338 The Evolution of Architecture. 



glass as well as stone. Glass would, moreover, let in the 

 light, and this glass could be stained " with forms of saints 

 and holy men who died, here martyred and hereafter glori- 

 fied." Such was the evolution of Gothic architecture. If 

 the primitive Romanesque had its complete development in 

 Germany, culminating in the Cathedral of Speyer, and the 

 later Komanesque had its complete development in Eng- 

 land, where Durham is its great example, Gothic not only 

 had its complete development in Prance, but it had it only 

 there, the Gothic of Spain and Germany being almost 

 wholly French and only different to be less, while the 

 Gothic of Italy and England is never structurally Gothic in 

 the fullest sense, but a matter of Gothic ornaments and de- 

 tails inhering in a building of Romanesque construction. 

 Gothic architecture in France was first distinctly and sys- 

 tematically applied to a great edifice in the building of 

 the Notre Dame of Paris. There the system of opposing 

 thrusts was everywhere substituted for the inertia of great 

 masses. In Amiens the new system reached its most com- 

 plete expression in the thirteenth century. The building 

 of Salisbury was almost exactly contemporaneous with that 

 of Amiens and Burgos from 1220 to 1260. But both 

 Salisbury and Burgos are essentially walled buildings ; that 

 is, their strength depends largely on their walls, not on the 

 opposing thrusts of their functional frame-work. This 

 does not prevent their being buildings of marvelous beauty. 



The Gothic had an internal evolution, more or less sig- 

 nificant as it was here or there. In France it passed from 

 the early decoration to a more elaborate, from the flame- 

 like character of the window-tracery called flamboyant. In 

 England also the different stages are named after the tra- 

 cery, which, beginning with the lancet, single or in groups, 

 passed into the decorated, in which flowing lines predomi- 

 nate ; thence to the perpendicular, in which the flowing lines 

 are cut by perpendicular mullions and there is a general 

 accentuation of perpendicular and horizontal lines. The 

 evolutionary principle of correlated growth finds many 

 happy illustrations in this process, as where the flattening 

 of the roof over the aisles extinguished the triforium, the 

 arcade between the lower and upper stories of the cathe- 

 dral nave or choir 



The architecture which followed Gothic was the Renais- 

 sance. It was a dubious return to what was worst in the 

 Greco-Roman architecture of the second century, and hence 



