266 GREEN TRAILS AND UPLAND PASTURES 



up companioning its fellows, in stately silhouette against 

 the sunlit water beyond. Our eyes may not seek the 

 branches above, the mere passage across the vision of 

 those upright columns being enough to evoke the mood, 

 a grave, solemn cathedral mood. I have often wondered 

 if it were not such a grove of trees which gave to the 

 sculptor of the Parthenon frieze his idea for the pro- 

 cession of vertical draperies which add such grave state- 

 liness to that composition. 



Man's use of the vertical in his buildings, of course, 

 reaches its most characteristic expression in Gothic 

 architecture. The mood of aspiration so closely asso- 

 ciated with all religions is directly appealed to alike by 

 the Moslem minaret and the Christian spire, but it was 

 in the Gothic style that it reached its flower, and the 

 soaring uprights sprang unbroken into the dim tracery 

 of sky-borne vaults, the innermost skeleton structure of 

 the cathedral revealing itself in verticals. One of the 

 chief reasons, of course, why an English cathedral never 

 gives you quite the stirring effect of Rheims or Chartres 

 is because horizontals have been introduced. Cu- 

 riously enough, it was not until Cass Gilbert applied 

 Gothic to our modern skyscrapers (in the West Street 

 building and the Wool worth Tower, particularly), that 

 they justified their height aesthetically. If you look 

 attentively at the ordinary skyscraper, you will see that 

 the various stories are clearly marked by horizontal 

 rows of windows the building is a layer cake of hori- 



