. Essays and Belles Lettres. that have cost you tenor twelve shillings a foot. Now the Gothic builders placed their decoration on aprecisely contrary principle, and on the only rational prin-ciple. All their best and most delicate work they put onthe foundation of the building, close to the spectator, andon the upper parts of the walls they put ornaments large,bold, and capable of being plainly seen at the necessarydistance. A single example will enable you to understandthis method of adaptation perfectly. The lower part of the 92 Architecture and Painting fagade of the cathedral of Lyons, bui
. Essays and Belles Lettres. that have cost you tenor twelve shillings a foot. Now the Gothic builders placed their decoration on aprecisely contrary principle, and on the only rational prin-ciple. All their best and most delicate work they put onthe foundation of the building, close to the spectator, andon the upper parts of the walls they put ornaments large,bold, and capable of being plainly seen at the necessarydistance. A single example will enable you to understandthis method of adaptation perfectly. The lower part of the 92 Architecture and Painting fagade of the cathedral of Lyons, built either late in the13th or early in the 14th century, is decorated with a seriesof niches, filled by statues of considerable size, which aresupported upon pedestals within about eight feet of theground. In general, pedestals of this kind are supportedon some projecting portion of the basement; but at Lyons,owing to other arrangements of the architecture into whichI have no time to enter, they are merely projecting tablets,. Fig. 13. or flat-bottomed brackets of stone, projecting from the bracket is about a foot and a half square, and isshaped thus (fig. 13.), showing to the spectator, as he walksbeneath, the flat bottom of each bracket, quite in the shade,but within a couple of feet of the eye, and lighted by thereflected light from the pavement. The whole of the sur-face of the wall round the great entrance is covered withbas-relief, as a matter of course; but the architect appearsto have been jealous of the smallest space which was wellwithin the range of sight; and the bottom of every bracketis decorated also—nor that slightly, but decorated with no Architecture and Painting 93 fewer than six figures each, besides a flower border, in a space,as I said, not quite a foot and a half square. The shape ofthe field to be decorated being a kind of quatrefoil, as shownmfig. 13., four small figures are placed, one in each foil, andtwo larger ones in the centre. I had on
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