumed the Ogive termination, from which, as from the apex of every opening in the triforium, straight lines ascended without interruption till they were lost in the interlacing tracery of the vaulting.

'Thus that very form of architecture—the truest, the most beautiful, the most magnificent which the world has yet seen, the genuine offspring of the pointed arch, whose brightest triumph was the achievement of a glorious unity of separate existent parts gave birth by a strictly logical process to a wholly antagonistic idea, which necessitated the abandonment of the very feature which had been its essential and most splendid characteristic, and by a growth of marvellous rapidity, the principle of the subordination of parts ended in their ultimate absorption.'*

For examples of this style, which, it must be *Edinburgh Review,' Jan. 1857.

remembered, is in principle identical with the Flamboyant style of France (as will be evident from the accompanying outline of a Flamboyant window), may be instanced the Latin Chapel at Oxford, Finedon Church, Hants, Irthlingborough

Church, Northampton, south walk of Cloisters at Westminster, great west window of York Minster, east window of Hull Church, Yorkshire, the Lady Chapel at Lichfield, the east end of the choir at Bristol, and the choirs of Carlisle and Selby.

About the middle of the Reign of Edward III. (1357) to the end of the Reign of Henry VII. (1509).

HE flowing Curvilinear Decorated style was rapidly succeeded by another, as it

was found that the extension upwards could be effected by straight vertical lines as well as by flowing or curved ones, and with much greater ease.

In this style, which is called the Rectilinear, Continuous, or Perpendicular style, the principle of verticality is carried out to its greatest extent. From every point of arch or window tracery extend upwards vertical lines which reach to the top, and are finally lost in the ceiling. The principle of subordination is thus completely done away with, and every idea is centred in the production of a continuous and collective unity.

There are many features in this style which are entirely peculiar, the first to be noticed being of course the windows. The mullions are continued upwards in vertical lines right to the head of the window, so as to form perpendicular divisions, which are again divided into compartments by horizontal transoms, and are trefoiled or cinquefoiled at the top.

The immense size of some of the windows erected during this period necessitated the use of

these transoms to prevent the tall perpendicular mullions being pressed out of their verticality by the weight of the masonry above. So great was their size occasionally, that they were in some cases directly opposed to the principle of a Gothic window, there being little or no wall round them, and presented the appearance, as in the otherwise magnificent window at Gloucester, of being a huge screen of open panelled stonework which had been erected to finish up the end of the building, and which had afterwards been filled in with glass.