the "Seven Lamps," the changes
are described which reduced the massive roll mouldings of the early
Gothic to a series of recesses, separated by bars of light. The shape of
these recesses is at present a matter of no importance to us: it was,
indeed, endlessly varied; but needlessly, for the value of a recess is
in its darkness, and its darkness disguises its form. But it was not in
mere wanton indulgence of their love of shade that the Flamboyant
builders deepened the furrows of their mouldings: they had found a means
of decorating those furrows as rich as it was expressive, and the entire
frame-work of their architecture was designed with a view to the effect
of this decoration; where the ornament ceases, the frame-work is meagre
and mean: but the ornament is, in the best examples of the style,
unceasing.

Sec. VI. It is, in fact, an ornament formed by the ghosts or anatomies of
the old shafts, left in the furrows which had taken their place. Every
here and there, a fragment of a roll or shaft is left in the recess or
furrow: a billet-moulding on a huge scale, but a billet-moulding reduced
to a skeleton; for the fragments of roll are cut hollow, and worked into
mere entanglement of stony fibres, with the gloom of the recess shown
through them. These ghost rolls, forming sometimes pedestals, sometimes
canopies, sometimes covering the whole recess with an arch of tracery,
beneath which it runs like a tunnel, are the peculiar decorations of the
Flamboyant Gothic.

Sec. VII. Now observe, in all kinds of decoration, we must keep carefully
under separate heads, the consideration of the changes wrought in the
mere physical form, and in the intellectual purpose of ornament. The
relations of the canopy to the statue it shelters, are to be considered
altogether distinctly from those of the canopy to the building which it
decorates. In its earliest conditions the canopy is partly confused with
representations of miniature architecture: it is sometimes a small
temple or gateway, sometimes a honorary addition to the pomp of a saint,
a covering to his throne, or to his shrine; and this canopy is often
expressed in bas-relief (as in painting), without much reference to the
great requirements of the building. At other times it is a real
protection to the statue, and is enlarged into a complete pinnacle,
carried on proper shafts, and boldly roofed. But in the late northern
system the canopies are neither expressive nor protective. The