Читать книгу The Englishman's House: A Practical Guide for Selecting and Building a House онлайн

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The style of architecture just referred to is remarkable for its picturesque character, and may fitly be adduced as an ensample of that quality in the absence of an exact definition of the term.

An able writer criticising Gothic buildings, remarks that the outline of the summit presents a great variety of forms of turrets and pinnacles, some open, some fretted and variously enriched. But even where there is an exact correspondence of parts, it is often disguised by an appearance of splendid confusion and irregularity.

In the doors and windows of Gothic Churches, the pointed arch has as much variety as any regular figure can well have; the eye, too, is less strongly conducted than by the parallel lines in the Grecian style, from the top of one aperture to that of another; and every person must be struck with the extreme richness and intricacy of some of the principal windows of our cathedrals and ruined abbeys. In these last is displayed the triumph of the picturesque, and their charms to a painter’s eye are often so great as to rival those which arise from the chaste ornaments and the noble and elegant simplicity of Grecian architecture.