Bk. VI. Ch. III. DETAILS. 185 Details. When we consider the bi'illiancy of invention displayed in the decorative details of French ecclesiastical buildings, the play of fancy and the delicacy of execution, it must perhaps be admitted that in this respect the French architects of the Middle Ages far excelled those of any other nation. This Avas, no doubt, due in a great measure to the reminiscences of classical art that remained in the country, especially in the south, where the barbarian influence never really made itself felt, and whence the feeling gradually spread northwards ; and maybe traced in the quasi-classical details of the best French examples of the 13th century, even in the Isle de France. More also should perhaps be ascribed to the Celtic feeling for art, which still characterizes the French nation, and has influenced it ever since its people became builders. Though the English must yield the palm to the French in this respect, there is still a solidity and appropriateness of purpose in their details which goes far to compensate for any want of fancy. There is also in this country a depth of cutting and a richness of form, arising from the details being so often imitated from wood-carving, which is architecturally more valuable than the more delicate exuberance of French examples. These remarks apply with almost equal force to figure-sculjiture as a mode of decoration. Neither in Germany nor in this country is anything to be found at all comparable with the great sculptured Bibles of Rheims, Chartres, Bruges, and other great cathedrals of France : even such as Poitiers, Aries, St. Giles, are richer in this respect than many of our largest churches. It is true that the sculptures of the fa9ade at Wells, or of the Angel Choir at Lincoln, are quite equal in merit to anything of the same period on the Continent; and, had there been the same demand, we might have done as well or better than any other nation. Whether it arose from a latent feeling of respect from the second Commandment, or a cropping out of Saxon feeling, certain it is that figure-sculpture gradually died out in England. In the 14th century it was not essential ; in the 15th and 16th it was subordinate to the architec- tural details, and in this respect the people became Protestant long before they thought of protesting against the jDope • and the papist form of worship. As already hinted at, it is probable that a great deal of the richness of English decorative carving is due to the employment, in early times, of wood as a building material in preference to stone. It is difficult, for instance, to understand how such a form of decorative arch as that on the old staircase at Canterbury could have arisen from
