VIII. THE STATE OF DENMARK 383

Scott.¹ Edmund Oldfield, already advanced far beyond me in Gothic art scholarship, was prime mover in the matter, but such rumour as existed in the village of my interest in architecture justified him in expecting some help from me. I had already quite fixed notions of what the colour of glass should be, and in these Edmund concurred. The tracery of the east window seemed to us convertible into no dishonouring likeness of something at Rheims or Chartres. Hitherto unconscious of my inability to compose in colour, I offered to design the entire window head; and did, after some headstrong toil, actually fill the required spaces with a mosaic presenting an orthodox cycle of subjects in purple and scarlet, round a more luminous centre of figures adapted from Michael Angelo. Partly in politeness, partly in curiosity, the committee on the window did verily authorize Edmund Oldfield and me to execute this design; and I having fortunately the sense to admit Edmund’s representations that the style of Michael Angelo was not exactly adapted to thirteenth-century practice, in construction of a vitrail, the central light was arranged by him on more modest lines; and the result proved on the whole satisfactory to the congregation, who thereupon desired that the five vertical lights might be filled in the same manner. I had felt, however, through the changes made on my Michael Angelesque cinquefoil, that Mr. Oldfield’s knowledge of Gothic style, and gift in placing colour, were altogether beyond mine; and prayed him to carry out the rest of the window by himself. Which he did with perfect success, attaining a delicate brilliancy purer than anything I had before seen in modern glass.

154. I should have been more crushed by this result, had I not been already in the habit of feeling worsted in everything I tried of original work; while since 1842, I was more and more sure of my faculty of seeing the beauty and meaning of the work of other minds. At this time, I

¹ [St. Giles’ Church. For particulars, see Vol. XII. pp. lxiv., lxv.; and the letters to Oldfield, ibid., pp. 435 seq. The window designed by him and Ruskin is shown on Plate XXII. in that volume.]

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