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ON TASTE IN ORNAMENTAL DESIGN. Paet II. 



true that many grand buildings were made in the Tudor style ; 

 but at length it lost the very features which constituted the 

 charm and peculiarities of the Gothic : the flowing lines, and 

 the pleasing variety of the adjacent parts, were exchanged for 

 numerous harsh rectangular forms and parallel lines, forced 

 into accordance with curves ; constant repetitions wearied 

 the eye ; and the walls became at length so covered with bars 

 and fretwork as to be scarcely seen through this ornamental 

 cage, which in the ceilings looked like a compromise between 

 a fan and a net. And yet this over-elaborate treatment is 

 what is so often admired in Henry VII.'s chapel at West- 

 minster Abbey. I do not, however, extend this censure to the 

 interlaced work, such as we see in the ceilings of rooms of a 

 rather later period, with intricate, and at the same time, 

 tasteful patterns ; which are pleasing in form, and also well 

 adapted for variety of colour. 



In the Perpendicular style, the pointed arch of a window 

 lost its proper effect, from the incongruity of the unbending 

 lines which ran straight upwards through the head ; and it had 

 not even the excuse of its florid contemporary, the Flamboyant 

 of France, of exhibiting an exaggeration of the features and 

 characteristics of a preceding style. It even departed so far 

 from the Gothic, that one portion of many a Perpendicular 

 edifice, cast in metal, might almost serve for constructing the 

 rest of it. And if the flat-headed four-centred arch is 

 useful for the space it affords in the interiors of buildings, it 

 ceases to claim any merit in a window, where its effect is 

 heavy, and its tracery graceless and out of keeping with its 

 form. The return to regularity, characteristic of the Perpen- 

 dicular style, served to prepare the way for the introduction 

 of the Renaissance; and the revival of the classical in this 

 country had probably some connection with, or at least was 

 aided by, the tendencies of this its immediate precursor, which 

 had already the horizontal line as one of its leading features. 



