. Essays and Belles Lettres. any more of moment, as in small windowsand traceries, you instantly have the point given to thebottom of the window. Do you recollect the west windowof your own Dumblane Abbey ? If you look in any commonguide-book, you will find it pointed out as peculiarly beauti-ful,—it is acknowledged to be beautiful by the most carelessobserver. And why beautiful ? Look at it (fig. 7.). Simplybecause in its great contours it has the form of a forest leaf,and because in its decoration it has used nothing but forestleaves. The sharp and expressive moulding which sur-rounds it is
. Essays and Belles Lettres. any more of moment, as in small windowsand traceries, you instantly have the point given to thebottom of the window. Do you recollect the west windowof your own Dumblane Abbey ? If you look in any commonguide-book, you will find it pointed out as peculiarly beauti-ful,—it is acknowledged to be beautiful by the most carelessobserver. And why beautiful ? Look at it (fig. 7.). Simplybecause in its great contours it has the form of a forest leaf,and because in its decoration it has used nothing but forestleaves. The sharp and expressive moulding which sur-rounds it is a very interesting example of one used to anenormous extent by the builders of the early English Gothic,usually in the form seen in fig. 2. above, composed ofclusters of four sharp leaves each, originally produced by Architecture and Painting 69 sculpturing the sides of a four-sided pyramid, and afterwardsbrought more or less into a true image of leaves, but deriv-ing all its beauty from the botanical form. In the present. Fig. 7. instance only two leaves are set in each cluster; and thearchitect has been determined that the naturalism should beperfect. For he was no common man who designed that 70 Architecture and Painting cathedral of Dumblane. I know not anything so perfect inits simplicity, and so beautiful, as far as it reaches, in all theGothic with which I am acquainted. And just in propor-tion to his power of mind, that man was content to workunder Natures teaching ; and instead of putting a merelyformal dogtooth, as everybody else did at the time, he wentdown to the woody bank of the sweet river beneath therocks on which he was building, and he took up a few ofthe fallen leaves that lay by it, and he set them in his arch,side by side, for ever. And, look—that he might show youhe had done this,—he has made them all of different sizes,just as they lay ; and that you might not by any chancemiss noticing the variety, he has put a great broad one atthe top, and then a
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