File:The Pictorial handbook of London - comprising its antiquities, architecture, arts, manufacture, trade, social, literary, and scientific institutions, exhibitions, and galleries of art - together with (14596555227).jpg

Identifier: pictorialhandboo00weal (find matches)
Title: The Pictorial handbook of London : comprising its antiquities, architecture, arts, manufacture, trade, social, literary, and scientific institutions, exhibitions, and galleries of art : together with some account of the principal suburbs and most attractive localities ; illustrated with two hundred and five engravings on wood, by Branston, Jewitt, and others and a new and complete map, engraved by Lowry
Year: 1854 (1850s)
Authors: Weale, John, 1791-1862
Subjects:
Publisher: London : Henry G. Bohn
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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therefore, the lastfragment of splendid ecclesiastical building in England. It is alsothe last decidedly decorative work that is unmixed with Italian details(which had already been introduced pretty extensively), and the lastthat contains the great structural essential of the Gothic architecture,viz., the vaulting, which has ever since been so completely abandoned,that everything relating to it is become practically a lost art. Thisis indeed, at present, a fortunate loss, as it preserves this one part ofthe ancient buildings—incomparably their most important and variedpart, as regards either science or taste—from the present grievous restoration, a more ruthless catastrophe than any that befel themunder the Tudor tyrant, the Roundheads, or the churchwardenbeautifiers. Parsimony or inability precludes our restorers fromtouching this main feature, and thus leads us to hope, that when thestorm has done its worst, though all the rest of these precious me- ST. STEPHENS CLOISTERS. i 71
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HENRY VII.S CHAPEL. mentos be worse than destroyed—falsified, and made a forgery—thevaultings and their carved bosses will remain genuine. The St. Stephens cloisters are on a very minute scale, but on theusual plan, surrounding a square court, and are remarkable forhaving had two stories, of which the lower only was vaulted. Thewindows and their mouldings occupy the whole of each inter-buttress,so as to admit all the light possible, and hence the upper ones haveeach light carried up to reach the flat ceiling, and no general archspanning from buttress to buttress to relieve the minor arches overthe lights. There being no mass of wall to support, this constructionis here fit and beautiful; not so in other cases, where this Tudorwindow is evidently used merely as the cheapest means of retainingthose Gothic peculiarities that had come to be considered essential togentility; and where the necessity for a concealed arch (often inancient and always in modern instances) renders the whole

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