l its parts as the human
body. Structure was ornament, and ornament structure, and the two were
fused as they have never been in any other style of architecture.
Decoration and variety of outline were supplied by the mere disposition
of the supporting masses, the arrangement of structural lines; to the
exterior, by the flying buttresses, the pinnacles, and the window
tracery; to the interior, by the banded shafts, the capitals, the
groined ribs of the vaults, and the openings of the triforium. Outside
the church became a framework of glorified stone scaffolding; inside, an
avenue of columns rising from the ground to the vaults, with
intermediate spaces of tracery and coloured glass. But before this stage
was reached there were many compromises and passing phases, and every
considerable church in England, until the end of the fourteenth century,
may be classified and criticised, not only for its beauty, but as a link
in the development of Gothic architecture. The builders were grappling
with both tendencies, the vertical and the horizontal; they were not
consciously working on a theory of complete vertical development; they
made progress by structural experiment, and a sensitive eye for
possibilities of beauty; and in the meantime their problem, both
structural and artistic, was to make a happy compromise between vertical
and horizontal lines. It was a problem which probably presented itself
to them in the question how they were to treat the different storeys of
the building. Structural difficulties would be continually at war with
their aesthetic ambitions, and the heavy stone vault made structural
difficulties a serious matter. There was a growing desire for space, for
height and width, for light and colour. With every increase of height
and width the burden of the vault became more oppressive; with every
enlargement of windows its supports were weakened. As a rule, the
English builders were far less ambitious in their treatment of these
problems than the French. Amiens Cathedral, begun at the beginning of
the thirteenth century, is structurally as daring as can be. Salisbury,
but for its spire, a later addition, is comparatively modest and timid.
The French builders quickly reached the limits of structural
possibilities, and their type became fixed. The English, with less
economy of support, and a lower organisation of structure, were better
able to play with their forms. So their churches present a series of
continual