128 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE

beautiful designs should be reserved for situations where no glass would be needed.*

§ 20. The method of decoration by shadow was, as far as we have hitherto traced it, common to the northern and southern Gothic. But in the carrying out of the system they instantly diverged. Having marble at his command, and classical decoration in his sight, the southern architect was able to carve the intermediate spaces with exquisite leafage, or to vary his wall surface with inlaid stones. The northern architect neither knew the ancient work, nor possessed the delicate material; and he had no resource but to cover his walls with holes, cut into foiled shapes like those of the windows. This he did, often with great clumsiness, but always with a vigorous sense of composition, and always, observe, depending on the shadows for effect. Where the wall was thick, and could not be cut through, and the foilings were large, those shadows did not fill the entire space; but the form was, nevertheless, drawn on the eye by means of them, and when it was possible, they were cut clear through, as in raised screens of pediment, like those of the west front of Bayeux: cut so deep in every case, as to secure, in all but a direct low front light, great breadth of shadow.

The spandrel, given at the top of Plate VII., is from the south-western entrance of the cathedral of Lisieux; one of the most quaint and interesting doors in Normandy, probably soon to be lost for ever,¹ by the continuance of the masonic operations which have already destroyed the northern tower. Its work is altogether rude, but full of spirit; the opposite spandrels have different, though balanced, ornaments very inaccurately adjusted, each rosette or star (as the five-rayed figure, now quite defaced, in the upper portion appears to

* Cloisters, for instance. The only fruit I have seen of this exhortation is the multiplication of the stupidest traceries that can be cut cheapest, as in the cloisters of the missionary school at Canterbury.2 [1880.]

¹ [A prophecy of doom not hitherto fulfilled.]

² [St. Augustine’s College, re-founded by the late Mr. A. J. Beresford Hope in 1844. The buildings, erected from the designs of Butterfield, were completed in 1848, 310 years after the dissolution of the earlier foundation.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]