commonly called Henry VII.'s Chapel, because he built it. It was commenced in 1502, and completed in 1516. It would seem, indeed, as though the architect had in this building determined to excel all previous buildings by the exquisite and elaborate ornament displayed even in the minutest parts. He has succeeded almost in giving to stone the character of embroidery, and inclosing his walls with the meshes of lace-work, and when first completed, every window in it was filled with the richest of coloured glass. About the commencement of the present century it was observed that the outside, owing to the excess of fine work, was considerably decayed, and in 1808 the work of restoration was commenced. Between that time and 1822 the decayed parts were pretty successfully imitated and replaced by new work, at a cost of over 40,000l., and although some incongruities in the modern work may be detected, it is on the whole well done. A far finer building however, because free from the false construction involved in the use of pendants, is the Chapel of King's College, Cambridge. 205 CHAPTER XI. ELIZABETHAN AND DEBASED GOTHIC (From about 1530 to early part of Seventeenth Century.) A |BOUT the end of the reign of Henry VII. that decline of Gothic architecture began in this country, the seeds of which were sown on the abandonment of the subordination and pure Geometric forms of the first period of the pointed styles. The second period, comprising the two later styles, was not without merit and beauty, but the flowing tracery of the Flowing Curvilinear Decorated style, however much to be admired for its delicacy and graceful variety, renders that style, owing to the uncertain and fantastic contortions of which it is capable, one which is not to be imitated. The Perpendicular style, with its predominating system of verticality, had exhausted itself; and as the theory on which it was founded was incapable of further development beyond that which it had reached under the hands of the Tudor builders, attention was afterwards entirely given to ornamental detail, to the neglect of proper construction. The change of faith involved by the Reformation was not without its effects on the architecture of the time, and while that event was in progress men's minds were more intent upon the destruction of ancient work than the erection of new. There is no doubt that the Reformation and the troublesome times which followed were connected with, if they were not the primary cause of, the decay of the art of architecture, at least in this country. The sacking of the religious houses and cathedral establishments by Henry VIII. was sufficient to cause churchmen to desist from rearing noble piles, and also to prevent private munificence from erecting and endowing parish churches; but what really caused the downfall of Mediæval architecture was its departure from its original principles of construction, and the introduction of foreign ornament. Mr. Ruskin's eloquent outburst, or as it has been called "funeral oration,' over the grave of the complete Gothic is very vivid. 'So fell the great dynasty of Medieval architecture. It was because it had lost its own strength, and disobeyed its own laws-because its order, and consistency, and organisation had been broken through--that it could oppose no resistance to the rush of overwhelming innovation. And this, observe, all because it had sacrificed a single truth. From that one surrender of its integrity, from that one endeavour to assume the semblance of what it was not, arose the multitudinous forms of disease and decrepitude which rolled away the pillars of its supremacy. It was not because its time was come; it was not because it was scorned by the classic Romanist, or dreaded by the faithful Protestant. That scorn and that fear it would have survived and lived; it would have stood forth in stern comparison with the enervated sensuality of the Renaissance, it would have arisen in renewed and purified honour, and with a new soul, from the ashes into which it sank, giving up its glory as it had received it for the honour of God-but its own truth was gone, and it sank for ever. There was no wisdom nor strength left in it, to raise it from the dust; and the error of zeal, and the softness of luxury, smote it down and dissolved it away. It is good for us to remember this, as we tread upon the bare ground of its foundations and stumble over its scattered stones. Those rent skeletons of pierced walls, through which our sea winds moan and murmur, strewing them joint by joint, and bone by bone, along the bleak promontories on which the Pharos lights came once from houses of prayer-those grey arches and quiet aisles under which the sheep of our valleys feed and rest on the turf that has buried their altars-those shapeless heaps that are not of the earth, which lift our fields into strange and sudden banks of flowers, and stay our mountain streams with stones that are not their own, have other thoughts to ask from us than those of mourning for the rage that despoiled, or the fear that forsook them. It was not the robber, not the fanatic, not the blasphemer, who sealed the destruction that they had wrought; the war, the wrath, the terror, might have worked their worst, and the strong walls would have risen, and the slight pillars would have started again from under the hand of the destroyer. But they could not rise out of the ruins of their own violated truth.'* Architecture declined also on the Continent about the same time, though the art lingered longer at some places, as at Orleans. The Elizabethan style, which prevailed during the reign of Queen Elizabeth and James I., fostered by the introduction of the features of Italian art during the reigns of Henry VII. and Henry VIII., * Ruskin's 'Seven Lamps of Architecture.' |