TREES IN ARCHITECTURE 183 



became clear, it was too late. Take, as an 

 instance, the tracery of their windows. It is 

 true, as Mr. Ruskin says, that they began by 

 piercing holes in a wall of the form of a leaf, 

 which developed, in the rose window, into the 

 form of a star inside, and of a flower outside. 

 Look at such aloft there. [Chester Cathedral.] 

 Then, by introducing mullions and traceries 

 into the lower part of the window, they added 

 stem and bough forms to those flower forms. 

 But the two did not fit. The upright mullions 

 break off into bough curves graceful enough : 

 but these are cut short — as I hold, spoiled — 

 by circular and triangular forms of rose and 

 trefoil resting on them as such forms never rest 

 in Nature; and the whole, though beautiful, 

 is only half beautiful. It is fragmentary, un- 

 meaning, barbaric, because unnatural." 



Unfortunately for his argument, the account 

 Kingsley gives of the development of mullions 

 and tracery is far from correct. The tracery 

 does not consist of flower forms, but of geo- 

 metrical forms, often as suggestive of crystals 

 as of flowers, and frequently with the circle as 

 the main motive ; and the mullions are not 

 stem and bough forms, but only refinements of 



