GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE

S1everal monuments of architecture which still excite our admiration are the fruit of the artistic impulse received from contact with people more devoted to its culture and from the growing fervour of devotion. The sight of Greek and Arab monuments introduced into the West a new taste by which that Syrian, Arab, or Saracen type of architecture, improperly called Gothic, was brought to its highest degree of perfection. Delicately pointed ogive arches replaced the low and ugly openings which timid builders were afraid to raise higher and which presented but narrow outlooks to view. Architects were judged skilful as they were able to astonish by the boldness and daring of their own work. As in the mosques, they loaded upon light and graceful columns enormous masses which seemed upheld by the support of an invisible arm. They cut stones into a thousand different and often most fanciful forms, and set into them painted glass whose brilliant colours were admirably brought out by the rays of the sun. And as if they foresaw the indifference of posterity to their work, they gave it a solidity which has enabled it to go for great lengths of time without care and restoration.

2At that time appeared the most magnificent offsprings of Gothic architecture. Then was built the leaning tower of Pisa, which has become a marvel through the injury of time. A Greek architect built at Venice the church of St. Mark, strongly impressed with the degenerate taste of the Greeks. A German conceived the plan of the tower of Strasburg, whose delicate structure seems unable to hold it so high in the air. Suger did not disdain to study architecture; he restored his own abbey church and left an account of his labours. The foundations of Amiens, masterpiece of bold and delicate construction, were laid. La Sainte Chapelle at Paris, less vast but equally delicate in style, was the finest work of the favourite architect whom St. Louis took with him to Asia. We should go on at too great a length were we to enumerate all the superb edifices built in the glorious age of Gothic architecture. Barbaric, perhaps, in ornamentation, these artists have never been equalled in principle, in general design, stone-cutting, in knowledge of arching, and in the majesty of their edifices as a whole.